{"id":62,"date":"2021-05-07T10:32:47","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T14:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2021\/?p=62"},"modified":"2024-01-18T12:05:30","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T17:05:30","slug":"in-the-name-of-jah-and-dick-gregory-a-new-vegan-movement-is-born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2021\/2021\/05\/07\/in-the-name-of-jah-and-dick-gregory-a-new-vegan-movement-is-born\/","title":{"rendered":"In the name of Jah and Dick Gregory, a new Vegan Movement is Born"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Plant-Based Community Fridge located on Bleecker Street at Overthrow Boxing Club.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s Friday night, and for the first time in months, warm enough to stroll around New York City without the armor of arm-stiffening winter wear. In a city still timidly emerging from their apartments after a year in quarantine, Crown Heights buzzes with relieved New Yorkers, still masked, but enjoying the early spring weather.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Just a block from Prospect Park, Ital Kitchen is not a new restaurant, but the crowd in the backyard patio\u00a0<\/span>might suggest otherwise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I enter the cozy indoor dining room, pass a bamboo divider and take a quick walk through the kitchen, arms distance from open flames topped with steaming woks and pots and pans.\u00a0 A trendy, Brooklyn-looking crowd dine and chat and drink in the restaurant\u2019s secluded backyard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Metal tables with mismatched chairs and benches, low couches and heat lamps are spread out at a safe distance. On each table, a different spread of booze brought from home, little cups of rice, and one of many plant-based dishes chef Michael Gordon just whipped up in the kitchen. Hand painted portraits hang from the wooden fence, and every direction, happy, young patrons of all fashion aesthetics and hair colors laugh in the dim light, sipping from mason jars and quirky glasses painted with butterflies and animals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Backyard at Ital Kitchen, 1032 Union Street, Brooklyn, NY.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gordon, who is 50, opened Ital Kitchen in 2001, and finding an enthusiastic audience took 20 years in the making.\u00a0 But he always insisted on sticking to his principles, and having fun while doing it, patiently waiting for the tide to shift. \u201cThe place hasn\u2019t changed, but at least I\u2019m making money now,\u201d he jokes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Born in Jamaica, Gordon moved to the United States in 1986 when he was fifteen years old. He decided\u00a0 to open Ital Kitchen shortly after he discovered Rastafarianism in his late twenties. Growing up on the Island, Gordon had an uncle who was a devout follower of Rastafari. It was not until Gordon was living in Queens, and had children of his own, that he truly came to embrace some of the beliefs he had learned from his uncle. Gordon had been feeling at a bit of a standstill, and was unsure what to do with his life, \u201cI just needed something different,\u201d he said. In Rastafari, he found a new purpose.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the Rastafari concepts that resonated the most with Michael was the idea of <\/span>Ital<\/span><\/i> eating, which stems from the word vital and is defined by eating natural, unprocessed, predominantly plant-based foods.\u00a0 As Gordon says, \u201cItal <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> vital.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For Gordon, Rastafari and the idea of <\/span>Ital<\/span><\/i> opened his eyes to the way food affected not only him as an individual, but also the people around him. He quickly found that by eating a plant-based diet, he felt happier and calmer, and found the same to be true of other plant eaters. Gordon believes that \u201cthe greener you eat the greener you be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He defines foods made with animal products as \u201cangry foods\u201d and \u201cstressful foods\u201d \u2014\u00a0food which at some point in their production, involve the suffering of some human or animal to get from the farm to your plate. \u201cI think a lot of violence comes through food. I think a lot of people are eating these stressful foods that create violence within them,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But he believes it does not have to be that way, and after a few years experimenting with <\/span>Ital<\/span><\/i> and Rastafari for himself, decided to open Ital Kitchen to share his discovery with fellow New Yorkers. But in the early 2000s, vegan food was a hard sell, even in Brooklyn, and for nearly 20 years, an average day at Ital Kitchen was one with little business. \u201cWe used to just sit here and play chess and smoke pot all day and we would get three or four customers,\u201d says Gordon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And between the menu of vegan ingredients many people had never heard of, and Michael\u2019s stoner eccentricities, his family and members of his Crown Heights community had plenty of doubt that he would succeed at all. \u201cWhen I first started people thought I was crazy,\u201d he admits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Year after year, he stayed in the same storefront, pouring his love into the place. He has painted and repainted the walls and the chairs, added new decor from his travels around the United States and back to the Carribean, and constantly experimented with new recipes (the vegan jerk chicken, however, has always been on the menu: his nod to the Island). Along the way, Gordon went to Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Arizona, he graduated in 2010. Every week, he flew to Scottsdale to attend classes and on the weekend, he returned to Ital Kitchen to practice his new skills in the restaurant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gordon wears his years of work on his paint splattered sweatpants, a faded red and green knit cap and a smile which creases at the eyes, the face of a man who enjoys what he does. And as the rest of New York and the world is beginning to <\/span>catch up <\/span><\/a>to the ideas Michael has been touting since 2001, and embracing the power of plant food, Ital Kitchen is finally enjoying some of the popularity Michael has worked hard to earn. He proved his naysayers wrong \u2014 the proof is in the electric Friday night crowd.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe world has shifted to Rastafarianism without even knowing,\u201d he says. \u201cFood is going to save us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Standing on the Shoulders of Green Giants<\/b><\/p>\n

Marcus Garvey<\/span><\/a> was born in Jamaica in 1887. He grew up poor, and belonged to the lowest social class on the island which was still under British rule. Garvey grew up to resent imperialism and white supremacy. After traveling around the Americas and to London as a teenager looking for work, he returned Jamaica in 1914, and brought with him a mission to empower the \u201cnew Negro\u201d under a banner of Black nationalism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He started the <\/span>Universal Negro Improvement Association<\/span><\/a>, and in 1916 moved to Harlem where he helped the organization rapidly grow. By 1920, it had over 1,900 divisions in 40 countries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A focal point of Garvey\u2019s work was the\u00a0 \u201cback to Africa” movement, and as a powerful public speaker, he rallied masses around the idea of unity for people of the African diaspora. In 1920 he delivered a <\/span>speech <\/span><\/a>telling the audience to \u201cLook to Africa when a black king shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance is near.\u201d These words would make Garvey a prophet of Rastafari, a religion in nativity. In 1930, the prophecy was fulfilled when a man named Ras Tafari crowned himself Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. Selassie became a living god for followers of Rastafari around the world.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Leonard Howell<\/span><\/a> was one of the first preachers of new religion, and is known by some as \u201cThe First Rastafari.\u201d\u00a0 In 1934, he was arrested and charged with sedition for speaking against the Jamaican government in a speech to rally new members to the Rastafari religion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After he was released from prison, he continued to preach against white supremacy and in support of Rastafari, and in 1940, founded the first Rastafari village in Jamaica known as Pinnacle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Howell, who had spent much of his childhood traveling around the world, admired Hinduism and became known as \u201cthe Gong” or “Gyangunguru Maragh,” amongst his followers. The Rastafari belief in <\/span>Ital<\/span><\/i> comes from Howell, who borrowed a commitment to plant-based eating from Hindu practices and applied it to his new Rasta religion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rastafari<\/span><\/a> belongs alongside Judaism, Christianity, and Islam under the banner of Abrahamic religions, but is differentiates itself in it\u2019s Afro-centric reading of the monotheistic Bible. <\/span>Ideologically,<\/span><\/a> many Rastas accept Haile Salessie as a messiah, who will deliver people of the African diaspora back to Zion, the promised land, which is Ethiopia in the Rasta view. Once delivered back to Zion, the Black race, which is believed by Rastas to be one of the original tribes of Israel, will be freed from Babylon, which in this context, refers to Western society.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In practice, however, Rastafari may align itself more with Eastern religions like Buddhism or Hinduism. For many, Rastafari is a lifestyle, not just a religion, and there is no one set way to embrace it\u2019s values. Many Rastas smoke marijuana, as a form of spiritual cleansing\u00a0 and many abstain from other intoxicating substances like alcohol, cigarettes and prescription drugs. Wearing dreadlocks is also common amongst Rastas as a commitment to living as natural a life as possible and a symbol of their dedication to <\/span>Jah<\/span><\/i> or God. Followers of Rastafari may also affiliate with a particular subgroup, or \u2018mansion.\u2019 The Nyahbinghi and Bobo Ashanti are two of the strictest, and to this day, most members of these mansions follow plant-based diets in the spirit of <\/span>Ital.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

A few decades after Rastafari began to spread and develop into a movement of global proportion, a new kind of movement for Black liberation was gaining momentum.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The 1960s was marked by the American Civil Rights Movement, led by figures like Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Coretta Scott King, who had visions for racial equality in a country still fractured by Jim Crow separatism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dick Gregory was a well known Civil Rights activist and comedian and like Leonard Howell, turned to food as a tool for racial liberation. Gregory died in August of 2017, but in many ways, he was a father of a revolution just beginning to come of age.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

When Gregory watched his wife, who was nine months pregnant, get kicked by a Mississippi sheriff in the 1960s, the only reason he did not fight back was because he had sworn himself to nonviolence, a pillar of the Civil Rights Movement of that decade. In that moment, he had another <\/span>revelation<\/span><\/a>: if nonviolence meant a refusal to hit or kick another person, even one that was beating him, the same should apply to animals. He decided to stop eating meat, and in the decades to come, advocacy for vegetarianism became a focal point of his work.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1974, he co-wrote a book with Dr. Alvenia Fulton, a naturopathic physician and owner of the first vegetarian cafe and health food store on the south side of Chicago. Entitled <\/span>Dick Gregory’s Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin’ with Mother Nature,<\/span><\/i> Gregory\u2019s book explains the health costs of the modern American diet which is filled with animal products and processed foods, and how people might find better health, and perhaps even enlightenment, in a vegetarian diet.<\/span> An original copy <\/span>now sells for nearly $400<\/span><\/a> and the book is being reprinted, with a new introduction, and will be sold beginning in June.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In an <\/span>obituary<\/span><\/a> of Gregory written by Trayce McQuirter, she wrote about a lecture he gave while she was attending Amherst College, and how it inspired her to transform her lifestyle. She wrote, \u201cin his speech, he traced the path of a hamburger from a cow on a factory farm to the slaughterhouse to a hamburger to a clogged artery to a heart attack, and it completely rocked my world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

McQuirter published <\/span>By Any Greens Necessary: A Revolutionary Guide for Black Women Who Want to Eat Great, Get Healthy, Lose Weight, and Look Phat,<\/span><\/i> in 2010, a recipe book, guidebook, and essay all in one, which exposing the unsanitary and inhumane conditions under which meat is produced and the explains potentially deadly effects of consuming a predominantly meat and dairy diet. The book advocates for other Black women, and everyone, to consider going vegan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Over half a century after his book was published, Gregory\u2019s plea for Black Americans to consider plant-based nutrition is gaining popularity \u2014 McQuirter is not a lone disciple.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As of 2020, Black Americans formed the fastest <\/span>growing demographic<\/span><\/a> of plant-eaters \u2014 a Gallup Survey estimated eight percent of all Black Americans are vegan and people of color ate 31 percent less meat in 2019, compared with a 19 percent decrease for white people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

VegNews, a popular vegan news outlet, published a <\/span>\u201cBlack Vegan Issue\u201d<\/span><\/a> in January, complete with \u201cThe Great American Black Vegan Restaurant Tour.\u201d From <\/span>Slutty Vegan<\/span><\/a> in Atlanta, to <\/span>Ras Plant-Based<\/span><\/a> in Brooklyn, and <\/span>Detroit Vegan Soul<\/span><\/a>, restaurant owners across the country are offering creative spins on vegan dining, and are unapologetic with their politics in the process.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Directly inspired by Gregory or Rastafari, and their own experiences and ideas, a new generation of Black political leaders are turning to the page and to their community, and promoting veganism as part of their vision for racial equality. Breeze Harper is the editor of <\/span>Sistah Vegan,<\/span><\/i> a collection of essays written by Black women explaining their connection to veganism, and attributes her initial interest in plant-based advocacy to Gregory\u2019s teachings. Omowale Adewale, founder of <\/span>Black VegFest<\/span><\/a> and author of <\/span>Brotha Vegan, <\/span><\/i>was <\/span>inspired <\/span><\/a>to go vegan by the Rastafari religion, and uses his work as a way to see himself represented in the mainstream vegan movement. “The vegan community has been white for so long, and sometimes it feels like they want to keep it white,”<\/span> he told BBC<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Across the country, Black vegans are in search of a solution to centuries of inequality and oppression that begins in the kitchen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

An Unequal Food History\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

My personal introduction to these ideas came from watching \u201cThe Invisible Vegan,\u201d a 2019 documentary directed by Jasmine Leyva. She is an actress living in Los Angeles, who decided to go vegan 10 years ago after meeting <\/span>Chef Babette<\/span><\/a>, owner of vegan restaurant, Stuff I Eat. Though Leyva was only 20 at the time, she was amazed that someone who was 60 years old could look so good just from eating vegan, and decided to give it a shot.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Immediately, Leyva noticed a huge difference. \u201cA lot of minor health problems I had that I thought were just growing pains starting clearing up,\u201d she told me. Leyva had suffered from chronic acne and severe menstrual pain which all but disappeared when she changed her diet. \u201cI realized there\u2019s more to this than being able to look good in some booty shorts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But while the physical changes Leyva experienced were positive, the feedback she received from her peers was less so. \u201cI\u2019m from D.C., which is more of \u2018Black city,\u2019\u00a0 she said, \u201cand when I moved to L.A. and went vegan, my friends from home used to make fun of me and say \u2018you\u2019re eating white people food.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Leyva decided to make the \u201cInvisible Vegan\u201d to break down the stereotypes she faced as a Black woman who is vegan, a return credit for the vegan movement into the right hands. As she points out in our interview, Donald Watson was a white Englishman who <\/span>coined the term<\/span><\/a> \u2018vegan\u2019 in the 1940s. While his organization, The Vegan Society, helped bring plant-based eating into Western culture and vocabulary, it may have also helped erase some of the true origins of plant-based eating, and it\u2019s original non-white practitioners. \u201cIt\u2019s just like yoga,\u201d says Leyva. \u201cIt isn\u2019t a European thing, but images of yoga in the West tend to be a white woman with a ponytail. The true origins of the other people who contributed to these movements get lost sauce.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 90 minutes, the documentary covers a lot of ground; from the history of soul food, to body image, to factory farming. Leyva mentions Rastafari, Dick Gregory, and other Civil Rights activists like Angela Davis and Rosa Parks, whose contributions to vegan and vegetarianism are often forgotten in the pages of history. And in one of the most impactful sections, Leyva lays out what may really be at stake when it comes to choosing what to eat for dinner.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the documentary, Black Americans are 30% more likely to die from heart disease and 60% more likely to be diabetic than white Americans. In addition, Black women are 40% more likely to develop breast cancer and the rate of pancreatic cancer is 50-90% higher amongst Black men. Black men also die at the highest rate of prostate cancer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why such a sharp disparity? Evidence increasingly suggests that diet may be to blame, but it is not quite that simple. lauren Ornelas, founder of the Food Empowerment Project believes that we are living in a \u2018food apartheid.\u2019\u00a0 And in the United States, it is by design. \u201cThese are deliberate attempts to harm the health of Black, brown and indigenous communities,\u201d she tells me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ornelas, who identifies as Chicanx and Indigenous, has dedicated her life to educating people on where their food comes from and advocating for the people and animals most often harmed by large, industrial food companies. Her organization promotes what they call \u201cethical veganism,\u201d or rather, a plant-based diet free from animal or human suffering in the form of farm worker exploitation. \u201cI think that capitalism obviously was created to benefit and profit off the backs of those who were seen as vulnerable,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was never meant to benefit us at all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Ornelas, the \u2018food apartheid\u2019 is not just about the treatment of food industry workers, but there is also a problem with the food itself. From the moment Christopher Columbus brought cattle to the New World on his fourth voyage, food systems in America began to change, and the Indigenous diet was trampled over by new imports. \u201cColonization is part of what brought these foods to our shores,\u201d she explains.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The dairy cow serves as an apt example to prove her point. Most Native Americans are lactose intolerant \u2014\u00a0 roughly 95% \u2014 as well as\u00a0 50-60% of Latinx and 65-75% of Black Americans, according to McQuirter\u2019s <\/span>By Any Greens Necessary<\/span><\/i>. Yet still to this day, the USDA <\/span>recommends<\/span><\/a> dairy products universally as part of a healthy diet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But dairy is just one example. In her book, McQuirter details several other examples of the way USDA guidelines defy nutritional science, and further, she explains a bit on food advertising and finance, which works to keep the meat and dairy industries on top and plant foods on the sidelines. But there is another problem at play. Not only does the food industry and USDA keep people misinformed, it also creates a landscape which makes affordable, healthy food hard to come by for many people living in low-income, often minority-dominated neighborhoods. It is a phenomenon known as a food desert.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The USDA <\/span>defines<\/span><\/a> a food desert as an area over one mile from the nearest grocery store and with limited transportation options for access to fresh produce. Food Empowerment Project <\/span>estimates<\/span><\/a> that in New York alone, 750,000 people live in areas legally classifiable as food deserts and an additional three million struggle with grocery store access to fresh produce. And the problem disproportionately<\/span> impacts<\/span><\/a> neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem and with higher percentages of Black residents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Increasingly, nutritional science has begun to undo decades of lies. In one instance, The World Health Organization <\/span>deemed meat a carcinogenic substance<\/span><\/a> in 2015. Other experts like Dr. Milton Mills featured in the Invisible Vegan have begun to promote plant-based diets to help people to prevent the onset of degenerative diseases. And documentaries like the <\/span>Game Changers<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>What the Health<\/span><\/a> are doing their part to set the record straight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But already decades, if not centuries of damage have been done, and the same people who grew up in a system that lied to them and made them sick are aging, and at risk of developing degenerative disease most commonly caused by excess consumption of animal products.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a nation, we are perhaps just beginning to wake up and unlearn the campaign of lies waged against an entire county, a campaign which disproportionately claims victims from communities of color. But where do we go from here? What might a more equitable, and transparent food industry look like, which places the well being of consumers over profit? And if plant-based living holds the secret, how do we expand the pulpit of the vegan movement to make room for all?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In New York, I found some interesting people with ideas to make that vision a reality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aunts et Uncles\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The stretch of Nostrand Avenue that runs through Flatbush is known as Little Caribbean. The neighborhood has been home to immigrants from the Caribbean islands since the early twentieth century, and wears the mark of its history on its storefronts. Caribbean Vibes, Exquisite Express, Immaculee Bakery and Real Caribbean Pot all serve traditional dishes from the islands within a block of one another.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Aunts et Uncles is a young face on a block of sun-bleached awnings. The storefront faces out to the street with floor to ceiling windows, unblemished aside from the company name and the words Plant-Based Cafe Bar Shoppe. Gold tables with mint green chairs on the sidewalk invite you to grab a coffee and people watch.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Inside, everything is a vision in pink, white, green and a calming light colored wood. Basking in the natural light by the windows, a pink plush couch sits in front of a backdrop of greenery, beside the book display and merchandise; sweatshirts, t-shirts and tote bags. The bar area is accented with gold: gold seats, cocktail shakers, even the orb-shaped light fixtures overhead. A set of tables neatly set with pink and green chairs line the wall across from the bar.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Dining room at Aunts et Uncles, 1407 Nostrand Ave., Brooklyn, NY.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The restaurant is run by married couple Michael and Nicole Nicholas. Michael was born and raised in Brooklyn and Nicole is from Toronto and between his background in graphic design and her background in event planning, not a detail was overlooked when it came to designing building their Aunt et Uncles brand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we came up with the concept it wasn’t a restaurant first or a bar first, it was an experience first,\u201d says Michael.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both Michael and Nicole are from large families where their Caribbean heritage played a big part of life growing up. And both have a lot of aunts and uncles, and 30 nieces and nephews. For them, the name is a tribute to their own relationships with their family members. \u201cThe conversations you can have with your aunts and uncles are a step away from your parents so it\u2019s a little less judgmental. It\u2019s more a free space to be yourself and that\u2019s what we wanted this to be,\u201d Nicole says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael\u2019s family immigrated to the United States from St. Lucia, and Nicole\u2019s mother is from Trinidad and her dad is from St. Vincent. For them, opening Aunt Et Uncles is a way to pay tribute to their families through the food they serve. And by putting their own, vegan twist on Caribbean staples like the Haitian Immaculee Patty or Jamaican salt fish on a biscuit, and other recipes close their hearts like lobster roll and tacos, they are paving the way for a new generation of Little Caribbeans.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Aunts et Uncles plant-based ‘Bake & Saltfish’.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Aunt et Uncles’ ‘Pumpesto’.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re kids from Caribbean culture who were Americanized and Canadianized and exposed to different things from our parents. It\u2019s like we\u2019re dual citizens, so we\u2019re going to bring something totally different to the table. We\u2019re exposing Caribbeans to something different and we\u2019re exposing Americans to something different,\u201d explains Michael.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Michael and Nicole made the decision to go vegan as a couple as a way to escape the fate of many of their loved ones. Cancer, diabetes, and high blood run in the family, and at the time, Michael was overweight and feared he might soon get his own diagnosis for one of the diseases that took the lives of his grandparents and Nicole\u2019s mother.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They watched \u201cWhat the Health,\u201d a documentary which explains the link between consuming animal products and the chronic diseases that kill thousands of Americans annually, and decided to experiment, and remove all animal products from their diet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized that the food we were eating had to be the common denominator somehow. So that pushed us to be more mindful of what we consume and our lifestyle,\u201d says Michael.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They have been vegan for four years, and for them, Aunt Et Uncles is a way for them to share the vegan lifestyle they have created without \u201cbeing preachy.\u201d But it is about more than just the vegan food. For Michael and Nicole, Aunts et Uncles is their way to set an example for the changes they hope to see in their beloved Flatbush.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe always used to venture out of Flatbush to find spaces we could sit and concentrate on our ideas and we thought we would bring that right here,\u201d says Nicole.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe would go to Williamsburg to get food, Manhattan to get books or to get drinks. We were all over the place,\u201d says Michael. \u201cWe thought that if we\u2019re feeling like this, we can\u2019t be the only ones in our neighborhood that have those same views and needs.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes as people of color, we feel left out,\u201d Nicole adds.<\/span><\/p>\n

But while Nicole and Michael would like to see more hip cafes and shops make their way to Flatbush, what\u2019s more important to them is ensuring these new places are built for the community that already exists, and not for the gentrifiers. \u201cWhen you talk about gentrification and all of these big buildings come in and all of these changes are happening, the community that exists is not held in mind,\u201d says Nicole. \u201cBut what if we were? What if there were all of these great changes and the community that already lives there is included?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One of their main mantras as a business is \u201cMake It In,\u201d their response to the widespread notion that people who grow up in a neighborhood like Flatbush need to \u201cmake it out\u201d in order to achieve their dreams. \u201cWith the idea of \u2018making it in,\u2019 you\u2019re including the decisions of the community and everyone is growing together,\u201d Nicole explains.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And they embrace the idea of \u201cmaking it in\u201d with every decision they make, down to the prices. In order to ensure their vision is accessible to everyone in the community, Michael and Nicole sell high quality, locally sourced food at a less-than-profitable rate. \u201cLet\u2019s just say if we were doing it for the money we wouldn\u2019t be doing it this way,\u201d Michael admits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As their Instagram proclaims, Michael and Nicole are hoping to pay tribute to \u201ca culture within the culture of Flatbush.\u201d And in doing so, they hope to inspire a new generation of people like them with a fresh vision for what their neighborhood community can look like.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so many wonderful people in this neighborhood, but the idea of \u2018being in the hood\u2019 is not a geographical thing, it\u2019s a mindset,\u201d says Michael. \u201cSo if you start planting seeds and allow them to grow, the mindset will change.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Michael and Nicole Nicholas, owners of Aunts et Uncles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

COVID may have presented some speed-bumps to Michael and Nicole to open their brand, but with delicious food, an eye for design, and a mission to give back to a community they love, Aunts et Uncles is on track to make a splash.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have the mindset that Flatbush is a pretty chic neighborhood, that can be an anchor for people to change the representation of the neighborhood.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Overthrow Community Fridge\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

In Manhattan, Power Malu is planting his own seeds to grow the mindset of his fellow New Yorkers. On Bleecker street outside the Overthrow Boxing Club, he set up a refrigerator, spray painted with the words \u201cNew York, what are you fighting for?\u201d Malu is fighting to prove that everyone, even people struggling with insecurity, deserve to eat a healthy, plant-based diet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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When COVID-19 struck New York, Malu was returning from his native Puerto Rico where he had been assisting with Hurricane relief efforts. When he landed in New York, he found the city he loved in crisis, and got to work doing his part to help out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He got involved in mutual aid organizations which delivered food to people in need. But he quickly found himself in a crisis of consciousness. Malu has been vegan for nearly five years, and while he was happy to help people, and understood the financial limitations of the organizations he worked with, he was dissatisfied with the quality of food he was helping to distribute.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of (mutual aid) organizations that get money from the government basically throw scraps at people and that\u2019s what was happening during the pandemic,\u201d says Malu. \u201cI decided if no one is stepping up and talking about this, I need to bring awareness to this issue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Malu is a firm believer in the power of plant-based diet to reverse conditions like heart disease and cancer, a philosophy that came to him over time through experimenting with his diet and researching the merits of plant food. When he made food deliveries at the beginning of the pandemic, he met many people suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer who were struggling to pay their medical bills. He began to spread his gospel \u2014 \u201cfood is thy medicine.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe people that were suffering from COVID the most were people with underlying conditions from Black and brown communities,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What Malu set out to create with the Overthrow Community Fridge was in his words a way to \u201coverthrow the food system\u201d and start fresh. Rather than the treatment based model of disease that reigns supreme in the United States, he envisions a system of prevention. Give people access to the right food, and the health problems may never develop to begin with. \u201cWhen you talk about radical love and changing systems, food justice is exactly that,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

And as the Community Director at Overthrow Boxing Club, Malu knew the perfect place to make his dream of a free, vegan community fridge a reality.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Overthrow Boxing Club occupies a building on Bleecker with a rich history of radical politics. In 1967, the Youth International Party (often referred to as Yippies) was founded at 9 Bleecker Street. The group had a marijuana leaf on their flag, and were known for theatrical stunts and anarchy. With punk club CBGB across the street, the block was the counterculture hub in the city.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The boxing club took over the space in 2014. In addition to boxing, it hosts music events, sponsors 5k races, and partners with social justice organizations. Their most recent merchandise features a cartoon Donald Trump getting punched in the face with a boxing-gloved fist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to create a community fridge that was open to the public, free, and stocked 24\/7, Malu formed partnerships. He teamed up with Eloisa Trinidad, founder of Chili\u2019s on Wheels, a vegan mean share service and Hip Hop is Green, an advocacy group which offers a vegan oriented education on nutrition, mental health, and fitness in schools across the country. He spoke to grocery store and restaurant owners across New York and New Jersey who promised to provide regular donations of produce which may otherwise go unsold and large quantities of prepared meals. On a given day, the fridge might be filled with salads and cookies donated by the popular vegan fast-food restaurant byChloe, empanadas from Vspot in East Village, or fruits and vegetables recovered from a grocery store warehouse by one of the Overthrow Community Fridge volunteers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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And the block is busy, well-trafficked even on a cold night in March by visitors to the fridge, volunteers, and fitness gurus pumping out boxing workouts inside and chatting outside. Malu greets everyone with a smile, an elbow bump, and his <\/span>bendiciones<\/span><\/i> or blessings. He refers to everyone as brother or sister.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The fridge began operation in February, during Black History Month, and that was not a coincidence. \u201cThere are a lot of Civil Rights leaders like Dick Gregory, Angela Davis, Rosa Parks, that were vegan or vegetarian, but that\u2019s not something we learn about or talk about,\u201d explains Malu. Opening Overthrow Community Fridge in February was his way to pay tribute, and to bring awareness to a message which has perhaps earned less attention than it should. \u201cThis is part of the movement for liberation that we\u2019re seeing for Black lives, for Puerto Rico\u2019s independence, all of it works together. Because we’re fighting against a system that oppresses people and keeps people sick so that they can continue to make money off of people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In its three months of operation, the fridge drew quite a buzz. \u201cIt has inspired people from Brazil, Japan, all over the world. People are sending messages to us saying that they want to do something like this. So that in itself is powerful because we understand that it’s not only a local issue. This is a global issue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For Malu, the fridge is his way to make a statement that is visible to anyone who passes by. \u201cWe\u2019re out here in public telling people that you deserve to eat like this. This is healthy food and you deserve to have access to this no matter what your socioeconomic status is,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is radical in itself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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A Psychological Revolution Through Food\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

People like Power Malu and Michael and Nicole Nicholas are implementing their visions for a food system which does not play favorites and gives everyone an opportunity to live as healthy as possible. But the work does not end there. To truly undo centuries of food injustice, the most significant revolution may still need to occur on an individual, mental level.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think with lot of activism, we’re always trying to change others out there, but I think over time, some of the best work is what happens within,\u201d says Aph Ko, writer of <\/span>Racism as Zoological Witchcraft: a Guide to Getting Out <\/span><\/i>and co-author of <\/span>Aphro-Ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism and Black Veganism from Two Sisters<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ko has always had a passion for social justice, but always felt out of place in anti-racist and feminist organizations. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until I started interrogating animal rights that I realized how compartmentalized our movements are, and I felt very stifled,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Through her books and work with her website, Black Vegans Rock, Ko is out to prove that the way think about the issues ailing society is fraught; rather than thinking about all of these issues separately, and sectioning ourselves off to different groups and affiliations, we need to talk about racism, animal rights, and feminism all in the same conversations. \u201cAnd people think intersectionality is going to cure that but really it\u2019s just about being a person,\u201d she adds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, Ko believes (and argues, in <\/span>Racism as Zoological Witchcraft<\/span><\/i>) that most well intentioned activists are after a common enemy: white supremacy. But in Western society we have a tendency to attach ourselves to labels and align ourselves to movements only focus on a very small portion of a much larger movement. What Ko suggests is return to the drawing board. \u201cI think one of the negative things about a lot of our social justice movements is that we think there\u2019s only one way to do the work,\u201d she says. I\u2019m showing that there are different ways to be vegan, and different ways to be an activist and different ways to engage with this work.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And yet another ingredient to creating a vegan movement that is accessible to all, is to deliver the message in a way that is most palatable to the recipient. \u201cPart of what I like to encourage people to do is think more practically and more broadly so that we can stop holding people hostage around food,\u201d says Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson, a professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland. She has dedicated much of her career to studying food history of African-Americans, and is in the process of writing a book on what she calls \u2018food shaming\u2019 and \u2018food policing\u2019 and the need to eliminate judgement surrounding food, particularly that which is racist in nature.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Forson is quoted in an article entitled \u201c<\/span>\u2018White People Food\u2019 Is Creating An Unattainable Picture Of Health<\/span><\/a>,\u201d where she offers further insight on the importance of taking the right approach to encourage people to make health choices that are best suited to their needs. \u201cWhen you go into a person\u2019s culture and you say, \u2018You can\u2019t eat this,\u2019 or \u2018You can\u2019t do that,\u2019 it\u2019s just like going into your house and moving your furniture,\u201d she said.\u201dYou\u2019re going to feel violated, you\u2019re going to feel invaded. It makes people feel like their cultural sustainability has been compromised.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But whatever the best approach may be, when we begin to remove judgement and stereotypes, and take a step back to question the narrative around food that\u2019s been fed to us, a new, more truthful and compassionate narrative can take its place. \u201cWe need to wake up because a lot of the things that we spend our money on are things that we actually don’t support,\u201d says Jasmine Leyva. \u201cBut we’re zombie mode.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Epilogue<\/b><\/p>\n

I interviewed Michael Gordon in the dining room at Ital Kitchen on a quiet, sunny afternoon. At one point in our interview, he pulls a pack of Bob Marley rolling papers and a bag of weed from a patterned hemp pouch. He carefully rips the green bulbs apart into a little mountain, removes a sand-colored paper creased in half from the pack, and rolls it up. He holds the perfect joint as he talks, waving it around unlit, like an extra finger. He tells me this has always been, and will always be, the first part of his daily cooking routine.<\/span><\/p>\n

I ask Michael if he has a mission as a chef and as a restaurant owner. And his answer, after twenty years in business; \u201cI still don\u2019t know. I just set out that whatever I do, I\u2019m gonna have fun doing it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But while he may not have the words to boil his work with Ital Kitchen down to one statement of purpose, his mission in life is pretty clear. \u201cI tell people, to be smart is to achieve happiness.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And for Michael, vegan food is a central part of his happiness and the happiness he hopes to share with others. \u201cWhat makes the world a happy place is people getting into the habit of being happy. And you can\u2019t be happy if you don\u2019t have the right food to eat,\u201d he says. \u201cGive people the right food and they\u2019ll figure out the rest.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Vegan food may not be a stand alone answer to end centuries of racism and oppression, and it may not even be the answer to ending the food apartheid. But as the movement grows, and as more people begin to slow down and question the way they live and eat, it may be a good start.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen all the changes in this neighborhood,\u201d he says. \u201cI think everyone has been displaced somehow, that\u2019s the economics of things. But if you\u2019re going to grow you\u2019re going to have to accept changes and make yourself of the change you want. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve done here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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