STEW: Funding the Revolution is Delicious

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Activism Tastes Good.

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The STEW Organizers

STEW is a new project co-organized by the Baltimore Development Cooperative (http://www.baltimoredevelopmentco-op.org/) and Red Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse (http://www.redemmas.org/). The basic idea is simple: once a month, we'll be hosting a dinner at 2640 (http://redemmas.org/2640/), featuring high-end, locally-sourced, and maximally organic food (including a vegan option). The price for the multi-course dinner is $10. Interspersed with the food courses will be presentations of projects and ongoing social justice struggles—and the profits from the dinner will go towards funding these iniatives. This is an open-ended experiment—how can we use food to build a culture of solidarity here in Baltimore? How can we rethink the way we fund our projects? Can we build urban democracy over a collective dinner table?

STEW has been inspired by a number of initiatives, including the "network dinners" organized by the art-activist collective campbaltimore in 2006, Incubate Chicago's Sunday Soup (http://www.incubate-chicago.org/sundaysoup), Brooklyn's FEAST (http://feastinbklyn.org/), as well as the amazing dinner that took place at 2640 during the City From Below (http://cityfrombelow.org/main) conference.

The inaugural STEW took place on November 28, 2009, featuring presentations by Odonian Records (a record label, CD-R duplication service, and distribution network for social justice musicians), the Annex Theatre Gallery (a new visual arts component for a theatre group already performing and making puppets at the Copy Cat Annex, and The Baltimore Algebra Project (a democratic, student-run program focused on tutoring math one-on-one to middle and high school students).

STEW II is scheduled for January 22. For more information see http://stewbaltimore.org/

Stay tuned on indyreader.org, for STEW updates and stories.