Resistance Kitchen Opens! - Resistance Kitchen

Research by the Food Foundation shows that food insecurity has more than doubled this year compared to last year, with nearly 1 in 5 households going hungry. 1 in every 17 adults (over 3.2 million) reported not eating for a whole day in the previous month, because they couldn't afford food.

It was grim facts like these, confirmed by the poverty we witness in our community, which prompted us to open the Resistance Kitchen. The Resistance Kitchen is a community kitchen serving those in need in our local community of Norbury and Thornton Heath, in South London. Its launch this Saturday 1st July 2023, alhamdulillah, was a great success.

Hot Meals

We served chicken biryani hot meals, bought from a local restaurant, and shared fresh fruit & vegetable packs, and a selection home cooking essentials like rice, pasta, sauces, spaghetti, tinned vegetables, tuna, sardines, soups, cereals, etc . If the demand is there, then we will also look at providing a vegetarian hot meal option.

Fruit With Dignity

With food inflation surpassing 19% in April – highest in 46 years, families are cutting back on expensive healthy foods for cheaper calories. The research shows that fruits and vegetables are among the first to be sacrificed. 57% of food insecure households are cutting back on fruits, and 42% on vegetables. With this in mind we made the decision to provide fresh fruit bags with each hot meal. And include 1kg bags of potatoes and 0.5kg bags of onions in our home cooking selection for our guests to take home. Several of our guests commented positively on this, especially the scrumptious fruit bags.

Also interestingly one guest said it was ‘nice’ that the fruit and vegetables were given out in sealed presentable bags; he could see some effort had gone to making them. Whilst not quite a fruit hamper, we did try to make it presentable down to the arrangement of the fruit, and used a heat sealer to seal the bags. This was a conscious decision on our part – we didn’t want our guests to rummage through cardboard crates to find their fruit. How we give is often as important as what we give. It’s about respecting someone’s dignity, about giving in the way we ourselves would like to receive.

Could Happen To Anyone

Being a relaxed Saturday afternoon we got a chance to talk to our guests over a cup of tea and biscuits, an opportunity for them to share a glimpse of their lives with us. What struck us was that, on the whole, their lives were not that dissimilar to ours, they were ordinary hard working people, often in work or carers looking after elderly family members, or retired themselves. But had fallen victim of the government’s brutal austerity policies, which forced them in to food insecurity. It could so easily happen to any of us. Food is often the elastic part of a family’s budget – after all the other bills have been paid, so its the first to be cut when money is scarce.

Victims Conditioned To Blame Themselves

Having volunteered at another food bank for nearly a year, before launching Resistance Kitchen, one thing that stuck me was how common it was to see the victims of deliberate government policies blame themselves for their suffering, whilst being grateful to the breadcrumbs from those in power.

Liza McKenzie describes this in her book “Getting By – Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain” as how power works, by instilling a false belief in ‘middle-class meritocracy’ that the rich deserve their social advantages through merit alone, and they should not be questioned and remain invisible; whilst at the same time promoting the illusion of ‘natural disadvantage’, that the poor should be made to feel responsible for the inequalities they experience, their apparent failure is theirs alone, linked to visible behaviour.

This false perception is conditioned through blanket negative portrayal of the poor as lazy “scroungers” getting ‘free’ council houses and “benefit fraudsters” with countless ‘poverty porn’ ‘reality’ tv series and wall to wall coverage in the tabloids. Institutionally corrupt city bankers, traders, and tax dodgers like the Prime Minister’s wife who is allowed to embezzled £20 million in unpaid taxes, on the other hand, remain largely invisible. The wealth of the 1% is viewed as something to be admired and to aspire to – a reward for hard work, rather than the loot of generations of plundering and exploitation.

Road To Justice Begins With Education

Malcolm X said “America’s greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt.”

This applies in a wider context to all oppressed people. The first step to removing those masks of self-doubt and self-hate is knowledge, an understanding of why they are suffering, why they are hungry. This is a core aim in setting up Resistance Kitchen. Whilst providing food to those in need we must also campaign for justice, which begins with education.

We displayed a giant sandwich board with information to get passers-by thinking about the big questions of poverty and inequality in our community.

Rights Not Charity

On one side we had our core statement of our belief in a ‘rights’ based approach to alleviating hunger, rather than a ‘charity’ based approach which is what all food banks are, including ours – a contradiction we struggle with. It reads :

“Food is a Human Right that the state is legally obligated to guarantee with Dignity, not a need to be inadequately met through foodbanks. Charity can never replace Justice. Foodbanks should not exist in the 5th richest country. Our existence is an indictment of the state’s failure!”

Inequality

On the other side we chose a local statistic laying bare systemic poverty inequality and racial inequality in Croydon to bring the message home:

Selhurst and Selsdon are both suburbs in our borough of Croydon. They are just 1.6 miles apart. So why is the life expectancy of those living in Selhurst over 10 years less than those living in Selsdon (74.1 years compared to 84.5 years)?

We wanted to highlight the stark reality of poverty inequality in our borough – if you live in a deprived area then your life will be cut short by more than 10 years.

When we look at the ethnic composition of the two suburbs, it becomes clear the role racial inequality plays in poverty. The suburb with 80% white population lives more than 10 years longer than the suburb with a majority black/asian population.

Reflection Table

We also set up a Reflection Table with morsels of information painted on pebbles and other creative means to impart knowledge, to reflect on, and stimulate critical thinking.

We placed two contrasting passages next to each other – one on the suffering endured from one generation to the next, and the other of the reasons for that suffering.

Next to a candle we included a quote from a mum from East London which we found on the website of the End Child Poverty Coalition (endchildpoverty.org.uk):

“When I was younger we had to sit in the dark with candles because we didn’t have enough money for the meter – how can we as a country still be in the same position 40 years later?”
Aneita Lewis, 49, mum from East London

The UN Expert on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Prof Philip Alston was sent by the United Nations in 2018 on a fact finding mission to the UK to determine why people are in extreme poverty in the UK. Previously he had visited developing nations like Mauritania and Ghana, so it was telling when he was sent to investigate poverty in the 5th richest country in the world.

His findings were a damming indictment of government policies targeting the poor, violating their human rights in the process. The whole report is well worth reading if you want to understand poverty in the UK. For the Reflection Table we included a quote from the conclusions of his report on UK poverty:

“The experience of the United Kingdom, especially since 2010, underscores the conclusion that poverty is a political choice. Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so. Resources were available to the Treasury at the last budget that could have transformed the situation of millions of people living in poverty, but the political choice was made to fund tax cuts for the wealthy instead.”

Resting next too this passage was a pebble with a related quote from a speech Nelson Mandela gave at Trafalgar Square in 2005:
“Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made…”

Hopefully armed with these facts, people will see past the lies that austerity is a necessary evil in order to save the country from bankruptcy, and understand that it is an exercise in social engineering to squeeze the poor in order to fatten the rich.

Whilst still, very much a work in progress, the Reflection Table did garner some interest both from our guests and the general public. One guest told us “it’s good you are doing this”, I looked at the food stall thinking he was referring to it, but he clarified, pointing to the Reflection Table: “it’s important people understand”. A passer-by stopped at the table and spent several minutes reading each passage and carefully, lifting each pebble to read its message.

The name of our kitchen – Resistance Kitchen was also a hit, with several passers-by stopping to compliment us on it.

Generosity

A young couple with two adorable children seeing the kitchen gazebo with its “Food is a human right – All welcome” banner came over to donate £100 towards the kitchen. We thanked them for their generosity, but explained that we could not accept cash donations at the stall. Undeterred they returned 20 minutes later with a £100 worth of food from Lidl! We were overwhelmed by their kindness.

At the end of the session we shared the remaining hot meals and fruit with a group of rough sleepers we found in Thornton Heath Pond.

Our kitchen is open again next Saturday 8th July, all in need are most welcome! We look forward to seeing you!

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