People Organizing to Demand Environmental & Economic Rights

We recently kicked off our cooperative cooking series CONVIVIO (Get Together). Our friends joined us for a festive evening of cooking at the Fun House, located in San Francisco's Excelsior District and run by our creative hostess Grace Ubiera. On this evening our guests brought an ingredient without knowing who was bringing what. After a collective brainstorm, review of the food ingredients, and a quick assessment of peoples cooking skills the menu was decided. Our chefs organized themselves into teams...

The father/daughter team of Michael and Tatiana got to work on the salsa and lemonade. Our head chef Sofia, aided by Ofelia & Josie, tapped into her extensive restaurant experience and concocted a delicious chicken stew with cactus, cilantro, raisins, tomatoes, onions, peppers & a lil' dab of cola. Gregorio, quite and low key, packed a culinary knockout with his Guatemalan avocado tostadas. The College University duo of Marilyn and Juan felt at ease making an improvised salad dressing for the greens they put together. And Avelina, with her sweet tooth, made an incredible Puebla Mexico inspired dessert with walnuts, raisins, grapes, mangos and yogurt that had us all coming back for seconds.  

Many of our guests first met each other a few weeks back when PODER recruited a over a dozen local community members to participate in the Spanish-language recruitment sessions conducted by Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives in preparation for their opening of a new worker-owned bakery in the Mission District. The sessions informed us about the benefits of cooperative workplaces: democratic decision-making, labor with dignity, defense of worker rights, knowledge in business practices, community building and progressive ideals. This experience was both enlightening and strategic- we are looking forward to strengthening our community activities, youth programing, member program, and campaign demands with explicit cooperative ideals & principles.