Melissa: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. You're listening to The Takeaway, or should I say the bake away? [music] That's right. We're going to end this show with a tasty treat, so grab your whisks and measuring spoons, and let's head to the kitchen. Now, here's what you'll need, two tablespoons of radical empathy, three cups of social justice savvy, four teaspoons of smash patriarchy, five cups of dismantled white supremacy, and a dash of humor. Mix all of these ingredients together with lots of love, and care, and bam, bam.

Speaker: Bam, bam.

That's one delicious recipe for liberation. Baking like marching in the streets can be a powerful form of protest. It's one of the countless alternative forms of protest that we saw last summer. Whether we're talking about painting murals or surfboard paddle-outs, there's just so many different ways to be an activist today. The list just keeps on growing. For more on this, we're joined by Paola Velez, who is a Pastry Chef and Co-founder of Bakers Against Racism. Paola, welcome to the show.

Paola: Hi, thank you for having me.

Melissa: Also with us as Veronica Chambers, Editor of Narrative Projects at the New York Times, and author of "Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter. Veronica, great to have you here.

Veronica: Thank you so much for having me.

Melissa: Veronica, I want to start with you as a parent. What was your experience like in the spring and summer of 2020?

Veronica: It was heartbreaking. As I wrote about in the New York Times parenting news letter, I literally started-- there were days when I woke up crying and there were days when I went to bed crying. I was in a not-giant apartment with my 13-year-old daughter. I was navigating both this incredible grief over the moment that we were in with George Floyd and Brianna Taylor and so many other people. Also, trying to navigate, "Okay, how do I have this conversation with my daughter?" Because she knows more than I would want her to know right now about what's going on.

Melissa: I think for me that language of grief, of navigation, of the disruption, it's certainly Paola is why I turned to baking. I've always been a little bit of a baker here and there, but I think many of us in the context of the pandemic, even before the murder of George Floyd were soothing ourselves in part by the chemistry, the kitchen magic, all of that of baking. Why is baking a particular way to address those issues?

Paola: I think all of us self-soothe with sweets. We use sweets to celebrate, we use them to accomplish milestones, we use them when we break up with folks. This happening that happened in June of 2020, it was another way to activate baking and bake goods for the good of others. As a pastry chef, we always do these little celebration desserts at the end of someone's meal if they're happy, if they're just great people, if it's their birthday or anniversary and we radicalized baking to use it as a tool to fight against injustice this time around.

Melissa: I'm so married these days, but I'm so glad you reminded me of the importance of sweets at the moment of a breakup. Then, in fact, one of the things that your girlfriends do when they really love you is, if you're breaking up, they might bake you something and bring it to you. That's part of that commiseration. Veronica to go back to your parenting, I think a lot of us, not that we were in a really healthy relationship with the United States before this, but it really felt a rupture in our relationship with our nation. I think particularly for young people, that's how it felt. I'm wondering about how you and your daughter did begin to walk through those agonizing moments.

Veronica: I think every parent of color has to decide when you're going to have the race conversation with your daughter or son or child. I think that for me, I realized in that moment of June 2020 that I had really leaned in on culture or Afro Latino culture or the Black Girl Magic thing. I had built up all of these things from the Harlem Renaissance to W.E.B Du Bois to the Civil Rights Movement, to Alvin Ailey. I've gone so hard in one direction and I hadn't gone so hard in the let's talk about systemic racism, let's talk about lynching, let's talk about police brutality.

It was a tough moment because we were compressing really decades of history into days. One of the outcomes was that my daughter attended her first march and it was electrifying. I think partly what that moment provided was, and I know your work is so powerful about this, Melissa, but really what we were having a conversation was about citizenry and citizenship, and really what we were going to do in the moment. Not just how we felt, but how we could be in the community. For my daughter attending her first march, it was electrifying.

Melissa: I Love that point, that citizenship is not just about how we feel, but what we're going to do. Paola, talk to me about what you did about Bakers Against Racism

Paola: For us Bakers Against Racism-- for me, it was a continuation of something that I've always done. Before or when the pandemic just hit, everybody in the culinary industry was reeling. We were all losing our jobs, were being furloughed left and right. A lot of uncertainty was happening. I know personally that I didn't know what was next. I couldn't even get into the unemployment system to file for unemployment.

I had to call all of my local legislators, all of my counsel men and women to help my staff get their unemployment. Then I thought about what about our undocumented workforce? Who's standing up for them? Who is making sure that they still have a way to pay their bills or eat? I started this donut pop-up called Dona Dona, all of the proceeds were going to this organization called Ayuda DC. It got me into the act of always giving. My mom taught me that if let's say we had $3 to our name, we always should give one away. The act of giving has been something really ingrained in me. When the murder of George Floyd happened, it broke us, it broke every single person around me in my community.

When Willa Pelini asked me, "Would you like to do one more bake sale?" I figured it wasn't enough. If I was really going to stand up for Black Lives for my life, for my husband's life, or my family's life, for my community's life, was it enough to just do one more bake sale? I got to Google and I made a Google folder and I compiled everything that I had learned for the six-month run of Dona Dona. I just put it on the internet and it took $0 to raise almost $1.9 million in a week.

Melissa: I love this story because it shifts that idea of a bake sale, which has made almost trite or small or, "Well, what are you going to do? Just have a bake sale for justice?" "Well, actually, yes." It is a really extraordinary remembrance of what scale that is still very close to community can do. Veronica, in the piece that you wrote for the New York Times: Baking the World a Better Place, you actually talk about a history of liberation-based bake sales.

Veronica: I was so excited to write about Paola and Bakers Against Racism. In part, because I knew about the work of Georgia Gilmore, who during the 1950s helped fund the Montgomery bus boycott with a group she called the Club From Nowhere. It was local groups who made meals and baked. Their specialties were peach pies and pound cakes, and they donated the money to the movement and they kept it going. I think Paola's group and the bakers who work with them are in a really fine tradition. I think this is the upside of all the downsides. Is that in the quiet of the pandemic, in our grief, we connect as a community and I think there's a remembering of what we can do together with our own two hands, and it connetcs to history.

Melissa: Paola, talk to me about this network. On the one hand, you created it with the Google Form for free and raised nearly $2 million. But also talk to me about the relationships that were built, and are you all sharing recipes?

Paola: I guess we are, there have been so many diverse communities within Bakers Against Racism that have formed. We have, I think it's called the Bake Sale Project. I know that there have been a lot of cottage industry bakers that are now baking in their regions and they're making their livelihood from the very Google Forms that we sent out. It formed a community of folks that we thought we would never work again. We figured out how to work, and not only how to work, but how to support each other and how to support the causes that we believe in.

When we bake, we are not just baking for social justice. We're baking for the creatives, the scientists. We're baking for the Black surfers of Nova Scotia. We are connecting with folks in Mumbai, London. We are talking to folks in Australia who want to just radicalize baking and do good in this world. I always say that you can bake the world a better place and truly over the last year and a few months, we have strengthened that part of the industry that has been so ostracized and cast away whenever things get tough. We have formed a community of people who are just active and ready to bake for one another regardless of the cause.

Melissa: As I hear you talk about radicalizing baking, Veronica, where you ultimately came with your daughter as the publication of a new book, Call and Response, about all of these countless alternate forms of protest, very much like this notion of radicalizing baking, what are some of the other unique examples that you looked at?

Veronica: What was so great about doing this book, which is really centered on there's over a hundred photographs most of them by New York Times photographers, was just looking at the pictures. I love the pictures of the Rideout that the Compton Cowboys had and there's an eight-year-old girl riding a horse with a Black Lives Matter sign in Compton. I loved the skateboard protests and the bike protests. Paola mentioned the paddle-outs. I think the protests that Black surfers had in the oceans on both the East and the West Coast were so powerful, and the music that concerts that people like John Batiste had.

The murals that people made. Diving into the stories of the murals, I think so many of us we drive around cities and we love these murals, but for us, being able to know this was a father and daughter, this was a group of classmates who aren't even professional artists who decided, ''Okay, we're going to throw out this mural.'' They're so extraordinary. There's so many ways to be an activist and I was so happy to be able to highlight Bakers Against Racism because it's just one of a beautiful palette of activism and activation that young people have to choose from.

Ultimately, I think that's what I wanted to highlight in the book and in our work at the New York Times is that you have choices. When you have choices, it helps you from feeling helpless and powerless, which is what I really feared that my daughter would feel and that I think so many young people were in danger of feeling.

Melissa: Paola, will there be a cookbook?

Paola: I don't know yet. I think I am just trying to make sure that we stay up to date with everything that's going on in the world where currently our last activation was in support of AAPI lives. I'm gearing up after a little break for the summer gearing up to start activating again. I think I would have to ask the Bakers because I don't actually do anything without their consent.

Melissa: I will tell you that I am raising my hand begging for some way for all of us to engage even more with the incredible work that you're doing. Paola Velez is a Pastry Chef and Co-founder of Bakers Against Racism, and Veronica Chambers is Editor of Narrative Projects at the New York Times. So much gratitude for both of you for the work that you do and for joining us.

Paola: Thank you.

Veronica: Thank you so much.

[00:14:43] [END OF AUDIO]

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