Neighbour is a verb: Doing what needs to be done for each other with Rania El Mugammar

Transcript:

00;00;00;08 – 00;00;41;27

Rania

All Nations are a collection of stories, okay? Nation building is an exercise of telling stories, and Canada tells very specific stories about itself. That if you are here, living anywhere outside the dominant culture, on any side of the margins, you know those stories to be false or to be not the whole truth, right? And it is such a willful like nearsightedness on so many of our parts to ignore the vast majority of the experiences of people on this land in favor of the stories that we tell about ourselves.

 

00;00;41;29 – 00;01;01;19

Renee

You’re listening to Dignity and Joy, a podcast from Foodshare. Join us as we confront the systems of oppression that impact who has access to food and the land it’s grown on, and who doesn’t. To achieve something better will take hard work from all of us, and can only be done if we listen closely to the people who are already leading change.

 

00;01;01;21 – 00;01;22;18

Rania

Our host, Sheldomar Elliot, delves into the connections between food and justice, the folks who have their fingers on the pulse and their hands in the soil. Together, they dream in color and consider what it would take to build a just and hopeful world, one where everyone can feed themselves, their loved ones, and their community with dignity and with joy.

 

00;01;22;20 – 00;01;58;18

Sheldomar

For everybody. The episode You’re about to hear was recorded at our 2025 Annual General Meeting, where we had the pleasure of speaking with Rania El Mugammar. Rania is an artist, abolitionist, organizer, social justice, educator, and parent. Her work explores reproductive justice, transformative justice, and abolition. Art is liberation and digital justice. As a writer, Rania Is Work explores themes of identity, womanhood, blackness, flight, exile, migration, belonging, gender, sexuality, and beyond.

 

00;01;58;20 – 00;02;21;06

Sheldomar

Ran as primary mediums are poetry, spoken word, and oral storytelling. Rania is an experienced, anti-oppression, abolition and liberation educator and consultant who is unflinchingly committed to decolonization and freedom as the ultimate goals of her work.

 

00;02;21;09 – 00;02;37;28

Sheldomar

Wow. So this is pretty wild to me. I’ve never done an episode like this before, and usually in my room, behind the mic, in the comfort of my in my home. But this is really great. Thank you, everybody, for being here today. My name is Sheldomar. So, you sure folks on line can hear us?

 

00;02;38;00 – 00;02;39;24

Sheldomar

Welcome, Rania. Thanks for being here today.

 

00;02;39;27 – 00;02;40;24

Rania

Thank you for having me.

 

00;02;41;01 – 00;03;04;26

Sheldomar

Yeah. So, something we do on the pod, which is quite common now, but is, starting this discussion with the land acknowledgment. And I’m acknowledging that we’re all here in Toronto. The sacred land of the traditional territories of the Wendat, on the Shawnee Anishinaabe and the Mississaugas of the credits. And that this territory is covered by the dish with one spoon, one bon belt, wampum belt, covenant, and our food share.

 

00;03;04;27 – 00;03;30;04

Sheldomar

We think it’s important to start any conversation on this land by recognizing the many nations of indigenous peoples who presently live on this land. Those who have spent time here, and the ancestors who have hunted and gather on this land. I also want to acknowledge the many people of African descent who are not settlers, but whose ancestors were forcibly displaced as part of the transatlantic slave trade, brought against their will, and made to work on these lands and our future.

 

00;03;30;10 – 00;03;54;03

Sheldomar

We believe that advancing indigenous sovereignty is deeply and inextricably linked to black liberation. I remain committed to advancing both. I feel like I’d also be remiss by also not acknowledging that, you know, a close friend of mine recently told me that a land acknowledgment sometimes is not enough, and that we need action to follow with that and to connect the issues that we might be seen here to other problems around the world.

 

00;03;54;06 – 00;04;23;06

Sheldomar

So I’m thinking specifically right now about Occupy Palestine and the challenges of occupation and colonialism that are happening there through the forms of genocide. So I invite folks to take some time. There are lots of efforts and actions that are going on throughout the city of Toronto in the coming weeks. There’s one that happened yesterday, and you can learn more at p m Toronto or Toronto for Palestine on Instagram as ways to get involved and do our part to be in solidarity with indigenous folks globally.

 

00;04;23;08 – 00;04;47;12

Sheldomar

So before I dive into some icebreakers with Rania, I’d like to inform our zoom attendees that the Q&A function has been turned on so you can feel free to submit any questions you may have for Rania there. And my colleague Tiff has put instructions for accessing Q&A online through the chat, and we’ll cover 2 or 3 most upvoted questions, so please be sure to upvote your favorites.

 

00;04;47;14 – 00;05;01;05

Sheldomar

Right. So, Rania, the way that these conversations typically go is I like to just, throw some icebreakers out to kind of break the ice. No pun intended. Just got to get the ball rolling. Are you all for that?

 

00;05;01;07 – 00;05;01;25

Rania

Definitely.

 

00;05;01;26 – 00;05;16;05

Sheldomar

Okay, cool. So I know following your socials, that you’re a baker and I’m curious what might be some of your favorites to make and enjoy? And what do you get asked the most to bake?

 

00;05;16;08 – 00;05;40;01

Rania

So I would say the thing I bake the most is banana bread. Okay, I don’t like bananas. Okay. I, I don’t like them. Texture. Smell the other. The vibes are off with bananas for me personally. However, my youngest and my partner, if you ask them what they could eat every day forever, the answer would be banana bread. Now, not to brag, but to actually brag.

 

00;05;40;01 – 00;06;05;00

Rania

I make award winning banana bread. Like it’s me. And like aunties entering banana bread competitions and me winning and being terrible about winning. That’s usually how it goes. And so I make I make many loaves of banana bread in a week. A week. Yeah. Because like the they call a portion control in the house, but that means they cut a slice in half and proceed to eat both halves of the slice.

 

00;06;05;01 – 00;06;24;25

Rania

Right? So I would say I make a lot of banana bread and then I make cookies. Cookie cookies. I make thousands of cookies a year because, you know, I make them for like the school fundraisers. I make them to raise money for Palestine. I make them to raise money for Sudan. I made them recently to raise money for housing, for a vulnerable family.

 

00;06;24;28 – 00;06;45;00

Rania

I make them to give to people who have been supporting the mutual aid work that we do. I make cookies all the time. I don’t have a sweet tooth at all. Okay. So, generally speaking, I bake a lot of things I don’t eat. However, for my own self. I make bread brioche. Okay. Which is like the cake of bread, you know?

 

00;06;45;05 – 00;07;09;17

Rania

It’s so good. So I make that and I eat it before I give anybody else a chance to eat it. And I make patties at home. You know, like to make beef patties that I make them at home. And ever since I started making them at home, no one will eat the bread in station patties anymore. I was like, now, now we’ve gotten to to cool, to high and mighty for the ward and station patties, which is like my whole life growing.

 

00;07;09;17 – 00;07;11;27

Sheldomar

I was gonna say, we’re gonna bring back the patty work with that.

 

00;07;12;00 – 00;07;33;07

Rania

I mean, I’m ready to go big. I’m ready to be petty about it. So I yeah, I would say those are the things I bake most often. And recently I’ve been on a cinnamon roll. Roll. You know, I’ve been making a lot of cinnamon rolls because that’s what my kid is into right now. Okay. And, you know, every time he’s like, we should have a fresh batch this week, I’m like, who’s wheat?

 

00;07;33;07 – 00;07;55;06

Rania

Because it’s me in the kitchen kneading the dough. But, so yeah, I bake. Those are the things I say I would make more, more often. Funnily, I didn’t used to bake until the pandemic, really, because I learned to cook from my grandmothers who were just, you know, that they put enough of something, don’t put too much until it tastes right.

 

00;07;55;08 – 00;08;10;05

Rania

And baking doesn’t do these kind of like whimsical measurement units, you know? So it was a big learning curve for me. So I started baking in a pandemic. And now I shouldn’t have told people that I’ve been baking because now it’s like, oh, are you coming to dinner or can you bring this? Yeah.

 

00;08;10;08 – 00;08;17;28

Sheldomar

Well, to be saying that your award winning banana bread and now you have 20 plus three burger and about 30 plus online. So have you got mediums asking for next.

 

00;08;17;28 – 00;08;20;03

Rania

Time I’ll bring some banana bread.

 

00;08;20;05 – 00;08;22;27

Sheldomar

Crucial follow up with or without nuts?

 

00;08;23;00 – 00;08;28;07

Rania

No, no plain, plain banana bread. I’m a purist when it comes to the banana bread, which I don’t eat.

 

00;08;28;07 – 00;08;48;11

Sheldomar

Okay, keep it that way. People who know me know that I love music. I’m a big music lover. If there is one artist that you’d want to put people on to, who would that be? And it could be a person or an album. Anything that you’ve enjoyed recently or throughout time.

 

00;08;48;13 – 00;09;10;10

Rania

Because I’m a Sudanese gal, because I love Region Park, and I imagine probably a lot of people already know about Mustafa. But if you don’t know Mustafa’s music, you should listen to it. He makes like some of the most like, mournful folk music. Really. That’s how I would describe it. People love to categorize stuff as hip hop, even though it’s it’s wild to me.

 

00;09;10;10 – 00;09;33;25

Rania

I mean, sometimes is like the hip hop adlibs in the background, you know, a little nod to Region Park, but I would say Mustafa and I mean, I listen to all kinds of things. But yeah, that’s was like my most played in 2024. It was Mustafa’s album. And it’s like, to me, one of those, like, pieces of music that’s like.

 

00;09;33;25 – 00;09;55;15

Rania

So Toronto in so many ways, like going to that concert was like going to a prayer in Regent Park, where he is like aunties and little kids and like hood dudes, the street dudes and people I grew up with and faces that I didn’t know. So it’s to me like a slice of Toronto that people would really recognize, like a face of the city in that space.

 

00;09;55;15 – 00;10;04;28

Rania

And the sound of the music and then the narrative and then the storytelling of the music. So yeah, if you don’t know Mustafa the Poet, then you should know Mustafa the poet.

 

00;10;04;29 – 00;10;21;07

Sheldomar

Yeah. As it it’s a good one. A couple more here, Google. If there’s one person who may be currently with us from the past or potentially in the future that you’d like to have dinner with, who would that be? And what are you waiting?

 

00;10;21;10 – 00;10;45;09

Rania

Ooh. I’d like to have dinner with my grandfather. Right. I got the privilege of knowing him when I was very young, but he, was a journalist, and, really, like, justice minded person. And he’s the reason that I am who I am and that my parents, like, my dad, is in. He is. And generations of my family has been, have been thinking about justice in this way.

 

00;10;45;12 – 00;11;05;06

Rania

But I just want to know what it was like to be in the space that he was in, and to be writing dangerously at a time when, like my homeland, Sudan, was getting its independence from the British Empire and all the like, how difficult it was to navigate that moment, but also how important it was to witness that moment.

 

00;11;05;06 – 00;11;27;09

Rania

So I would say that’s that’s why I would want to have dinner with and especially as an adult, like I would want to know him as an adult because like, I know I know him as my grandfather, right? I’m giving books out of the side window of his house to neighborhood kids and sneaking his candies. But I want to know who he was and like his political thinking a lot more because, like, it’s very evident to my family.

 

00;11;27;09 – 00;11;36;15

Rania

But it’s something that I. Like, I just want to know how he experienced a lot of these things as a person, you.

 

00;11;36;17 – 00;11;40;28

Sheldomar

Know, and to that point, like, what would you choose to eat?

 

00;11;41;01 – 00;12;04;00

Rania

Food, which is like if you’re like from, North Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, so on and so forth, you will be familiar with food, which is typically a fava beans dish that’s like eaten at breakfast. If you’re my dad, you eat it any time of day. And that’s like probably the thing that I make most often to eat with my dad.

 

00;12;04;04 – 00;12;06;18

Rania

So I probably eat that with my grandfather.

 

00;12;06;20 – 00;12;19;01

Sheldomar

Love food. Love love love. Last one here. I know you’re a really big reader, and if there is a fictional character that you identify with from a show, movie or book, who would this person be?

 

00;12;19;04 – 00;12;22;26

Rania

Oh, my God, that’s a hard question.

 

00;12;22;29 – 00;12;31;08

Rania

A fictional character and that, of course, now, I don’t remember any book I’ve ever read.

 

00;12;31;10 – 00;12;54;21

Rania

Oh my goodness, I don’t know. I think a lot of Octavia Butler’s characters, I can’t think of a specific one that I would say identify with. But just like their tensions and their complexity and their contradictions, I think I feel that a lot in my self-care, and in my political thinking. So I would say somewhere in Octavia Butler’s literature, probably in the parables.

 

00;12;54;27 – 00;13;10;12

Rania

Okay. And especially because and in this place of like, the world does not end right. And I think I keep coming back to like those characters, despite their messiness and complexity, they still arrive at this place of like, we actually don’t die.

 

00;13;10;15 – 00;13;10;21

Sheldomar

Okay?

 

00;13;10;23 – 00;13;19;03

Rania

And not all of us, at least. So I would say somewhere there, somewhere in in those texts, there’s a me in those characters I like.

 

00;13;19;06 – 00;13;31;17

Sheldomar

You know, we were talking earlier and I was saying that I have so many books that I want to get into for leisure reading and parable of the sower is at the top of that list. So you’re telling you’re reminded me of the getting to the things I need to do.

 

00;13;31;17 – 00;13;32;26

Rania

Prepare to cry a little bit.

 

00;13;32;29 – 00;14;02;02

Sheldomar

I don’t mind. Yeah, I’m I’m okay with that. So, you know, kind of shifting gears a little bit, I noticed in some of your reels online that you introduce yourself as an internet neighbor. And I think this is funny. It speaks to this level of neighboring that might go beyond what we typically think a neighbor is like, in my mind, is someone who lives near me and in my context, like I’m in a building, so maybe someone who lives in my building.

 

00;14;02;04 – 00;14;20;25

Sheldomar

But I know that this also extends into your work and the transformative justice and abolition that you’re that you work and you do. So I’m just curious, what is the origin of this approach of neighboring an internet neighbor? I do have a follow up. Maybe you can sneak it in there. But what makes someone a neighbor?

 

00;14;20;27 – 00;14;45;03

Rania

I think maybe I’ll start with the follow up, because that’ll help answer. Go, Pi, you become an internet neighbor. I think what makes somebody a neighbor is being interested in each other, right? Making ourselves each other’s business. Right. And I always keep coming back to, this quote by Gwendolyn Brooks, who’s my favorite poet of all times.

 

00;14;45;05 – 00;15;05;21

Rania

She says we are each other’s business. We are. We are each other’s harvest. We are each other’s magnitude and bond. And I think about that all the time. Right? So the willingness to make other people our business is what it means to be a neighbor. Right. And sometimes we’re lucky to have that in proximity with people who are physically close to us.

 

00;15;05;23 – 00;15;46;17

Rania

Right. Who live on our street or next door to us, or in our building, or in our community. But sometimes for a lot of people, that is not, a luxury that is afforded to them. And I think a lot about people that I’ve come to know who live in communities that look very different than them, right, who live in rural communities, who live in, the suburbs, who live in communities as people of intersecting margins, who have no access to people who understand their experiences, their lives and their needs, and like the nuances and the complexity of all of that and how so many people and I think the pandemic became a huge

 

00;15;46;20 – 00;16;12;29

Rania

part of that for me, began to find a lot of that community connection and people who are willing to make them their business online. Right. And I think also because I organize so many mutual aid efforts, there’s so many people who show up in a neighborly way who, like, lives 6000km from the person we’re organizing to support and who will become connected and invested in that person.

 

00;16;13;01 – 00;16;38;12

Rania

And that feels really important. And then also a lot of as an organizer, a lot of the people I’ve learned from and I’ve been able to like, share lessons with code, learn with developers skills with and just like be a student of in so many ways are nowhere near me geographically. But the being connected in the IRL has allowed us to be neighbors in that way, right?

 

00;16;38;12 – 00;16;57;14

Rania

To care about each other. And I think a lot, actually about my friend Erica. Erica Lee, who is a real poet, artist and thinker. And when I think about Erica, I think a lot about how, you know, I joked with her, I’m like, is a mutual aid. If every time we’re in crisis, we’re just transferring each other. The same $25 back and forth and, you know, we laugh about it.

 

00;16;57;14 – 00;17;18;08

Rania

But she’s like, she’s like, go get some pierogies. You’re having a bad day. I’m like, I will get pierogies. Thank you. But really thinking about that like that, that’s what we do for each other is physical neighbors. Oh, you’re going through a hard time. I’m bringing you dinner. You know, I, for example, one of my biggest problems is I grew up in a big family, so I don’t know how to cook for two people.

 

00;17;18;10 – 00;17;36;17

Rania

It’s like, I don’t like, what are the portions of things you used to do that I don’t know, but it’s. So I’m always making, like, I’m not going to make a lot of rice. And then I’m like, oh God, there’s 14 servings of rice. And so I’ve learned to like, share that food with, with other people. So sometimes we can’t do that, but I can I can send you some money.

 

00;17;36;17 – 00;18;00;16

Rania

You could go to your favorite Chinese takeout and, you know, you can get spring rolls. So you could think of me. Right. And so that feels like a neighborly thing to do. And so when I started calling people my internet neighbor, I think a lot of the times when it comes to political education, there’s a lot of hostility online and a lot of like correcting people and a lot of like elitism about the political lessons that a lot of us have been lucky to learn.

 

00;18;00;20 – 00;18;25;00

Rania

Or. And so I want to think about how what does it look like to be a neighbor? What does it look like to be a generous teacher? What does it look like to be a humble learner? And I just try to not that I’m on all the time. Sometimes I cuss people out on the internet. It’s necessary when you know different tools for different situations, but it feels important to me to try and like model that kind of behavior if I want to see more of it around.

 

00;18;25;05 – 00;18;52;27

Sheldomar

Right. I love that. And this idea of like being interested in others and making each of us like each other’s business. I think that like contrasts with, I mean, in my case, sharing a lot about like staying out people’s business. Right? And not making other people’s, of course, is a time, a place of look, maybe stay out. But I like this like brief framing of it of like, yeah, being a part of someone’s business.

 

00;18;52;29 – 00;19;09;15

Sheldomar

And to your point, also like how do you how do you extend this to the neighbors? I might be really difficult to deal with. And I’m sure we all have those neighbors. Is there a boundary, like, how do is like. And what is that at least for you was it was I look like.

 

00;19;09;15 – 00;19;28;27

Rania

Yeah. I mean, I think boundaries are important in every relationship, right? I think there’s a lot of people who have never had good neighbors. Right. And part of them never having good neighbors is just being outwardly hostile and difficult to deal with. And I’ve had like, people will physically live close to me who have been like just awful till exactly right.

 

00;19;28;29 – 00;19;47;07

Rania

And I’ve thought a lot about like, what is the distance at which I can be fair to you. I can be supportive of you as much as possible without harming myself or without allowing you, allowing you to transgress against me. And I think that’s a really nuanced answer. Depending on the person you’re dealing with and like what their dynamics are.

 

00;19;47;07 – 00;20;05;00

Rania

You know, for example, in my neighborhood there are I have a lot of neighbors who are unhoused, right? I have a lot of neighbors who use substances, and they have a lot of neighbors who are very hostile to people who are on house and use substances. So I think a lot about how do I try to have a conversation with people.

 

00;20;05;02 – 00;20;22;27

Rania

Right. And I been like in the neighborhood Facebook group, listen, if you want to complain about somebody using substances, please don’t call the cops. Call me. I live in the neighborhood. Give me a call. I’ll come out and chat with somebody. Right. And I can see most of the time that it’s like, I get it. You want the situation dealt with.

 

00;20;22;29 – 00;20;43;19

Rania

You don’t want somebody near your house doing things that you think they shouldn’t be doing. I empathize to a small extent because people are up in their houses doing things they shouldn’t be doing. Okay, but I empathize to a small extent. And you, you could call the cops and that’s not going to change anything, is factually not going to get you the outcome that you want from that situation.

 

00;20;43;21 – 00;21;05;06

Rania

I don’t want to watch anybody get hurt by the cops or dragged away or moved from the community where they access services. Right? And like support and food and, you know, safe consumption and, you know, clean needles and a disposal side when and where they live, their neighborhood. I don’t want to watch people get violently evicted from their neighborhood.

 

00;21;05;08 – 00;21;23;06

Rania

So we have a little Venn diagram here where our interests beautifully align for a brief moment so you can call me. And when I when I started sharing that and like, and you know, if you want to see like carceral punishment, go to your Facebook neighborhood group, you know and you’ll see like some of the worst things that people do to each other.

 

00;21;23;08 – 00;21;37;11

Rania

But I had a lot of people in my neighborhood who reach out and say, hey, what are you doing? When like, people call you? I say, usually I come out. I usually have care packages, they have smokes in them, they have cash in them, they have no socks on in them. They have snacks and then they have a water bottle.

 

00;21;37;11 – 00;22;01;28

Rania

They have dry socks. You know, they have things that people need, right? They have soft snacks, they have diabetic friendly drinks. They have things in them that people need, things that I need, and I go out and I talk to somebody, say, hey, what’s going on? And like, I get it. That person is feeling upset and disrespected because our neighbors come out and yelled at them from their $2 million house for the 10th time.

 

00;22;02;00 – 00;22;18;19

Rania

And I’m like, I get that they shouldn’t be treating you like that. And I know you have an unmet need, so I’m going to take a minute. I’m going to talk to you until the end of the neighbor. I’m going to say, listen, hey, can I leave you with one of these care packages? Next time they come around, you can just give them this.

 

00;22;18;22 – 00;22;37;08

Rania

You know, half the time they’ll say, no, I’m not giving them cigarets. Cigarets are bad for your health. And I’m like, being unhoused is bad for your health. Like, so are the cops. I’m going to need this to focus here, okay? Like I need this for, like, really look at the situation for what it is. And so sometimes that, you know, that works out, sometimes it doesn’t.

 

00;22;37;08 – 00;22;55;29

Rania

Sometimes you are like, oh, you’re doing the wrong thing. All you liberal, whatever it is, I’m like, okay, it’s fine. I now know you’re not for me. And I can have a conversation with the other person about how to protect themselves from you, right. And that’s okay too. That’s these are information. Information is good for me. I want to know the things so that I can act accordingly.

 

00;22;55;29 – 00;23;12;14

Rania

Right. But it’s also become really helpful to find other people who are like minded who will say, hey, I want to help. I saw that you said people can call you. I want to be somebody. People can call, how do I do that? And I said, here are the things that I do. Do you have any other ideas that maybe some things that we can do.

 

00;23;12;16 – 00;23;28;24

Rania

Right. And, you know, sometimes people have ideas that I hadn’t thought about. And they’ll say, okay, maybe we can organize for some bigger asks, like, hey, maybe I can. I have a friend who works at, you know, camping supply store. Maybe we can get a discount on some tents. I say, okay, yeah, let’s try to make that happen.

 

00;23;28;26 – 00;23;51;00

Rania

Right. And that becomes something that we can do. Or. Oh, I know somebody who owns a business in the neighborhood. Maybe we can leave some care packages with them. I say, great, let’s try to make that happen. Right. So it’s about finding who’s not for you and finding your people simultaneously, right? There’s a lot of people who are hostile because they have unmet needs, including people who are housed, you know, like they’re isolated, they’re lonely.

 

00;23;51;00 – 00;24;07;00

Rania

There’s a lot of older people in my neighborhood who have no community connections. And I’ve invited people that I would rather knock in the face into my house for tea. I feel like you are coming for tea. And they’re like, oh, and I have tea with them and I hear them out on a cool. And I never invite you into my house again.

 

00;24;07;03 – 00;24;23;11

Rania

Or I might now know your name and say hello to you. The next time that I see you, I might check in on you when there’s a snowstorm, because now I know you’re by yourself right? I might send my kid over there to begrudgingly help shovel your driveway. Like, these are the things that we cannot know without getting a little bit nosy.

 

00;24;23;18 – 00;24;33;02

Rania

And if you want to be in community with people, the price of it is being inconvenienced, annoyed, and irritated. And it’s a small price to pay. Yeah, right.

 

00;24;33;05 – 00;24;45;11

Sheldomar

I love that, I love that it’s it’s it’s it’s reminded me of some of the stuff I’ve heard again through some of your socials, and I don’t know if this is a book that you’re writing every day. Abolition.

 

00;24;45;13 – 00;25;09;21

Rania

Yeah. It’s a it’s a learning series that I’ve put out there. The book that I’m writing is actually about teaching, being in community with children. And I have a free ebook that you can download called in our own Hands Talking Abolition and Transformative Justice with Little Ones. And it’s a book that I wrote to figure out how do I talk plainly about things that feel really complex to young people who are very capable of understanding these things?

 

00;25;09;24 – 00;25;25;02

Rania

And funnily enough, it’s grown-ups who have reached out to me to say, hey, I read this and it’s the first thing that I read about abolition and transformative justice that’s just like made sense to me. And I was like, oh, cool. I mean, we we could all be use that being spoken to in that like gentle and direct way, I believe.

 

00;25;25;02 – 00;25;25;18

Rania

Yeah.

 

00;25;25;20 – 00;25;49;28

Sheldomar

Very accessible. Yeah. So, it’s also reminded me, sorry, I sound like such a fan right now, but, some of the I believe it’s a tool you developed, like anatomy of the apology and maybe extending this into like. Or I guess bringing it into interpersonal relationships. Yeah, I don’t know. For folks who may or may not know if you want to maybe share what that might look like.

 

00;25;49;28 – 00;25;54;05

Sheldomar

And I know that’s like a whole thing, but yeah. Yeah, I think.

 

00;25;54;07 – 00;26;11;11

Rania

It like the tool is available online. I’ll make sure that it’s shared with folks at future so that you can have access to it. And I know in past years when I’ve had the opportunity to, like, have some cool learning spaces with food folks, we’ve talked about it a little bit, that the anatomy of an apology is like a tool for interpersonal repair.

 

00;26;11;13 – 00;26;36;22

Rania

I made it because I don’t know why. Like the ancestors decided that I would, like, end up living accidentally with somebody who, like, if people came in default packaging, he would come into default privileged walks day. Okay? And I’m sure he’ll listen to this eventually and get annoyed with me. But it is what it is. And when we first became friends, he’s like one of the most like, wonderful and loving people that I’ve ever met in my life.

 

00;26;36;24 – 00;26;50;14

Rania

Don’t get too big headed. If you listen to this, I can take it back real quick. And you know, one of the things that used to irritate me in our friendship all the time is him saying, I’m sorry you feel that way.

 

00;26;50;17 – 00;26;52;15

Sheldomar

 

00;26;52;18 – 00;27;19;15

Rania

These, like, I don’t I’m not quick to anger, but this is one of the things that will, like, send me into a rage. I’m like, don’t even apologize. Like, don’t say anything. Like, how do you say I’m sorry? You feel that way. My feelings are not the problem. It’s your behavior. Okay. And I like, realize that for so many of us, like, there was such a huge disconnect between, like, our political thinking intellectually up here in our heads and then how we moved in the world.

 

00;27;19;17 – 00;27;43;22

Rania

Right. And we punish each other so severely, and we reserve the harshest punishment for the people we love the most. And it feels so difficult to try and reconcile those things. Right? Like, you know, I could up here in my head, I could easily arrive at figuring out, okay, cops are not doing what we think they’re doing. I can literally look at the statistics and I could say, you know, they spend 70% of time, their time doing bylaw enforcement.

 

00;27;43;25 – 00;28;18;00

Rania

Okay, there’s a cop standing at the intersection of university and Queen guarding the construction of the new Ontario line. And, he makes $164,000 a year. And a crossing guard could do that. Lives well below the poverty line and has to access food banks, like, contribute to their own food security. You don’t need a gun. You need a vest and a little fine right to do this job so I can arrive at those conclusions intellectually pretty easily, because I can just look at it and rationally is it’s just not adding up.

 

00;28;18;02 – 00;28;42;24

Rania

Okay. However, figuring out how do I manage like conflict, harm, disconnect, miscommunication in my own life is so much harder. And how do I fix things in a way that doesn’t feel transactional? Like, how do I apologize in a way that feels meaningful? And when I looked at the anatomy of an apology, like, what really makes that apology real to me was things like consent.

 

00;28;42;27 – 00;29;11;18

Rania

Like, how many of us got an apology by force? I don’t want your apology, but you just want to absolve yourself, right? Things like acknowledgment, like naming the things we’re apologizing for. Not. I’m sorry for everything. And my partner, you saw that one. And I was like, oh, write a list. What’s everything? You know, put some footnotes in there because I want to know, the accountability, like owning our behavior and not saying, oh, my cat was sick, but that’s not my business.

 

00;29;11;18 – 00;29;36;04

Rania

Funny. Okay. Changing our behavior, like, sustained change behavior is like real accountability. Things like, centering the person who has been hurt, not making our the apology about our own feelings of guilt. Like it’s reasonable to feel guilty when you hurt people. That’s a really rational, healthy emotional response. However, take it to your mom or your group chat or your therapist.

 

00;29;36;07 – 00;29;54;28

Rania

Do not expect the person that you hurt to be the person to like healthy. Digest those feelings and like divest yourself from forgiveness. Because if it’s this transaction, I say sorry, you forgive me. You’re not really focused on the things you need to be focused on. Forgiveness was nice. School. I love when I get forgiven, I give forgiveness.

 

00;29;55;00 – 00;30;23;12

Rania

But it’s not a prerequisite for being accountable or for like modeling change behavior or like apologizing meaningfully. Right? So to me, these kinds of tools that are like very straightforward and I don’t even apologies, like, here’s things you can do right. Feel really important because to me, political education doesn’t really mean anything if working class people cannot plug into it, can’t use it, can’t make it make sense in the context of their own life.

 

00;30;23;14 – 00;30;54;07

Rania

And I come from like despite coming from a camp, a family of political organizer and academics, I very much come from a working class family. So it it’s really important to me that the people who are in my community and around me and in my family can look at a tool like this and see how it’s meant for them, as much as it’s meant for somebody who’s an academic writing about, you know, the restorative justice practices and repair for a picture like cool, you want to use it there to find that that’s like secondary to what I made it for.

 

00;30;54;10 – 00;30;55;02

Sheldomar

Thank you for sharing that.

 

00;30;55;03 – 00;30;55;12

Rania

Yeah.

 

00;30;55;13 – 00;31;10;27

Sheldomar

Oh, yeah. We’ll make sure all these things are shared out to where and tools are available to folks. Yeah. I feel like we should keep diving further into those things, but I want to shift gears just a little bit. Canadian smugness. There we go.

 

00;31;11;00 – 00;31;12;25

Rania

Yes, Canadians, this. Oh, that’s all.

 

00;31;12;25 – 00;31;13;10

Sheldomar

I had to say.

 

00;31;13;10 – 00;31;25;14

Rania

And I have a really strong feelings about this, right. People love this. Like, meanwhile, in Canada narrative Canada is a great brand. Okay, that’s really great branding.

 

00;31;25;17 – 00;31;26;11

Sheldomar

PR.

 

00;31;26;14 – 00;32;02;03

Rania

Incredible. Who’s doing a I don’t know, I want to hire them for me. Okay. Great brand Beavers Maple sirup cute red flag game I believe we’re into it. Adorable branding right. All Nations are a collection of stories. Okay? Nation building is an exercise of telling stories. And Canada tells very specific stories about itself. That if you are here, living anywhere outside the dominant culture, on any side of the margins, you know those stories to be false or to be not the whole truth.

 

00;32;02;06 – 00;32;36;19

Rania

Right? And it is such a willful like nearsightedness on so many of our parts, to ignore the vast majority of the experiences of people on this land in favor of the stories that we tell about ourselves. And for me, there’s two sides of this the side of we’re not like the states because of this, this or that. And to me, it all came to like a really ironic and tragic like moment, a few years ago, when the first time that 45 was elected in the United States.

 

00;32;36;21 – 00;32;58;21

Rania

And so when he was first elected in the during his first term as president, and they, you know, they put the like list of banned countries and immigrants are not welcome here. Justin Trudeau posted this picture of himself with a refugee family that had come in at the Wroxham Road crossing when it was still there. Being like refugees are always welcome in Canada, right?

 

00;32;58;23 – 00;33;17;03

Rania

Me being me and my superpower is I know a guy or a gallery, a non-binary account for everything, which means I’m always like three degrees of separation from anyone, anywhere, right? So I start calling around, I calling all my comrades who are doing like, you know, migrant justice work. And I say, hey, I want to know, like, where is this family at?

 

00;33;17;04 – 00;33;46;15

Rania

And they’re like, oh, they’re immigration detention, right? So we are a country that has in definite immigration detention, you can be held in immigration jail indefinitely in this country. All right. We are a country that deports people. We’re a country that uses the labor of agricultural and migrant workers and then sends them home with untreated injuries, without access to our health care system, with no pathway to citizenship, we’re a country that exploits indigenous people here and abroad.

 

00;33;46;15 – 00;34;15;02

Rania

As the largest mining like nation in the world, we’re Goliath among giants. We are in a globally, a force that enacts imperialism, colonialism and hostility inside and outside its borders. Right. And I think this notion of us being nice is so dangerous. And that’s the other side of the coin, is like this idea of politeness and politeness is really suffocating, right?

 

00;34;15;06 – 00;34;45;28

Rania

And polite and kind are two different things. Kindness requires honesty, humility, accountability. Politeness is a performance we all follow the script of like not disturbing things, not saying things that make people feel uncomfortable. We conflate discomfort and harm frequently. Right? And I’m uncomfortable when my worldview, my perspective, and my choices are being challenged. I’m also uncomfortable riding crowded public transit, wearing high heels, talking to people I don’t know, listening to going to the center.

 

00;34;46;00 – 00;34;46;09

Sheldomar

Okay.

 

00;34;46;09 – 00;35;12;15

Rania

Take discomfort. Yeah. Okay. I’ll join you. What, though? Yeah. People do uncomfortable things all the time. I do uncomfortable things all the time. When I’m being harmed by being insulted. Assaulted, transgress against the humanized silence. Excluded. But in Canadian cultural context, we really like, equate these things in a very dangerous way. That means that we, you know, cater to the comfort at some of some people, at the expense of the safety of others.

 

00;35;12;17 – 00;35;34;18

Rania

And as like our performance of kindness and politeness. And it’s really funny because when friends come to visit me in Toronto from other places, they often say like, this is like one of the the meanest places I’ve ever been in. But everybody’s smiling in your face. And I’m like, yeah, yeah, they really are. And I come from a very direct culture, you know, like you care if anything is up with you.

 

00;35;34;18 – 00;36;01;12

Rania

You walk in the house, you already know what’s like, oh, your shirt is wrinkled. My aunt told you. Okay, you look different. You look concerned. Somebody told you you didn’t see. Well, you’re really hungry today. Yeah. People will tell you what it. It’s for better or for worse, all the time. And so this like performance of like, politeness means we actually don’t see people like we don’t see people, you know, really meaningful way.

 

00;36;01;14 – 00;36;17;29

Rania

Yeah. We don’t say, oh, it’s rude to say to somebody, everything okay? Is it rude? Do you look like you’re struggling? You look like you’re fighting for your life. Are you good? But I’m your colleague. I’m not supposed to say anything to you. We’re just supposed to pretend like everything is cool. But if I don’t ask you that question, I don’t know that you’re grieving a family member.

 

00;36;17;29 – 00;36;38;23

Rania

Or you have somebody chronically ill, or your caregiver, or you’re struggling to pay your bills, and I can’t support you in a meaningful way. Right. But the idea that you’re supposed to support your business, you keep yourself to yourself and you, you know, you you’re supposed to be independent, right? Self-sufficient. All those things people are not they’re just not we’re not meant to live like that.

 

00;36;38;23 – 00;37;02;11

Rania

So in under the guise of politeness, we actually harm a lot of people. And so we stay really smug about it is, oh, this is happening in the States. It wouldn’t happen in Canada. What do you mean? We’re hiring 700 more cops in the city of Toronto. Okay, we are putting body cameras on TTC fare enforcement officers so we can watch them harass people in HD.

 

00;37;02;14 – 00;37;34;27

Rania

Okay. We are building more for profit housing as more and more people end up on the street. We are inhaling wildfire smoke every summer in a in a way that I do not recall when I was down there. Okay, wildfires always been part of the landscape of this land, but not like this, right? We are watching our elders die in long term care, underfunded in Ontario, we have the lowest per student education funding of anywhere in the country.

 

00;37;34;29 – 00;37;58;00

Rania

Right? All of these things that are happening, we ignore them in favor of like the lifestyle that actually a very small minority of us get to experience. Right? If any of us think we’re middle class, we’re probably aren’t. I’m still sorry to tell you, you probably are not middle class. You are. And you know, we’re all temporarily able bodied.

 

00;37;58;00 – 00;38;23;24

Rania

Many of us. It’s always a temporary privilege, right? Many of us are not able bodied even now. Right? If we’re temporarily housed, it’s temporary. That could change for so many of us, because we just don’t have the safety net to guarantee that. That that will be our experience. So that the precariousness of the our lives, the vast majority of us, we ignore in favor of this idea that we are better than other places.

 

00;38;23;27 – 00;38;40;12

Rania

Right. And part of it is we just don’t have data while we shut down those stories a lot. We’re not better in other places. When we collect data, we find actually we’re worse. We’re like, we’re living in Canada. 50% of federally incarcerated women in this country are indigenous women, who make up less than 1.5% of the overall population.

 

00;38;40;15 – 00;38;57;13

Rania

Right? So when we have the data and when we hear people stories, we know that this narrative that we’re better than the United States is far from the truth. And whatever’s happening south of the border will happen here. We’re just sent to be like, you know, wearing last season’s clown makeup. But it’s coming for us, okay? It’s coming for us.

 

00;38;57;13 – 00;39;25;15

Rania

And like this idea of looking at the United States and saying, we don’t have to do anything because it’s not that bad. Instead of equipping ourselves for recognizing that the Imperial boomerang is coming this way too, right? Like the fascist backlash is always coming this way to, the border is not like an impermeable thing. It’s really important for us to, like, confront that and to be very honest about what it means to be prepared to build the kind of world that we want.

 

00;39;25;17 – 00;39;40;29

Rania

All right? And if you do it from nationalism, sure. Go ahead. It’s not my vibe, but if you do it because you love Canada, I don’t care why you do it, I just need you to do it. So even if you claim or profess to love this place and you have to care for it.

 

00;39;41;01 – 00;40;02;21

Sheldomar

All said. Yeah, well said. I’m sure folks see with that. And it makes me think about a lot of a lot of conversation I had with my family, specifically around this time. But I’m not going to call out some of these family members that I love. But yeah, trying to have conversations with them about how fascism is is on the rise, regardless of what it looks like in the States and in Canada.

 

00;40;02;23 – 00;40;27;05

Sheldomar

Yeah, it is not fair to like, be while we’re different or it’s not affecting us here. It’s like not yet per se. I do want to switch it and just take a moment also to touch on other forms of your activism and fight for liberation. Regarding specific issues, Sudan specifically, and, I’m unsure about how much folks may know in this space about the crisis that’s happening there at the moment.

 

00;40;27;08 – 00;40;36;15

Sheldomar

So I invite you to share if you’d like. But my question here really is, what is something you’d like people to know about Sudan?

 

00;40;36;17 – 00;41;04;14

Rania

I’ll say two things. First, that what’s happening in Sudan, I know people like to call it a proxy war. Right there are a lot of foreign interests that are invested in sustaining the war in Sudan because it gives them access to vast natural resources, predominantly gold, oil. But also it’s food production in Sudan, locally in the region is known as the World Food Basket because it has some of the most fertile soil on the planet, because it’s in the valley of the Nile.

 

00;41;04;16 – 00;41;24;12

Rania

So all kinds of things grow on our soil, and it is a place that has been historically capable of feeding many nations over and over again. It’s also produces is the largest producer in the world of things like Arabic, one of the top producers of which is in everything. If you turn ear for you see, gum Arabic is one of the ingredients, right?

 

00;41;24;14 – 00;42;09;05

Rania

It is one of the top producers of, like, peanut, sesame, things that are used in all kinds of food production globally. So there are, there is that part of it, but what’s happening in Sudan is a counter Revolutionary War, right? Sydney Senegal had a revolution in 2019 that overturned a 30 year military dictatorship. And as a result of that, a lot of people were invested in control of these natural resources, began to lose their billions, and as such became very invested in sustaining instability in Sudan and instigating a war between the Sudanese Armed forces and the rest for the Rapid Support Forces, which is a paramilitary group historically known as the Janjaweed.

 

00;42;09;08 – 00;42;52;13

Rania

Mind you, these are both state sponsored military forces. Okay, the Sudanese Armed forces are not the good guys either. They have historically genocide, ethnic minorities in Sudan for like the last 30 plus years in many civil wars. And are just two generals essentially vying for military control of the country and its natural resources. So calling it a proxy war without acknowledging the fact that this is a counter-revolutionary effort aimed to shut down civilian rule of Sudan, really ignores up and recognizing Sudan has a long and storied political history of resistance, that a lot of even black civil rights activists and black liberation organizers, especially Malcolm X founder, footing in their political education in

 

00;42;52;13 – 00;43;15;02

Rania

Sudan and amongst its political organizers. So recognizing that, the other thing that I want people to know about Sudan is that it’s easy to look at Savannah as this place that’s been perpetually at war with itself as a failed state, as is like this place in crisis. But in reality, Sudan, prior to the war was among the top refugee receiving nations in the world.

 

00;43;15;04 – 00;43;38;18

Rania

Okay, there are people who are Palestinian, Sudanese, who are Syrian, Sudanese, who are Ethiopians, Sudanese who are Iranian, Sudanese, who are, you know, Jewish Sudanese people who are displaced from the various communities they came from. There are people who are who call Sudan home, who come from everywhere, including Greeks who were displaced Sudan during Ottoman rule, and so on and so forth.

 

00;43;38;18 – 00;44;05;08

Rania

So it is a place of cultural pluralism, cultural diversity and a place in which many people found safety. So recognizing that, like the grief of people who are mourning this crisis is so vast, like I need people all the time, like, you know, Chinese, Sudanese people. I meet them and they hear me speaking Sudanese in Chinatown, and they respond to me, and I turn around and they tell me, you know, like their family was displaced and they ended up in Sudan, and they tell me their stories there.

 

00;44;05;08 – 00;44;24;03

Rania

So really recognizing that and that this notion that, like, nobody cares about the land, I don’t think it’s true. I think it’s people who are in the dominant culture and the elites don’t care about Sudan much, like they don’t care about many of our suffering. Right. And that Sudanese people have been organizing mutual aid efforts for a very long time.

 

00;44;24;05 – 00;44;45;14

Rania

You know, my aunties don’t call it mutual aid. They call it doing what needs to be done, but that they’ve been showing up for themselves and for each other for a long time. And what we saw, even during the war in Sudan, that people who are going out to protest, who are holding up the Palestinian flag, right, and like bearing witness to what’s happening in Gaza and to the occupation of Palestine, you know, for more than 75 years.

 

00;44;45;16 – 00;45;22;22

Rania

And who stood up for Syrians, during the war and who stood up for Iranian women, right. So on and so forth. So that shouldn’t these people are very much rooted in solidarity. And if people are curious to learn more about what’s happening in Sudan, I would encourage them to look at the Sudan Solidarity Collective, which is based out of here in Toronto, which has been able to raise, more than half $1 million in the last two years to fund, like farmer collectives to feed people, which is such important and work, community kitchens, which have been like a huge mutual aid response in the war.

 

00;45;22;25 – 00;45;43;12

Rania

I would also encourage people to look at the Sudanese Resistance Fund, which is based out of globally but predominantly out of the United States, to look at the Sudanese American Physicians Association and to look at Sara Hassan, aka ABS on Blast, who is a Chinese journalist who does daily updates on what’s happening in Sudan and has since the beginning of the revolution.

 

00;45;43;12 – 00;45;57;13

Rania

I don’t even know how her mental health is like holding up against all of that, but she’s done what entire media organizations have failed to do, to connect the people in the diaspora and our allies and people who are in solidarity with us, with what’s going on Instagram.

 

00;45;57;19 – 00;46;18;00

Sheldomar

Yeah. Thank you so much for plugging those resources at the end, too, because that was going to be my questions, like, how can folks show up? And to your point, like, how do you be in solidarity with movements that are happening globally, not just here recognizing the imperial forces? If I go SoC we got some questions from the online folks, and these are the most upvotes for the audience online.

 

00;46;18;00 – 00;46;39;03

Sheldomar

So thank you to everybody who’s tuning in online. Cyberspace is coming through. Hi Rania, long time listener, first time caller. I know you primarily, I know you primarily from your abolition work. Can you speak to the ways in which incarceration and food intersect? That might be like a whole workshop.

 

00;46;39;06 – 00;47;01;06

Rania

And he’s a workshop I’ve done for future. But I will say, if not, I’ll direct people to my Instagram. But there’s a specific, post that I have on this on abolition and food justice specifically. Right. I think when we think about, abolition and food, I, when I think about injustice, injustice, so often there’s a thing that happens to the body, and hunger is a thing that happens to the body.

 

00;47;01;12 – 00;47;26;12

Rania

And hunger is one of the most predominant manifestations of injustice. It’s a huge way that we perpetuate the myth of scarcity, that there isn’t enough for all of us to survive. There’s no scarcity of food. There’s a problem with food distribution, right? And access to food being connected to financial resources. So a lot of the times people get criminalized primarily through the vehicle of hunger and not having enough to survive.

 

00;47;26;14 – 00;47;44;08

Rania

All right. So that begins that criminalization, whether it’s like, you know, you’re, you know, you’re shoplifting at Walmart to feed yourself or your family and Walmart has facial recognition technologies that are used by policing, and they wait until you have stolen more than $5,000 worth of food. And then you can get charged with, like, theft over $5,000. Right?

 

00;47;44;08 – 00;48;13;03

Rania

So we see, like policing technologies being used to like police people’s hunger in a really tremendous way. And then we also we look at food production and the prison industrial complex. Right. Like prison labor is used profoundly, food production all over North America. So that’s connected intimately to like, the abolitionist struggle and an abolitionist cause. We also see hunger being used inside the prison system as a tool of control and violence against incarcerated people.

 

00;48;13;05 – 00;48;33;11

Rania

I think when we talk about abolition and food justice, we also have to talk about land fundamentally, right? Everything goes back to land. Land is the basis of all freedom, justice, equality. This is Malcolm X who talks about land in this way. Right. And when we think about land specifically, we have to think about indigenous resistance.

 

00;48;33;14 – 00;48;57;29

Rania

And like access to indigenous food systems and sustainability and hunger that people who are protecting indigenous ecosystems in the land are criminalized. And these ecosystems are essential to our ability to feed human and non-human life alike. So that’s a huge piece there that I would like people to pay attention to. But specifically just I’ll I’ll reshare that post, which is I made to go with that workshop.

 

00;48;57;29 – 00;49;22;13

Rania

I don’t know how many years ago it was. Everything’s like blended together in the online workshops, but I will share with folks to look at it and I’ll say that like food is and like criminalization of like food production, access to food and land theft are like the primary vehicles that intersect. Food justice and abolition struggles together. Every struggle for justice is an abolition of struggle.

 

00;49;22;16 – 00;49;52;02

Rania

Every last one of them. Okay, gender justice, freedom from sexual violence, climate justice. All of these are abolition of struggles because resistance is criminalized. Right. And the criminalization of resistance is used as a tool to squash it, to silence people, to discourage mass mobilization, to discourage solidary, to discourage, you know, multi issue struggle, right. And solidarity between various sites of struggle for people.

 

00;49;52;02 – 00;50;05;26

Rania

But read through the the tool. I think you will find it super interesting. And there’s a lot of really cool people doing abolition and food justice work specifically around, the labor of migrant workers and incarcerated people. Yeah.

 

00;50;05;29 – 00;50;28;11

Sheldomar

That’s great. Yeah. I highly suggest if you haven’t checked out that workshop in that tool, I was there. Lots to learn. Oh, yeah. Check it out. Second question we got from audience online. In your experience, what has been the most successful route or strategy toward advocacy and what tool or approach do you use?

 

00;50;28;14 – 00;50;49;25

Rania

I use food, I be feeding people all the time. Right? So my longest lasting mutual aid effort is my meal train. I run a meal train with a lot of my, like, friends from high school. And like my teenage friends, for ordinary people doing ordinary things, they are teachers. They’re researchers, they’re engineers, they work in logistics. They are not organizers.

 

00;50;49;25 – 00;51;06;15

Rania

Is their, like, full time thing. But we run a meal training for elders and people in crisis in our communities. We cook for people, we cook for people. We come moving food, we clean out your fridge, we suck it with groceries. Oh, we asked you what you like to eat. We talk to you about your allergies, we coordinate delivery.

 

00;51;06;15 – 00;51;29;10

Rania

We do those things together. And it feels really humbling and rewarding to build those relationships and connections, because they bring me into contact with people I would otherwise have no overlap with in my life. And right people who are just like, very different than me. People will tell you they’ve come to like my workshops and I’ve made all the food at a workshop.

 

00;51;29;10 – 00;51;52;15

Rania

People will tell you, I hosted a community screening and I made 300 crepes, and people brought toppings and we all ate together. People will tell you they came to the transformative justice retreat, and I made 200 bowls of lentil soup that my inability to do portion control and cooking has come in very handy. But it’s become like the primary vehicle for me to connect with people and to care for people.

 

00;51;52;18 – 00;52;10;10

Rania

All right. A lot of the times people stop being defensive when they feel cared for. And I know, I don’t know about you, but I’m terrible when I’m hungry, I’m terrible when I’m hungry, and I should know better. Okay, but I don’t. My blood sugar starts plummeting, my attitude problem goes up. So like taking care of people in that way.

 

00;52;10;10 – 00;52;28;09

Rania

And I come from a community where that’s how we gather. If there’s a funeral, we eat together. If there’s a wedding, we eat together. If we’re babies born, we eat together. Like that is how we just find space to be with each other. So I would say food is the primary way to do that. Like food to raise money, food to, teach people food to connect with people.

 

00;52;28;09 – 00;52;43;15

Rania

You move it to my neighborhood. You’re my new neighbor. You are getting banana bread. There you go. Okay, I’m going to come over. I’m going to say hi. My name is Rania. I made you some banana bread. Here’s my phone number. If anything happens, you let me know. So now I have your phone number. If your kid is acting a fool and having a party, I’m going to affect you.

 

00;52;43;15 – 00;53;02;00

Rania

I’m not going to call the cops. Right? Like that’s the primary way that I’ve connected with people is by feeding them. Eating with them, like breaking bread with people is like, just allows us to just be in community reach to, like, sit face to face with somebody and to talk to them. That’s been like so humbling and so effective.

 

00;53;02;03 – 00;53;18;16

Rania

And then just like, really bypassing the system, any opportunity that I can, doing what needs to be done, any opportunity that I can like, oh yeah, people are like, oh, there’s a program for this. Like when I’m organizing marches, I’m like, oh, I know there’s a program. There’s like a 12 week waiting list. There’s 15 forms to go with that program.

 

00;53;18;16 – 00;53;41;03

Rania

Right? The violence of the paperwork, like El John says, the there’s bureaucracy, there’s no dignity in access to it. I want to take care of people now. Sure, we’ll try the program, but like, people need housing, that I want to get them into a motel. Right. People need food now. I want to get them groceries. So I would say food is, is and probably will always be as long as I’m able to cook for people.

 

00;53;41;06 – 00;53;43;21

Rania

The way that I connect with people in the most effective strategy.

 

00;53;43;25 – 00;54;01;17

Sheldomar

Yeah. That’s beautiful. That banana bread, though. Damn. I’m. I’m jealous. Whoever gets to try some of that. Well, I’m getting that. The time is up, so I want to say thank you so much, radio, for being here today, for this very special live episode. And it’s been really lovely to have this conversation with you today.

 

00;54;01;20 – 00;54;10;24

Rania

Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a joy. Yeah.

 

00;54;10;27 – 00;54;36;19

Sheldomar

It was great to have Rania join us for this special live episode of dignity and Joy. For listeners who want to stay connected with his work, you can follow her on Instagram. At Rania. Dot writes and her website Raniere rights.com. Dignity and Joy is a podcast from Foodshare Toronto, where food justice organization advocating for the right to food and working to challenge the systemic barriers that keep people from accessing the food they need to thrive.

 

00;54;36;22 – 00;54;58;09

Sheldomar

You can learn more about our work at future Dot net. If you have any feedback on the podcast, we’d love to hear from you. You can send us an email at info at foodshare. Net or on our social media. We’re at foodshare t o on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Editing for this episode of dignity and Joy is provided by the talented Marty Zak.

 

00;54;58;12 – 00;55;07;04

Sheldomar

The production team here at Foodshare is Renée D’Souza and Andrea Thompson. Special thanks to Amanda Cupido and thank you so much for listening.