we chose, as a company, not to discuss issues of politics. We felt the sting of backlash after engaging in political topics via the newsletter in 2017, and we were concerned about alienating people. Wouldn't we have a greater impact by keeping more people involved in the conversation? After all, food was what brought the GFJ community together. If it's not food-related, might folks not be interested in hearing our opinions on it? 

The answer to the latter question is, of course, YES - we have heard from newsletter readers regularly over the years with requests to unsubscribe or to 'stay in our lane'. But in all this time, we have also been finding our way toward an answer to the former question that, frankly, surprises us.

Food is what brings us together initially, but what keeps us at the table is precisely how food touches every other part of life - even (or especially) the hard parts. We love engaging with food because it helps us understand everything else better - joy, for sure, but also culture, the environment, nature, health and wealth, education, economics, justice, and yes: politics.

Our work, as Brené Brown helped us to see this week when she wrote, "I have a political identity, my work does not," is to view the world through the lens of food, and we go where the information takes us. A study of food has taught us that the systems humans have erected over the years - the ones based on exploitation, convenience, and profit - leave us collectively in loss: depleted of energy, resources, beauty, and abundance. We've learned that leveraging the concept of scarcity leads us all down the wrong path. We know that there are better answers, ones that may not have a successful or profitable model (in the narrow way success and profit are currently defined in our society) in place for us to draw from, and so the process of finding the right way will require us to wrestle with the wrong way. We need not fear addressing important and challenging issues - this is the only way for us to ultimately make positive change.

The purpose at the heart of GFJ is to sit with these topics and use food as a tool to digest them. We appreciate the time and attention of anyone willing to stay in it with us, to ask us questions, lend support, or challenge us to hold ourselves more accountable. We know it will not be everyone, because politics are divisive. But if you think that racial justice or politics have no place in our newsletters, then your connection to food is only skimming the surface.

Here's that question again: Wouldn't we have a greater impact by keeping more people involved in the conversation?

What we've noticed over the last twelve weeks or so, as we continue to hold the thread of inequity and social injustice through these conversations, is that we are gaining far more followers than we are losing. 

Some quick evidence: between June and August of last year, we averaged about 200 new subscribers to GFJ / the newsletter each week, while in that same period this year, we are averaging 400. Over on instagram, we reached approx. 80 new followers each month at this time last year, and now that average is closer to 180 per month. 

Our eyes tend to glaze over when we're talking about data points. We are far more interested in human stories - smiles, questions, calls to action - than statistics, at least when it comes to our business acumen. But as we've connected with more and more people over a summer that sticks, hovering in our memory like heat waves off the pavement, we've noticed a difference, and that difference tells us two things:

1. in this community, people care a lot more about talking about antiracism than they do about not talking about it and

2. through growth and exposure, our company is profiting from standing up for and actively participating in social justice. How are we going to use that profit to continue advancing antiracist messages, actions, and cultural change? 

That's a question we will not stop asking.

Today, as job listings continue to climb slowly back up toward our former average of more than 1,000 open positions on any given day (right now it is more like 400 or so) and we can see that the long-term impact of COVID is not going anywhere fast, we've decided to make our Pay What You Can model permanent. Just as GFJ has always been free to those seeking employment, it can also be free, or greatly reduced, for those in need of team members. The climb toward employment equity is a long and hard one, and we plan to keep going. 

If you have other ideas for how we can better serve you, or your community, or the cause of antiracism, please get in touch. 


In food, justice, and food justice, 

Dor + Tay

PS: We are working through the inspiring quantity of responses we received to our call for feedback about Americorps service. We'll be sharing more about that in the next week or two. In the meantime, if you would like to reach out, and haven't yet, we are all ears.

Photo by BrakeThrough Media