Put Your Politics Where Your Mouth Is

"Put Your Politics Where Your Mouth Is" is an annual week of talks, teach-ins, and skill-sharing around food justice on campus and beyond. This series of events is coordinated by The Midnight Kitchen and The People’s Potato—two campus-based collective soup kitchens that serve by-donation vegan meals to McGill and Concordia students as well as the general Montreal community.

Our goal is to provide spaces to skillshare, discuss, and learn about the politics of food. This year, workshops and events will focus specifically on the ways food politics intersect with race, racism, and white supremacy. Workshops and events will highlight the ways in which Indigenous Peoples and People of Colour (POC) are impacted by a variety of issues related to food politics, as well as resilience and resistance in the face of dominant food systems which inflict violence upon the lives, bodies, and lands of racialized people.

Note on Accessibility: We have prioritized the voices of self-identified People of Colour and Indigenous Peoples in the selection of workshops and workshop presenters.

Event Schedule

MON MARCH 10 @ 15h30 | Structural Racism in Montreal Food Systems

• Description: Through sharing experiences and engaging in group thinking, participants will critically examine their food system with an anti-racism lens. Part teaching and part experiential, participants will be presented with key anti-racism concepts and respond to scenarios. Depending on the number of participants, the group may be divided by level of familiarity with anti-racism activism. The end goal is to sensitize participants to the importance of anti-racism in meaningful activism.
• Focus Concepts: Positionality, whiteness, colorblindness, structural racism.
• Location: Lev Bukhman Room (2nd Floor), SSMU building (3600 McTavish)
• Event Link: Facebook Event

TUE MARCH 11 @ 13h00 | Fat Embodiment, Race, and Class

• Description: If we are not working to break down the systemic and racialized oppressions inherently connected to food consumption, contemporary food politics risk bolstering racialized, fat-phobic, and capitalist oppression. Food-based movements often participate in advertising a hierarchy of foods—and thereby a hierarchy of peoples—with racialized and classed individuals being targeted unfavorably. People of Colour and Indigenous peoples are specifically targeted by these capitalist-driven food hierarchies as they are less likely to have access to “elevated” kinds of food.
• Location: Room B-30 (Basement), SSMU building (3600 McTavish)
• Event Link: Facebook Event

WED MARCH 12 @ 18h30 | Closed Dinner for People of Colour and Indigenous-identified Folks

• Description: An invitation to all self-identified people of colour, Indigenous, mixed-race, or non-white people to join for an evening of free food and discussion. This is a space to hangout, meet other POC, network, and talk about identity, community building, healing, and representation. People new to race/radical politics are highly encouraged to attend.
• Logistics: Food is provided, but everyone is welcome to bring a vegan dish or snack to share. Zines will also be available.
• Location: People’s Potato Kitchen, Hall Building 7th floor, 1455 De Maisonneuve W.

THU MARCH 13 @ 18h30 | Solidarity Across Borders’ Winter Feast! A Community Dinner

• Description: Co-organized with the Food for All committee of Solidarity Across Borders, which fights for healthy food access for those with precarious immigration status. This dinner is part of the larger Solidarity City campaign aiming to build community resistance against the violence of the immigration system and demand access without fear to all city services.
• Location: Centre William Hingston, 419 rue Saint-Roch (metro Parc)
• Event Link: Facebook Event

FRI MARCH 14 @ 16h00 | Red Urban Project: Cooking a First Nation Meal

• Description: A free cooking workshop by Alan Harrington. Come learn how to make Three Sister’s Soup and Fry-Bread or Baked Bannock!
• Registration: Spaces are limited. Please RSVP to peoplespotato@gmail.com as soon as possible.
• Location: People’s Potato Kitchen, Hall Building 7th floor, 1455 De Maisonneuve W.
• Event Link: Facebook Event

Thanks to CCSL for funding this event!