Food Justice And Social Justice with Bryant Terry

Bryant Terry is a James Beard & NAACP Image Award-winning chef, educator, and author renowned for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. He is editor-in-chief of 4 Color Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House and Ten Speed Press, and he is co-principal and innovation director of Zenmi, a creative studio he founded. Since 2015 he has been the Chef-in-Residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco where he creates public programming at the intersection of food, farming, health, activism, art, culture, and the African Diaspora. 

His forthcoming collection of recipes, art, and stories entitled Black Food will be published by 4 Color Books/Ten Speed Press in the fall of 2021. In regard to his work, Bryant’s mentor Alice Waters says, “Bryant Terry knows that good food should be an everyday right and not a privilege.” San Francisco Magazine included Bryant among 11 Smartest People in the Bay Area Food Scene, and Fast Company named him one of 9 People Who Are Changing the Future of Food. 

Connect with Bryant via the links below: 

• Website: https://www.bryant-terry.com/
• Book: https://amzn.to/3BTpFC9
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryantterry/

HIGHLIGHTS

04:23 Getting busy on Black History Month

08:20 Bryant's self-care non negotiables 

11:27 Mindfulness and meditation are crucial too

18:37 Working as a resident chef and writing a book 

23:02 Having the impetus to do more in the midst of a racial reckoning

24:09 Imagining a different kind of activism

28:38 Giving back to the community and honoring past mentors

30:38 Growing up creative with family in Memphis

42:51 Healing generational trauma starts with the family

49:25 Negative parenting styles don't work in the long term

55:15 The connection between corporal punishment and slavery

57:59 Capitalism and the illusion of choice

1:02:06 Veganism isn't the end solution

1:05:23 All about Positive Mental Attitude 

QUOTES

21:15  Bryant: "We all eat. We all have a stake in a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. There should be space in these institutions to talk about these issues, to build a community around these issues."

24:08 Bryant: "I want people to imagine activism outside of just on the ground, confrontational protests on the streets, or grassroots base building. And to be clear, those things are the foundation and the cornerstone of movement building. But everyone can't be in the streets like that."

37:32 Koya: "I think it's so important that people understand that men and women and gender roles and things like that don't have to be. And we all have masculine and feminine energy and how if we nurture both of those sides of ourselves, we can really grow and thrive."

42:54 Bryant: "One of the most important things which our family has been on the journey on is healing generational traumas and being aware that we so often pass down these traumas unknowingly just through the way that we live and not knowing that these are toxic behaviors."

49:25 Bryant: "The cornerstone of this parenting model is that shaming, blaming, isolating, and punishing children, it doesn't work. It may work in the short term. If you have a kid and you're doing something and you shame, blame, punish, yeah it might stop that behavior but what it also does is it instills fear, it starts to chip away at their self esteem, it doesn't create empowered people who are gonna be empowered adults." 

55:43 Bryant: "The more that we can do this introspection and recognize that these larger systems and histories have impacted the way that we interact with each other, I think it will get us closer to healing."

58:15 Bryant: "An industrialized food system that's largely controlled by a handful of multinational corporations, we need to understand that so much of the way that the food is grown, the way that it's transported, the way that it's cooked, the way that it's presented to us, these are decisions that are made by a small handful of people."

59:08 Bryant: "We need to be organized against capitalism. I'm just gonna say it. If people don't understand that capitalism is not like if I just work hard I can make enough money. Capitalism is about these institutions that are concentrating so much wealth and making so many decisions about these systems that we have to push back against them."

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