Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (27 page)

Working with Others

“What keeps me going,” Kathleen explains, “is that I feel I’m on a frontier. I feel that the whole group is on a cutting edge, able to share a sense of vision, and able to support each other personally in our work.”

For Leah, as for Kathleen, working with other people has made all the difference. “Working in groups is the most important thing because you can get support from other people and test your ideas,” Leah says. “I discovered that a lot of things I thought were true were not. When I kept my thoughts to myself, I didn’t have an audience to check them. Once I started interacting in groups I got challenged on my ideas, on the way I lived, on my capacity as a person.”

“You have to find some kind of core group, maybe only two or three people that you can relate to value-wise,” adds Jody Grundy, who works with Kathleen Cusick at Rural Resources. “They can be a renewing source of energy for work that is often isolating and lonely. We three women in Rural Resources have a sense we can do anything!”

To do more than we think we can do, most of us need a push. For some this means taking a position in which a lot more is expected of us than we feel prepared for. Keith Jardine, one of the key people in the Canadian People’s Food Commission (a two-year-long nongovernmental initiative to involve people at the grassroots in analyzing problems of the Canadian food system), told us, “I began with the Commission as a volunteer, and when a staff position opened, I was hired. I suddenly found myself helping to organize this enormous project. I had no particular training or experience, other than a minimal amount of educational work in my food co-op. Most of my experience was shuffling boxes around.” From the experience with the Commission, Keith concluded, “If I changed, then other people can!”

Direct Experience of Oppression

Many people first got involved by “playing the hand they were dealt,” but for others personal travel in the third world (even a vacation trip to Mexico or Jamaica) or a stint in the Peace Corps or VISTA made the difference. Their life directions were profoundly altered when they put themselves as close as possible to the deprivation and oppression which previously they had only read about.

Larry Simon was a college professor before he joined Oxfam-America, a development organization based in Boston. “I suppose what changed me the most was not reading or intellectually grasping the structures of oppression but having the opportunity to actually go to Latin America, to talk to peasants, to talk to cane-cutters working for Gulf + Western Corporation, to feel the incredible repression in the air, to taste and smell the awful, needless poverty.”

Sue Penner found that her work as a Peace Corps nurse in Honduras sensitized her permanently to the injustice of needless suffering. “When you’ve seen the poor kids, the babies that are shrivelled up like little old men, the ashen faces of women
dying
of anemia, the men with stunted bodies and stooped shoulders, it somehow makes you start thinking,” she writes. “It’s awfully hard to forget. It’s awfully frustrating just sitting down there pushing penicillin into the bodies of sick babies who couldn’t have died if they’d just had
food
to eat!”

As a participant in a Jesuit Volunteer Corps program, Annie Newman worked one day a week at a soup kitchen frequented by the poor and down-and-out in the Latino area of San Francisco. “I grew up in a middle-class family in Phoenix, so working at the soup kitchen shocked me at first,” says Annie, who also works at our Institute. “Seeing how badly our society takes care of these abandoned people really strengthened my commitment to working for change.”

From Larry’s, Sue’s, and Annie’s experiences, we can derive a powerful lesson: to cut through our own self-doubts and indecision about what we should be doing with our lives, it is often necessary to experience the real oppression which so many people face every day. Of course, such firsthand experience will always be vicarious; we will always “have a plane ticket in our pocket,” as Larry Simon puts it. Nonetheless, seeing firsthand the suffering with which so much of the world lives can sometimes jolt us into taking our own life choices more seriously.

Remaining Critical—Especially Self-critical

“Playing the hand one is dealt” does not mean simply taking the most obvious step uncritically. Working with pressing issues close to home must go hand in hand with an evolving analysis, an analysis constantly used to evaluate your own work. Larry Simon’s experience in the third world took him from an academic setting to more active participation at Oxfam-America. But having made that step, he did not suspend his critical analysis. Within only a few years Larry was examining not only the projects Oxfam supports in the third world but also the context in which those projects operate. Finally he concluded that Oxfam should not work in certain countries where government repression is so strong that it precludes the existence of any organization working for redistribution of power, the only kind of organization which Oxfam wants to support.

Hard Work and Balance

“Corporate executives work hard. Peasant organizers work hard,” Leah Margulies points out. “So must we.” Leah actually made a conscious decision to move to fast-paced New York City so she could “learn how to work hard.” Hard work and self-discipline were frequently mentioned by the people we interviewed.

This might appear to contradict the fact that these people are full of energy and excited about their work. Their lives tell us that passionate involvement must link risk, self-discipline, and hard work, with release and comfort to achieve a balance. Perhaps those committing their lives to social change today have learned something from the 1960s, when many people “burned out.” Leah Margulies, for instance, plays flute and bass and has performed regularly in a women’s band and a theater group.

Balancing one’s life to avoid burning out is an essential part of an attitude that working for justice is not just something to do for a few years before settling down into a more conventional life. Rather, the activists we talked to see themselves as part of a historical process longer than their own lifetimes.

“We’re in this for the long haul,” says John Vlcek of the Nashville-based Agricultural Marketing Project. “We’ve got to realize that even if we work our entire lifetime we’ll only have a certain impact, and a lot of that impact is going to be seen only after we’re gone.”

The most common link we found in talking to people working in the food and hunger movement was the tremendous change they felt in their individual lives. They began to experience themselves as initiators of change in others. For them, the possibility of change is no longer just theoretical. Leah moved from seeing herself as a dependent housewife to becoming a major policymaker in an international movement which has affected millions. John Vlcek and Bob Pickford have seen how the ideas of a few food activists could grow, within a few years, into programs of direct marketing and co-op stores that affect tens of thousands of people. As Keith Jardine said, “If I changed, then other people can!”

I hope that the testimonies in this chapter show that getting involved—taking on the challenge of “what can we do?”—can bring extraordinary satisfaction.

But, after reading a draft of this chapter, Cathy Lerza, a founder and director of the Washington-based National Family Farm Coalition, protested: “Frankie, you make it sound too heavy and serious. Actually, I’ve had a great time the last ten years! I
want
to come to work each morning.I love the people I work with. How many Americans can feel that way?

“You make it sound like working for social change is harder than the lot of most people. But no, it’s the people who feel that they have no reason to get up in the morning who are in worse, shape. If I weren’t doing what I am, my life would be so much less interesting. I think I’m pretty damn lucky!”

What everybody wants is what Cathy’s found—something she feels passionate about. That’s the common thread uniting the people I’ve quoted here. My central hope for this book is that it’s given you some clues as to how others have made that discovery—so that you might make it for yourself.

But, so many say, what difference can
one
of us make? The problems are so enormous. And they are right. Nothing any one of us can do will make a big difference. Yet, the irony is that the world is changing every day in response to individual choices; and that is the
only
way it can change—by individuals making up their minds to act.

When we realize that no one individual act will make much difference, when we appreciate how many things have to change at once, self-doubt and despair come in the door. I believe this is inevitable. But the door is also open to another realization: if it is true that many things must change at once, we can put behind us the futile struggle to figure out
the
way to change the world and get on with the work right at hand—the injustices, the needless suffering, the destruction of resources right in our own communities.

And once we grasp how profound the problems are, we also can let go of our futile efforts to overcome our despair once and for all. The people quoted in this chapter may seem basically satisifed with their lives, but their satisfaction does not come from protecting themselves from uncertainty. They accept periodic uncertainty, loneliness, and self-doubt as facts of life. Their satisfaction comes in knowing they can face those feelings and go on. So, more than a guaranteed recipe for action, more than perfectly formed analysis, we need courage—courage to face despair and go on.

And remember: we don’t have to start the train moving. It is moving! Our struggle is to figure out how to board that train, bringing on board all the creative energy we can muster.

^*
Published by the Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1980.

2.
How to Plug In

T
AKING THE FIRST
step is easier today than it was two decades ago when I first wrote
Diet for a Small Planet
. Literally thousands of citizen organizations have emerged, addressing both immediate problems in their communities and global problems of historical impact.

But
how
can you find out about them? And
how
can you choose those through which you can learn and act for positive change? Instead of including a list of organizations here as I have in earlier editions—one that of necessity must be partial and impermanent—I suggest the following:

First, I’ve noticed that most of us get involved through someone we know. So look around. Turn to friends and acquaintances who are already involved in something they care about deeply. This may mean seeking out new friends. Whom we choose as friends can be among the most important decisions of our lives. We can choose those who challenge us to take risks—to try on new ideas and new actions.

Another step in finding others to work with for constructive change is to broaden one’s reading. Bring new books and periodicals into your home in which you can find out about citizen initiatives that would probably not appear on the nightly news. In
Appendix A
, I’ve included a short list of books and periodicals for you to consider.

I also suggest that you write to the two organizations which I know best, both for ways to get involved and for further “leads.”

For more depth on issues related to food, land, and third world development, I suggest you write to Food First (the Institute for Food and Development Policy), 145 Ninth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. Food First will send you further reading and action ideas, membership information, as well as a guide to other related organizations working for constructive change.

I also suggest you write to the organization I co-founded with Paul Du Bois in 1990, the Institute for the Arts of Democracy, 700 Larkspur Landing Circle, Suite #199, Larkspur, CA 94939. We are developing programs to bring forth a more active democracy in which citizens are reclaiming authority in public life—in the schools, the media, the workplace, and at every level of government. We call this work “Building Citizen Democracy.” We’d love to have your participation. Please write to us to find out about joining with us and to receive a list of publications. We and Food First are especially looking for volunteers and interns to work with us.

Preface

In 1980, when I decided to write a Tenth Anniversary Edition, I sent out a call for help. I mailed hundreds of fliers and put notices in newsletters and magazines asking people to contribute their favorite complementary protein recipes. The response was incredible. Hundreds of people not only sent recipes but also their very thoughful suggestions for how to make the book better.

At first I found it hard to write this edition—to go back to what I had written so many years ago. But these letters kept me going. Many people described their own personal journey over the last ten years. Their words made more bearable the isolation I feel when I write, I felt I had friends all over the country who were urging me on. No longer did I feel like I was going backward; instead I could use this new book to move forward, by taking the time to reflect on what I had learned.

You’ll recognize these new recipes by the names of contributors at the top. Bill and Akiko Shurtleff, authors of the
Book of Tofu, Miso
, and
Tempeh
, deserve a special thanks, since I used several of their excellent recipes.

All of these new recipes and those that have been substantially revised are indicated by an asterisk (*) on each Contents page.

   When I was growing up my brother and I used to say that although our mother was no gourmet cook, she was perhaps the best short-order cook in the world. Judging from the reaction to the first edition of this book, I’d say that a lot of other Americans have the same approach to cooking as my mother. They like recipes that they can whip up from memory, vary according to what they have on hand, get on the table in a hurry, but that have a flair of originality to them.

This is certainly the way I try to cook most of the time, except for those special meals for friends when the extra preparation time and care add to the pleasure of the occasion. So in this edition I have divided the recipes into sections that reflect my own cooking habits.

The first and largest section is “Meatless Meals in a Dish.” (Suggestions for salad or vegetable accompaniments are given, too.) If the beans or grains for these dishes can be taken from the refrigerator or freezer already cooked, virtually all of these dishes would appeal to even my “short-order” mom. Others are quick even starting from scratch.

The next section, “Meatless Menus for Special Occasions,” gives complete dinner menus to help you plan when you have the time for more elaborate dinners.

Following these main sections, you’ll find recipes for “All the Extras”—snacks, appetizers, breakfast foods, baked goods, and desserts. Most of these dishes, from the main dish recipes to snacks and desserts, use complementary protein combinations.