Hi everyone. Recently I figured out that despite my uptick in community numbers here on Twitter, someone I admire and follow and have supported decided I was not good for their virtual space. I'm not going to name them. I'm cool with them making decisions for them. However..

I have to rethink my relationship to that individual. I am not your average culinarian. My work comes out of a tradition born in African American studies of academic excellence married with social responsibility and aesthetic and moral purpose. I'm not here to center on technique

I guess ghosting me is better than getting in my face on Twitter as some have chosen to do. I realize my tweets have been pointed and political and I cannot control how others feel about that. However, social justice is not a trend for me. It is part of my values as a person

Who is centered in social justice and moral suasion. This is inseparable from food...feeding the hungry and doing justly are systemic issues and are connected to one's ethical core and to history&identity& making community. Food without thought is just compost waiting to happen.

I am also out here screaming into the ether because I realize& I am grateful that a lot of people follow me on social media who do not look like me. I'm grateful for the opportunity to change a mind or a perspective that may have remained stagnant. I make myself vulnerable bc

I am not interested in pretending to create a front. If you like me or hate me I want you to understand that injustice affects me personally. How are we going to break bread in an inauthentic way? I am not going to lie about my heart and head. For anyone. The Torah is focused on

And the idea that we do not stand by....idly by....our neighbor's blood.
I am blessed to have spent my time on earth learning our cuisine and history and culture and those of others, but I also care about the people who create those cuisines and their lives and I can't be

Hard hearted and soulless. Food is a window to what people value and who they really are and why they persist at all. I'm not here just to eat. If I am I am nothing. I am here because food provides the opportunity to love thy neighbor as thyself. It also does not hide our issues

So while some of us in the food game can focus our energies on traditional food writing, blogging, photography, and creativity, I proudly salute them but stand my ground because social justice and moral suasion are self preservation for me as an intersectional man of color.

I don't have an option here. I have stories to tell. And on the way I will not ignore missing and murdered Indigenous American women, children in camps, the verbal&physical abuse of Trans people, the way society ignores and disenfranchises the disabled, the historical scourge

Of woman hatred, homophobia or anti-Black racism or anti-Semitism or Islamophobia. I will not tolerate blind and baseless hatred, but I also refuse to fume and not do justly and figure out a better way. Human beings who want to respect other humans are the guests at my table.

And because I cannot repair the world on my own&do not know everything &cannot be everything, I desperately need a crowded table that we all can manage to share. That's why I value this work and the opportunity to share the burden humbly and pass it on lighter to those to come.