#Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems
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Calls to Action for Safeguarding Seven Generations in Times of Food, Social, and Ecological Crises – Reporting on the Outcomes of the 2023 UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum (UNPFII Side Event).
Indigenous Youth leaders of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus with Indigenous Youth leaders who attended the second session of the biennial UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum will report on the outcomes and calls to action deliberated at the Forum.
186 Indigenous Youth from the seven socio-cultural regions, 54 countries, and more than 100 Indigenous Peoples – gathered for a week at the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy in October 2023 for the first in-person gathering of the UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum. From a week of discussions with Indigenous Youth, Indigenous Chefs, Member State Countries, UN agencies, foundations, NGOs, universities, and research centers they distilled clear calls to action, and recommendations as it relates to the future of Indigenous Peoples' food and knowledge systems in the context of the intersection of food, social, and ecological crises that humanity is facing. The Coalition on Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems, the Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems, and the Youth Hub of the Mountain Partnerships participated in UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum and will share their commitments to partner and advance the work with Indigenous Youth globally. Indigenous Youth are taking action in their communities, and they are ready for organizations, Member States and UN Agencies to listen and support their advancements.
Watch the Calls to Action for Safeguarding Seven Generations in Times of Food, Social, and Ecological Crises – Reporting on the Outcomes of the 2023 UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum (UNPFII Side Event)
#tribal groups#indigenous#aboriginal#indigenous rights#indigenous youth#young indigenous peoples#ecological crises#ecological crisis#social crises#Coalition on Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems#unfpii23#Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems#Youth Hub of the Mountain Partnerships#UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum#food crises#call to a
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Why Malaysia is the Ideal Destination for Your Higher Education Journey
Choosing the right destination for your higher education is a crucial decision that can shape your future career and personal growth. While many students consider studying in Western countries, Asia has emerged as a strong contender in the global education arena. Among the Asian nations, Malaysia stands out as an increasingly popular choice for international students. With its diverse culture, affordable living costs, high-quality education, and strategic location, Malaysia offers a unique blend of opportunities that make it the ideal destination for your higher education journey.
Study in Malaysia
1. World-Class Education System
Malaysia is home to some of the top universities in Asia, many of which are recognized globally for their academic excellence. Institutions like the University of Malaya (UM), University Kembangan Malaysia (UKM), and University Putra Malaysia (UPM) consistently rank among the best in the world. These universities offer a wide range of programs, from engineering and business to medicine and the arts, catering to students with diverse academic interests.
Moreover, Malaysia hosts several branch campuses of prestigious foreign universities, such as Monash University Malaysia and the University of Nottingham Malaysia. These campuses provide students with the opportunity to earn a globally recognized degree at a fraction of the cost of studying in their home countries.
2. Affordable Education and Living Costs
One of the most compelling reasons to choose Malaysia for your higher education is the affordability factor. Tuition fees in Malaysian universities are significantly lower compared to those in Western countries. This makes Malaysia an attractive option for students who want to receive a high-quality education without accumulating massive student debt.
In addition to lower tuition fees, the cost of living in Malaysia is very affordable. Whether it's accommodation, food, transportation, or entertainment, you’ll find that your money goes much further in Malaysia than in many other study destinations. This allows international students to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle while focusing on their studies.
Study Abroad Agents in Kenya
3. Cultural Diversity and Inclusivity
Malaysia is a melting pot of cultures, with a population that includes Malays, Chinese, Indians, and numerous indigenous groups. This cultural diversity is reflected in the country’s festivals, food, and everyday interactions. As an international student, you will find it easy to adapt to life in Malaysia, where people are welcoming and open to different cultures.
The multicultural environment also enhances your educational experience, as you will interact with students from various backgrounds, broadening your worldview and preparing you for a global career. English is widely spoken in Malaysia, and it is the language of instruction in most universities, making it easier for international students to integrate and excel academically.
4. Strategic Location in Southeast Asia
Malaysia’s location in the heart of Southeast Asia makes it an ideal base for exploring the region. With easy access to neighboring countries like Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam, you can enrich your educational journey with travel experiences that broaden your cultural understanding and global perspective.
The country’s strategic location also makes it a hub for business and trade in the region, offering students ample opportunities for internships, networking, and career development. Malaysia’s rapidly growing economy, coupled with its focus on innovation and technology, provides a fertile ground for students to launch their careers.
Study Abroad Consultants in Kenya
5. Safe and Stable Environment
Safety is a significant concern for students and their families when choosing a study destination. Malaysia is known for its political stability, low crime rates, and overall safety. The government places a strong emphasis on maintaining a secure environment for residents and visitors alike. This peace of mind allows students to focus on their studies without worrying about their safety.
Additionally, Malaysia has a well-developed healthcare system, ensuring that students have access to quality medical care if needed. The country’s tropical climate, with its warm weather year-round, also contributes to a comfortable living environment.
6. Vibrant Student Life
Malaysia offers a vibrant and dynamic student life, with numerous extracurricular activities, clubs, and organizations to join. Whether you’re interested in sports, arts, culture, or community service, there’s something for everyone. Malaysian universities often have active student associations that organize events, workshops, and social activities, helping international students to make friends and feel at home.
The country’s bustling cities, such as Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Johor Bahru, offer plenty of entertainment options, from shopping malls and restaurants to cultural sites and nightlife. The combination of academic rigor and a lively social scene ensures a well-rounded university experience.
Study in Malaysia Agents in Kenya
7. Pathways to Global Opportunities
Studying in Malaysia can open doors to global opportunities. The country’s education system is recognized internationally, and degrees obtained from Malaysian universities are respected worldwide. Furthermore, many Malaysian universities have strong ties with industry, providing students with internships, research opportunities, and job placements that can enhance their employability.
Malaysia’s focus on developing industries such as technology, finance, and healthcare means that there are plenty of opportunities for graduates to build successful careers in the country or abroad. The skills and experiences gained during your time in Malaysia will be valuable assets in the global job market.
Conclusion
Malaysia is more than just a study destination; it’s a gateway to a world of opportunities. With its world-class education system, affordable living costs, cultural diversity, and strategic location, Malaysia offers an unparalleled experience for international students. Whether you’re looking to advance your academic pursuits, explore new cultures, or lay the foundation for a successful career, Malaysia is the ideal place to embark on your higher education journey.
#Study Abroad Consultants in Kenya#Study in Malaysia Agents in Kenya#Study Abroad Agents in Kenya#Study in Malaysia
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Beyond the Textbooks: Unveiling the Benefits of a Degree in Malaysia
For students seeking an academic adventure beyond the ordinary, Malaysia beckons. This Southeast Asian nation offers a unique blend of academic excellence, affordability, and cultural immersion that sets it apart. Here's why a degree in Malaysia could be the key to unlocking a transformative educational experience:
1. Quality Education at an Unbeatable Price:
Compared to Western institutions, Malaysian universities boast a compelling proposition: top-notch education at a fraction of the cost. Tuition fees are significantly lower, making it an attractive option for students burdened by the looming shadow of student debt. This financial advantage allows you to focus on your studies without constant worry about finances. The savings can also fuel unforgettable experiences, from exploring hidden Malaysian gems to venturing into neighboring Southeast Asian countries.
2. A Flourishing Hub of Academic Excellence:
Malaysia's commitment to education is reflected in its rapidly developing universities. Many institutions are internationally recognized, consistently ranking high in global university rankings. This ensures you receive a rigorous and well-rounded education that meets the highest international standards. The focus goes beyond textbooks, often incorporating practical experiences like internships and industry projects, preparing you for a successful career.
3. A Springboard to Diverse Career Opportunities:
A Malaysian degree opens doors to exciting career prospects. The country's booming economy presents a wealth of opportunities across various sectors, including technology, engineering, finance, and tourism. Many multinational corporations have established a presence in Malaysia, offering potential internship and job opportunities. Additionally, with a globally recognized degree, you'll be well-equipped to pursue careers internationally.
4. Unveiling a Cultural Tapestry:
Malaysia is a cultural kaleidoscope. Here, Malay, Chinese, Indian, and indigenous influences blend seamlessly, creating a vibrant cultural landscape. Imagine strolling through bustling night markets overflowing with fragrant curries and sampling delectable street food. Immerse yourself in batik-making workshops, learn greetings in Malay, or witness the vibrant celebrations of Hari Raya or Thaipusam. This cultural immersion will broaden your perspective and equip you with a deeper understanding of the world.
5. A Gateway to Southeast Asian Exploration:
Studying in Malaysia positions you perfectly for exploring Southeast Asia. During breaks, you can embark on budget-friendly adventures to neighboring countries. Dive into the crystal-clear waters of Thailand's beaches, explore the ancient temples of Cambodia, or lose yourself in the bustling markets of Vietnam. This exposure to diverse cultures and landscapes will enrich your personal and academic journey. You'll graduate not only with a degree but also with a deeper understanding of the region and its people.
6. A Secure and Supportive Environment:
Malaysia is known for its warm hospitality and safety. The multicultural society fosters tolerance and understanding, making it easy to integrate and feel welcome. The efficient infrastructure ensures you can navigate cities and towns with ease. A network of student support services and international student clubs provide guidance and a sense of community, allowing you to thrive both academically and personally.
Embrace the Malaysian Advantage:
Earning a degree in Malaysia offers more than just academic qualifications. It's a gateway to cultural immersion, affordability, and exciting career prospects. With its world-class education system, warm hospitality, and strategic location, Malaysia promises an unforgettable journey that will shape you into a well-rounded global citizen. So, pack your bags, embrace the adventure, and embark on your transformative educational journey in Malaysia!
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Climate Justice, Food Sustainability and Black Lives Matter
Leah Thomas is an environmental activist and she is known for strongly and loudly advocating for environmental justice and intersectional environmentalism which advocates for the protection of people and the planet. At COP26, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Glasgow, Scotland, Thomas garnered a lot of attention when she tried to uplift and amplify the voices of marginalized communities in the climate conversation. While doing this, she emphasized the importance of putting equality and equity at the center of our focus, and reiterated how justice is a necessary topic when it comes to climate action. Leah Thomas also highlighted the disproportionate impacts of climate change on communities of color and indigenous peoples seeing as the global south is often left traumatized by disastrous natural events.
Intersectional Environmentalism is a framework that acknowledges the connections between social and environmental issues and it recognizes that environmental issues cannot be addressed without also addressing issues of social justice, including race, class, gender, and more. It emphasizes the intersection of various forms of oppression and how they come together to create disproportionate impacts on marginalized communities. This idea of intersectional spans across several different movements, most notably, feminism. Intersectionalism very often pushes the needle forward and helps people recognize their own biases and bad behaviors while uplifting the voices that were previously left unregarded in spite of the movement supposedly caring about them. The incorporation of intersectional helps bring the world together in a much more modern way and is the only way to eventually get the world powers to stop bullying the marginalized into submission
Black Lives Matter is a movement advocating for racial justice and equality and, in doing so, intersects with environmentalism through its focus on addressing systemic racism. An example of this intersection of race, class, and environment can be seen when communities of color most often live in communities being hit hardest by environmental disasters, pollution, etc. Many would rightly think that Black Lives Matter would be doing a disservice to everyone they’re trying to serve by ignoring intersectional and intersectional environmentalism which it’s why it’s so important that they keep this practice at the forefront of their movement.
Leah Penniman works in food justice and agricultural activism who got her start farming in 1996 and started teaching to spread the word about food justice and agricultural activism 22 years ago in 2002. As a farmer, educator, and co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, Penniman’s work focuses on dismantling systemic racism in the world of food systems and promoting equitable access to land and resources. Soul Fire Farm which is located in Grafton, New York, is not merely a place of food production and agricultural work, but also a hub for community empowerment and education both of which is very much needed not only in the United States, but all over the world. Through various programs, workshops, and outreach efforts, Penniman and her team continue to strive towards bringing up a new generation of agrarian leaders committed to social and environmental justice.
Soul Fire Farm's significance to the climate movement lies in its multifaceted approach to addressing the root causes of food insecurity and environmental degradation. By prioritizing the needs of marginalized communities, particularly the communities of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color (BIPOC) who have historically been excluded from land ownership and agricultural opportunities, the farm serves as a beacon of hope and resilience. This work is a prime example of intersectional environmentalism at work as Penniman strives to close the gap of good, healthy food reaching some communities and not others. The emphasis Soul Fire Farm places on sustainable farming practices and cultural preservation underscores the interconnectedness between land stewardship and climate resilience. In the current world as we all try to combat and deal with the impacts of climate change, Leah Penniman’s Soul Fire Farm offers a great model of regenerative agriculture that not only mitigates environmental harm but also brings about social growth, fosters communities around the country, and empowers people economically in a way they never thought possible.
“Black Forager" a.k.a. Alexis Nikole is a TikTok influencer who is known for the educational content she makes which focuses on foraging, sustainable living, and reconnecting with nature. The post that caught my eye the most when I was exploring her page was her tutorial on making dandelion honey. The recipe involves harvesting dandelion flowers, boiling them with water and apple juice, and infusing them to create a flavorful syrup which she has called dandelion honey. I think that Nikole's content resonates with audiences because of its accessibility, entertainment and educational value, and its emphasis on reconnecting with nature all of which are topics that are becoming more popular, especially on an app such as TikTok. By making these videos, she gets people to start thinking about important issues like food sovereignty, sustainable living, and the importance of traditional knowledge in a modern context.
In my own life, I define food sovereignty as the making of intentional choices about where my food comes from, making a concerted effort to support local and sustainable producers, and minimizing food waste and the use of non-biodegradable/recyclable products. While I currently don't grow all/most of my own food, me and my family try to prioritize purchasing locally and in a class last semester, I learned about community supported agriculture (CSA) programs which I hope to incorporate into my everyday life in order to better support local farmers and reduce my carbon footprint. The class also showed us some community gardens around Manhattan and while I haven’t started actively participating, it has inspired me and will stay with me until I can hopefully start going to community gardens and working first hand on CSA. Me and my family also compost organic waste which we use in our garden. The pandemic and learning about these topics in school has prompted me to reevaluate my food habits, not only focusing on what I buy but what I can grow and the complete lifecycle of the products at the supermarket.
Isaias Hernandez, also known as "Queer Brown Vegan," is a passionate environmental activist, educator, and content creator who has dedicated his platform to promoting sustainability, veganism, and social justice. Through his work on social media, Hernandez has continued to emphasize the intersectionality of environmentalism, highlighting how important it is to incorporate inclusivity and equity in the movement. With a focus on decolonizing environmentalism and reconnecting with nature, he inspires his audience to adopt more conscious lifestyles while we continue to live in an environmentally and socially fraught time, while advocating for the rights of marginalized communities. Hernandez's much-needed perspective as a queer person of color is endlessly helpful to the environmental discourse as he challenges the mainstream narratives and shows that the intersectional approach is key to addressing global challenges.
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Food Sovereignty Resources
An introductory post on the basics of food sovereignty
What is food sovereignty?
“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. It defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers. Food sovereignty prioritizes local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and economic sustainability.”
–Declaration of Nyéléni
The seven pillars of food sovereignty:
1. Focuses on Food for People
Puts people’s need for food at the centre of policies
Insists that food is more than just a commodity
2. Builds Knowledge and Skills
Builds on traditional knowledge
Uses research to support and pass this knowledge to future generations
Rejects technologies that undermine or contaminate local food systems
3. Works with Nature
Optimizes the contributions of ecosystems
Improves resilience
4. Values Food Providers
Supports sustainable livelihoods
Respects the work of all food providers
5. Localizes Food Systems
Reduces distance between food providers and consumers
Rejects dumping and inappropriate food aid
Resists dependency on remote and unaccountable corporations
6. Puts Control Locally
Places control in the hands of local food providers
Recognizes the need to inhabit and to share territories
Rejects the privatization of natural resources
7. Food is Sacred
Recognizes that food is a gift of life, and not to be squandered
Asserts that food cannot be commodified
Food sovereignty also fights for women’s rights in agriculture.
Organizations:
Via Campesino
Via Campesino is an international coalition including but not limited to: peasant farmer organizations, agricultural workers, and indigenous communities. They are the originators of the term food sovereignty.
vimeo
Via Campesino’s archive of documents on food sovereignty
Their website also has separate sections for climate justice, international solidarity, agroecology, peasant rights, and land/water rights. Their recent posts focus a lot on the affect of COVID-19 on peasant farmers and workers in the global south
Land Rights Now
“Land Rights Now is an international alliance campaign to secure Indigenous and community land rights everywhere“
A Recipe For Global Food Security from Land Rights Now:
some key statistics from this report:
“Up to 2.5 billion women and men depend on land and natural resources that are held, used or managed in common. They are farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, and forest keepers. They make up a large part of the world’s small-scale food producers, who – despite difficult challenges – provide 70% of world’s food. They protect more than 50% of the planet’s land surface, but governments recognize their ownership rights over just 10%”
“To feed a growing world without exhausting its resources, food production needs to be sustainable, protecting diverse landscapes rather than investing in mono-cropping. Indigenous Peoples and local communities preserve 80% of the world’s biodiversity…Research shows that where Indigenous Peoples have secure rights to their lands there is less than one-tenth the deforestation rate of where they do not”
Academic Writing:
Agroecology, Food Sovereignty, and the New Green Revolution
Agroecology: The Ecology of Food Systems
Linking the defence of territory to food sovereignty: Peasant environmentalisms and extractive neoliberalism in Guatemala.
Food Sovereignty and Gender Justice
Urban transition toward food sovereignty
Books:
Campesino A Campesino: Voices from Latin America's Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture by Eric Holt-Gimenez
The Struggle for Food Sovereignty: Alternative Development and the Renewal of Peasant Societies Today edited by Remy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau
*Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by Leah Penniman
All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life by Winona LaDuke
*this book is intended for black people, obviously no one can physically stop others from reading it and it could help in understanding some of the struggles black people face but lets just all try to be conscious of intruding on spaces that are not for us
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I hope this post has been helpful at introducing people to the concept food sovereignty, there is so much more to read and learn but I wanted to provide at least a starting point for people who have never heard of this movement. I hope we can all continue moving forward towards a more sustainable and just future by continuing to empower, uplift and work in solidarity with black, indigenous and peasant farmers around the world.
vimeo
Painting by Francisco Daniel of the Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores
Music: Cuando tenga la tierra by Mercedes Sosa
#food sovereignty#food justice#food security#sustainability#land back#decolonization#land rights#water rights#indigenous rights#peasant rights#cottagecore#farmcore#prairecore#gardencore#disclaimer that i have not read all these books and some of the articles i just skimmed#bc i lost my collection of writings on this subject that i have read and i cant find them anywhere :(#also i tried my best to fix the formatting on mobile but tumblr i guess does not like it when you copy and paste so theres giant gaps sorry#long post#links#resource#references
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Monday, May 3, 2021
Global coronavirus cases are surging, driven by India and South America (NYT) The number of new daily cases has exceeded 800,000 for more than a week. The spike is largely driven by the outbreak in India, which now accounts for more than 40 percent of the world’s new cases. The U.S. plans to halt travel for non-U.S. citizens from India starting Tuesday. Vaccines in India are running short, hospitals are swamped and cremation grounds are burning thousands of bodies every day. Health experts and political analysts say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overconfidence and domineering leadership style bear a huge share of the responsibility for the crisis. Meanwhile, Indians living abroad are frantically seeking to help sick relatives. Much of South America is also faring poorly. Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Argentina and Colombia all rank among the 20 nations with the highest number of Covid deaths per capita.
Elderly statesman? (NYT) Arnold Schwarzenegger left the California governor’s mansion 10 years ago. He is a more popular political figure today than when he was elected. Over the past year, the former Republican governor, now 73, has been in demand, embracing an unlikely role that he describes as “elderly statesman.” He’s made public service announcements on hand washing, raised millions of dollars for protective health gear and is now being sought out for guidance on the Republican-led effort to oust Gov. Gavin Newsom, the same mechanism that led to Schwarzenegger’s election in 2003. “When you leave office, you realize—well, I realized—that I just couldn’t cut it off like that,” he said in a three-hour interview.
Looming showdown as Michigan governor orders Canadian pipeline shut down (Washington Post) For Michigan’s governor, the 645-mile pipeline jeopardizes the Great Lakes. For Canada’s natural resources minister, its continued operation is “nonnegotiable.” The clash over Calgary-based Enbridge’s Line 5, which carries up to 540,000 barrels of crude oil and natural gas liquids across Michigan and under the Great Lakes each day, is placing stress on U.S.-Canada ties. In a move applauded by environmentalists and Indigenous groups on both sides of the border, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in November ordered the firm to shut down the nearly 70-year-old lines by May 12. Canadian officials, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have appealed to their American counterparts, including President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm for help. Joe Comartin, Canada’s consul general in Detroit, said a shutdown would have “significant” impacts on both sides of the border. He predicted effects ranging from months-long propane shortages to higher costs for consumers to fuels being carried by rail, truck or boat—methods that he said are less emissions-friendly and more dangerous than a pipeline. One “irritant,” he said, is “the claim from the state that they are doing this to protect the Great Lakes, that they’re more interested in protecting the Great Lakes than we in Canada are. Basically, we reject that completely.”
NYC Eyes Reopening (Bloomberg) New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said yesterday the city would aim to fully reopen July 1, lifting restrictions on restaurants, gyms, and all other businesses. A return to normal would mark a symbolic moment for both New Yorkers and the country—America's most populous city was a global epicenter early in the pandemic, registering an average of 800 deaths per day last April. The city is averaging roughly 1,700 new cases per day, down 70% since January, reporting about 30 deaths per day.
Kissinger warns of ‘colossal’ dangers in US-China tensions (AFP) Acclaimed diplomat Henry Kissinger said Friday that US-China tensions threaten to engulf the entire world and could lead to an Armageddon-like clash between the two military and technology giants. The 97-year-old former US secretary of state, who as an advisor to president Richard Nixon crafted the 1971 unfreezing of relations between Washington and Beijing, said the mix of economic, military and technological strengths of the two superpowers carried more risks than the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Strains with China are “the biggest problem for America, the biggest problem for the world,” Kissinger told the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum on global issues. “Because if we can’t solve that, then the risk is that all over the world a kind of cold war will develop between China and the United States.” While nuclear weapons were already large enough to damage the entire globe during the Cold War, he said advances in nuclear technology and artificial intelligence—where China and the United States are both leaders—have multiplied the doomsday threat. “For the first time in human history, humanity has the capacity to extinguish itself in a finite period of time,” Kissinger said.
Thousands march in Colombia in fourth day of protests against tax plan (Reuters) Thousands of Colombians took to the streets on Saturday for International Workers’ Day marches and protests against a government tax reform proposal, in a fourth day of demonstrations that have resulted in at least four deaths. Unions and other groups kicked off marches on Wednesday to demand the government of President Ivan Duque withdraw the reform proposal, which originally leveled sales tax on public services and some food. Cali, the country’s third-largest city, has seen the most vociferous marches, some looting and at least three deaths connected to the demonstrations.
Europe’s economy shrinks amid slow vaccine rollouts and lockdowns (Washington Post) With swaths of Europe still under lockdown restrictions and facing a stuttering vaccination rollout, the region’s economy slid into a double-dip recession in the first quarter of the year, in contrast to a rosy outlook in the United States. The European economy shrank by 0.6 percent in the first quarter of the year, according to data released Friday. The U.S. economy grew by 1.6 percent over the same period, amid massive federal stimulus spending and a speedy vaccination rollout. Export-dependent Germany, which had already been heading toward recession before the pandemic as manufacturing dropped off, saw its economy shrink by 1.7 percent, the most in Europe. The economies of Spain, Italy and Portugal also contracted. Much of Europe is battling a third wave of coronavirus infections. Germany has a nighttime curfew in place in 15 of its 16 states, and shopping requires booking appointments and getting a negative test.
Dozens of German police injured in May Day riots (AP) At least 93 police officers were injured and 354 protesters were detained after traditional May Day rallies in Berlin turned violent, Berlin’s top security official said Sunday. More than 20 different rallies took place in the German capital on Saturday and the vast majority of them were peaceful. However, a leftist march of 8,000 people through the city’s Neukoelln and Kreuzberg neighborhood, which has often seen clashes in past decades, turned violent. Protesters threw bottles and rocks at officers, and burned garbage containers and wooden pallets in the streets. There’s a nightly curfew in most parts of Germany currently because of the high number of coronavirus infections. But political protests and religious gatherings are exempt from the curfew.
Big Myanmar protests aim to ‘shake the world’; seven killed (Reuters) Myanmar security forces opened fire on some of the biggest protests against military rule in days, killing at least seven people on Sunday, media reported, three months after a coup plunged the country into crisis. The protests, after a spell of dwindling crowds and what appeared to be more restraint by the security forces, were coordinated with demonstrations in Myanmar communities around the world to mark what organisers called “the global Myanmar spring revolution”. Streams of demonstrators, some led by Buddhist monks, made their way through cities and towns including the commercial hub of Yangon. The protests are only one of the problems the generals have brought on with their Feb. 1 ouster of the elected government. Wars with ethnic minority insurgents in remote frontier regions in the north and east have intensified significantly over the past three months, displacing tens of thousands of civilians, according to U.N. estimates. In some places, civilians with crude weapons have battled security forces while in central areas military and government facilities that have been secure for generations have been hit by rocket attacks and a wave of small, unexplained blasts.
Vaccinated faithful throng Jerusalem church for Holy Fire (AP) Hundreds of Christian worshippers made use of Israel’s easing of coronavirus restrictions Saturday, packing a Jerusalem church revered as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection for an ancient fire ceremony a day before Orthodox Easter. The faithful gathered at The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, waiting for clergymen to emerge with the Holy Fire from the Edicule, a chamber built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was buried and rose from the dead after being crucified. As bells rang and the top clerics from different Orthodox denominations appeared, the worshippers scrambled to light their candles and pass the fire on. Within a minute, the imposing walls of the old church glowed.
Israel asks whether autonomy of the ultra-Orthodox contributed to the deadly stampede (Washington Post) Israel’s ultra-Orthodox residents exist in a world within the world, citizens of Israel but pledging their allegiance, attention and obedience instead to their rabbis and God. In isolated enclaves, they are exempt from the military draft, outside the national school system and—in apartments usually without Internet or television—largely oblivious to the surrounding culture. Now, this shocked country is asking whether that self-segregation—and the secular politicians who have enabled it for decades—is responsible for the worst civilian catastrophe in Israel’s history, the trampling death of 45 ultra-Orthodox men and boys at a massively overcrowded religious festival in the early hours of the morning Friday. The ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim as they are known in Israel, follow some of the most conservative tenets in Judaism and have a lifestyle based on the Jewish culture that evolved hundreds of years ago in the communities of Eastern Europe. Since Israel’s founding, state leaders have sought preserve this culture after much of it was devastated during World War II. When more than 100,000 members of the Haredim convened for a boisterous annual festival at an ancient rabbi’s tomb on Mount Meron, they overflowed a narrow, sloped compound known to both government and religious leaders as a potentially dangerous setting. Sunday, as the final victims were being buried and flags around the country flew at half-mast in a national day of mourning, multiple investigations were getting underway that will target police planning, local regulators, site managers and national ministries with responsibility for oversight. Already, journalists and whistleblowers have unearthed a shocking paper trail of warnings ignored, recommendations overruled and absent supervision. Officials have been called to account for meetings in recent weeks in which specific recommendations from health and safety authorities were overruled at the behest of Haredi groups.
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(via Study in Melbourne Australia 2020 - Courses, Universities, Employment)
Study in Melbourne – 7 Reasons to Study in Melbourne
If you are still in two-minds about your study abroad destination or are confused between options, here are 7 reasons why Melbourne should be at the top of your list:
1. Ease of Living – Melbourne has persistently ranked as one of world’s most liveable cities, ever since the EIU’s Global Liveability Index began in 2002. These rankings are based on quality of health care, education, infrastructure, stability and culture, with more than 30 factors being taken into consideration when deciding the ranks.
2. Top Universities – All 7 universities in Melbourne are placed in the QS World University Rankings of 2020, with the highest ranked institution, The University of Melbourne, coming in at #39 globally.
3. Employment Opportunities – Melbourne is a hub for international companies to set up their base of operation in Australia. In fact, global giants like BP, ExxonMobil, and Alibaba etc. have their offices in Melbourne. The University of Melbourne also runs an annual mentoring program that brings students in touch with alumni mentors who help them with their career decisions.
Want to study abroad? How about studying in Australia.
4. Cultural Diversity – More than 140 cultures are represented in the city, ranging from Victoria’s indigenous tribes to migrants from Europe, Asia and Africa. Melbourne is a welcoming and outgoing city, with a spirit that embraces the heritage of all the people that make up the community. There is a wide variety of vibrant cultural festivals and events held throughout the year to celebrate every culture that has contributed to making Melbourne what it is today.
5. Sports – Unofficially, Melbourne is the sporting capital of Australia and holds the distinction of being the only city in the world with 5 international sporting complexes. The MCG or Melbourne Cricket Ground is an iconic field which is instantly recognizable for any cricket fan worth his salt. Even the ever popular Aussie rules football or AFL was invented in the city of Melbourne. Sports fans can attend high-profile international sporting events like the F1 Grand Prix, Australian Open and Cricket series throughout the year.
6. Food – With all the different cultures coexisting together, the food scene in Melbourne has something for everyone! There are numerous cuisines from all around the world that you can sample without ever having to leave the city, from dumplings in Chinatown to borsch soup in the Russian restaurants.
7. Student Support – With Melbourne attracting ever increasing numbers of international students, the education industry in the city has created an excellent support system. From help in learning the English language, tutoring services, student housing and financial aid, the universities in the city make sure that students have all the support they need to excel in their academic and professional lives.
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NRG Grids
NRG - Nephilim Reversal Grids
The headquarter hub in Stonehenge area acts as a final collection point by directing huge amounts of Electromagnetic power, through massive amounts of collected (stolen) life force from multiple subsidiaries all over the planetary globe and the planetary grid lines, as well as the Planetary Gates.
The Archontic Deception Strategy is directly to inflict Sexual Misery, sexual abuse and sexual slaves on this planet, starting as early and young as possible. This was taken advantage of by the negative aliens to splinter the soul energies, rather than integrate and heal it, by controlling the sexual energies. By promoting distortions around the sexual act, gender roles and corrupting our relationship to our mother and father parent, our race descended into Sexual Misery and in many cases, forms of sexual slavery and Misogyny. This is known as the “sexual misery program” propagated and controlled by the Moon Chain (lunar) lineages of the NAA on the earth. (These are lineages not indigenous to the earth but came through the process of invasion and deception.) These are multiple layers of architecture and Mind Control that have been artificially created to control, deceive, separate, confuse, torture and steal human beings sexual life force, and it is a violation against the human soul. The main collection center for Sexual Misery is called the NRG network that is the central hub in the UK. It is designed to create psychopaths and sexual predators based on Archontic Deception Behavior.
Known subsidiary networks exist at every Planet Stargate, such as Iran Gate, Michael Mary Reversal in Calgary, The Cathar Grid lines (S. France), Dragon Moth/Snake Networks in Asia. All are collected and returned to UK for distribution off planet for the Orion Group and Annunaki Nibiru groups to parcel out.
DNA Splitting or Pair Bond Splitting
The Nephilim Reversal Grid (NRG) is an alien AI machined structure that is active in the United Kingdom. In order to dismantle the NRG, the various hubs feeding it from all over the planet need to be dismantled systematically, while freeing the soul enslavement of the collective consciousness of the earth humans that is used to power up these grids. This dismantling and grid rehabilitation has been transpiring with the Guardian teams since my awareness of this project in 2008.
The NRG is responsible to break apart hybridized genetics by reversing any synthesis of alchemy that happens organically between the male and female principle (electron-proton balance), as well as repelling any healing for the DNA of reverse pair bonds that are connected to Nephilim DNA or that which has been hybridized with reptilian genetics. This is desired by the Reptilians because their human representatives on the earth have been bred as Nephilim (genetic hybrid between Oraphim and Reptilian) and thus are easy to possess and Mind Control for carrying out the negative alien agenda NAA.
The Reptilians Negative Aliens do not want to heal their genetics, thereby integrate into human society as an equal, they want to rule humanity as an absolute authority as the False King of Tyranny. The Illuminati plan and the infiltrated monarchy are based within these genetically controlled factions, that are considered the royal bloodlines. Many of these royals are not human any longer, but have been partially or fully possessed by the interdimensional entities in order to make the carrying out of the agenda more convenient. The NRG is a massively complicated alien machinery that has interfered with true spiritual marriage or Hieros Gamos, the union between the inner male-female principles in the original human DNA, making this embodiment nearly impossible for most human beings on the planet.
We are continually working on embodying the unity template of Spiritual Marriage in No Time, in order to create the foundation for Hieros Gamos which unites the male-female consciousness units, and requires the alien bi-wave systems fail to run on the earth grids in the future Timelines. The NRG system keeps electron distortions feeding the Patriarchal Domination archetypes that are superimposed upon the males and females given power and influence over others, in the socially accepted roles of identity. This results in a bevy of highly destructive mental belief systems and emotional body schisms that split the male and female principle apart from each other, referred to as Gender Splitting. The strategies of splitting the pair bonds is outlined in the Archontic Deception Behavior.
These schisms promote the Predator Mind and anti-human thinking, which is highly dysfunctional to the point it generates genetic damage in the lightbody, especially in the 2nd Chakra and 4th Chakra layer functioning where there is the 2D/4D Split. These archetypes were once creational myths that the souls could play out in the polarity game on earth, but the archetypes were synthesized into AI mind control machinery in order to become a massive source of energy food to be harvested for the controllers, especially with the use of the Victim-Victimizer software. As these archetypes became AI controlled, they were used to gain access to the human energy fields, and control people with Mind Control software, thus the person regressed into aggressive anti-human, robotic and disconnected behavior, losing all feelings of Empathy and spiritual connection. Spiritually abusive behaviors that disconnect people from their Soul Matrix are known as Archontic Deception Behaviors.
Sexual Misery
The name of the game for the NRG is propagating and feeding highly destructive addictions and deviant sexual attitudes and behavior within the global human population. This is a part of propagating the Sexual Misery program along with the Victim-Victimizer. Its first priority is designed to relegate all sexual activity laced with guilt and shame into the lowest forms of human expression and perversion possible. Depending on accepted cultural attitudes it will use the perceptive level of access to serve the current societal paradigm into distortion. (In Muslim countries it can be the legal killing of raped women by being left in the desert to die by their own husband, or the selling of little girls to prostitution in Thailand, Catholic priest pedophilia in the Vatican, Sadistic or masochistic fetishes in Germany. These harvested energies all feed back into the same NRG matrix.)
This NRG matrix starts out looking on the surface like its “harmless” based on open sexual attitudes (What are you, a prude? Are you jealous and possessive? Don’t you know that polyamory is what we were designed for?) It’s designed to suck you into Addiction Webbing and nonstop base instinct desire of the second chakra, so all that is craved is “plugging into” the next “outlet” or in its deeper levels - getting relief from addictive anxiety. The promiscuity design is to crash your human genetic code so you lose your “real” sense of divine human connection, which is the deep desire to be truly intimately connected and experienced as the divinity within. Unity Field intelligence (God force) is created between the male and female principle at highly developed consciousness frequency such as within the union between equals in Spiritual Marriage in No Time or Hieros Gamos. (This is what it is like on advanced planets. This is when unconditional love is shared in a safe emotional haven and the full transparency of trust to create divine union is made possible.) Most of us engaged in the sexual act forget that the human design to Ascend into God Source is a part of the union of equals existing in perfect love. We need to remember this again in order to heal ourselves and return true unity in spiritual marriage to the planet.
In order to separate humans from divine union, the NRG grid promotes disconnection through all means sexual, such as internet porn, the sexualization of inanimate objects and the belief the grass is always greener with another sexual partner. Once a person becomes addicted to the bait of this rapidly descending pathway, the architecture of this control system hooks into all of your lower centers to capture your vital force. When something vampirizes your vital force (sexual chakra) all you instinctively want is to get it back, so you seek the next “seduction” to vampirize someone or something else. Never succeeding in feeling satiated, you become addicted to all things external. The mind becomes fixated on latching into another outlet, sex, food, drugs, clothes, or any object or person. This is the definition of Mind Controllled Addiction. In its advanced stages the fixation becomes obsessive compulsive in order to relieve the discontent to the level of anxiety experienced, courtesy of the NRG grid.
Princess Code
As an example, the Asian grids are feeding “Princess Code” female principle distortions as well as “sexual robot” fantasies. Hello kitty products (princess code) and Anime cartoons (sexual robot) had extensive architecture powering into the NRG as a battery source. This means huge Asian populations are feeding distortions to power this NRG in the same way the reptilians are using, this does not mean these items in itself are “negative”. It means these items are being exploited into some massive deviation that is far from balanced and healthy to the human being who is unaware they are being negatively manipulated through these systems.
See also: https://ascensionglossary.com/index.php/Wormwood/Stonehenge
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Meet Four Craft Chocolate Makers Decolonizing the Industry
Jill Fannon/Eater
Chocolate makers Jinji Fraser, Karla McNeil-Rueda, Damaris Ronkanen, and Daniel Maloney on how ancestry informs what they do, and how to eradicate cultural erasure in the industry
Over a perfect omelet brimming with spring ramps and morels, I found myself stunned mid-chew as I listened to the words of my father. Moments earlier, I learned from him that my grandfather’s final bit of travel before he died was to Guyana, where our ancestors had lived, and where he had arranged to meet with a distant family member. Between bites, my dad continued, “there’s a Fraser family land trust outside of Georgetown...”
As a student of geography, I knew the region he’d begun to describe to be a major coastal export hub of Guyanese hinterland treasures, like gold, diamonds, and rice. As a chocolate maker, I knew Georgetown to be just west of cacao-rich rainforest. And right there, as I absently mopped up omelet sweat with a hunk of crusty bread, I felt the dissolution of the intimidation I had often felt while making chocolate in a male, white-dominant landscape. Our family land signified an ancestral connection to the greater sacred cacao story, which I suddenly found myself belonging to, creating a new grounding in my career. No longer was my work a radical dissent from the mainstream. It was now an homage to all who had come before me, passed down from generations ago through my DNA, and into my hands.
Even as my own story continues to unfold — through family lineage research and eventual travel to Guyana to see what has come of our land — I became fascinated with the ethnic diversity of the craft chocolate industry. I began to wonder about the ancestral rites of passage by BIPOCs (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) whose inclusion and celebration as chocolate makers has been marginalized in the media while the contributions of white men are normalized and bolstered. The narrow lens through which craft chocolate is seen is not only to the detriment of Indigenous chocolate makers globally, but also robs consumers of the chacne to experience the multitude of ways chocolate is produced. Healing the short-sightedness of our already fragile industry works toward universal fair-trade practices, equitable treatment of women farmers and producers, and the celebration of the work of BIPOC makers worldwide.
I spoke with Karla McNeil-Rueda (Cru Chocolate), who focuses on drinking chocolate, drawing from her own family experience while bringing attention to the undeniable influence of Mesoamerican heritage on the chocolate industry. Damaris Ronkanen (Cultura Craft Chocolate) also brought family nostalgia to our discussion, grounding herself solidly in community activism by educating the youth in chocolate making. Finally, I talked with Daniel Maloney (Sol Cacao), whose Trinidadian roots inspire him to continue his family lineage in cacao, as well as encourage an industrywide commitment to fair-trade practices. Altogether, we investigate how ancestry informs what they do and how they do it, as well as how we might eradicate cultural erasure in chocolate making, creating visibility and opportunity for more diversity.
The following interviews have been edited for clarity and length.
Karla McNeil-Rueda
Co-Founder, Cru Chocolate, Sacramento, California
Eater: Did you find chocolate, or did chocolate find you?
Karla McNeil-Rueda: A bit of both. Chocolate, and cacao to be more specific, has always been here; it’s part of who we are, like corn, like a family member — it’s part of our DNA. Growing up in Honduras, we had many cacao- and chocolate-based drinks in different seasons with as many names as there were flavors, so this is a big part of our diet.
Keba Konte, courtesy McNeil-Rueda
Karla McNeil-Rueda
In the U.S., the chocolate-making space is dominated by white men. How do you find your own way?
Yes, it is true that what most people understand as chocolate making in the U.S. is represented mostly by white men, but we have no interest in fitting into that category. What they call chocolate is different to us; chocolate is our heritage and part of what we are. It is health, pleasure, an everyday ritual, a state of mind and a way of being. So we will never find our way in the chocolate industry; we must remain true to our own way. Chocolate in the U.S. and Europe needs the romance and the exotic appeal of a faraway land. For us, those lands are our homes, and that makes a big difference in our approach.
We also choose to only work with people who think differently, and [who] value the contribution of small and local businesses. These are people who also want to work with us, and don’t need to receive a container full of cacao in order to feel fulfilled — just how I don’t need to have a mega factory in order to find value in my work. It takes more time, more phone calls, more resources, more fun, more humanity, more everything — but that is what I love, that is the joy of freedom.
How does your ancestry inform what you do and the way you do it?
For me, ancestry is made up of the seeds and foods that fed those before us, including the agreements they made and work that they did in keeping each other alive through thousands and thousands of years.
So as we cook, our kitchens can become temples and our pantries can transform into altars, which opens our space for the feelings, emotions, memories and questions that arise. That is why I like to cook with music. It helps me have a sensibility,
This is how I feel my ancestry speaks, through food and especially through cacao. I notice how my thoughts change as the roasting or the grinding changes. We can better accompany our foods by listening as they go through these changes, because in the same way, they have accompanied us as we experience change in our daily lives.
How do we reconcile being chocolate makers when the industry is still entrenched in colonialism?
I think that the industry as a whole is dominated by many people, many colors, and many genders across the supply chain. There are many white women replicating colonial systems here in the U.S., and there are also many brown men enforcing this system at the farm level. The lack of fairness and equal opportunity in the chocolate industry has its roots in extraction, and that thrives in separation and in the erasing of others.
Import and export of crops are entrenched in colonialism, but cacao is an ancient native food, so you can also find many people still growing and making chocolate who are originally from the land in which cacao grows.
Colonialism is real, but so are the Indigenous people of these places. They are alive and thriving even with an imposed system, because they belong there. Colonialism is strong, but I believe our ancestral ways are stronger. We must have faith in the survival of these Indigenous groups; we must look for them, we must awaken a sincere desire for them to thrive.
It requires work, time, relationships, knowing each other’s culture, knowing each other’s languages, and courtship. That’s why colonialism is so appealing to many: You don’t have to know anything in order to participate and make money. A big lie of colonialism is the belief that there are no buying options; there’s only one way, the original people are gone, and what’s left is the colony. This is not true.
How do we create more diversity in the chocolate-making world?
First we must acknowledge the chocolate-making world is very diverse. In any city where you find immigrants from Mesoamerica, I guarantee you they are making chocolate.
That said, why is it easy for people to recognize a white man who had never seen a cacao tree before becoming a chocolate maker? And what makes it so hard to see a woman from Mesoamerica who has been making chocolate for generations as a chocolate maker? Why do people celebrate one and condemn the other?
I think when people rethink chocolate ... things will change. As long as people only chase the industrial candy bar, the craft chocolate bar, or the sugar- and cream-filled bon-bons, chocolate as a way of living among BIPOC will remain invisible. Misrepresenting chocolate creates social, environmental, and cultural problems, which at their core create disease and poverty for farmers and consumers.
Daniel Maloney
Co-Founder, Sol Cacao, the Bronx, New York
Courtesy Sol Cacao
Sol Cacao co-founders and brothers Dominic, Nicholas, and Daniel Maloney
Eater: Did you find chocolate, or did chocolate find you?
Daniel Maloney: At Sol Cacao, we believe chocolate found us. Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, one of our most memorable moments was our grandmother carrying a basket of vegetables in both hands and a bowl of herbs balancing on her head. She would do this ritual everyday, even after turning 99. She would show my brothers and I all the vegetables she would pick, and their nutritional benefits. These early memories would leave a major impression and seed our interest in food security and sustainable and renewable agriculture. Before my brothers and I enrolled in college, our father began telling stories of our grandparents and how they practiced farming for over 35 years. Their favorite crops were sugarcane and the cacao tree. After learning these stories, we saw it in ourselves that we are capable of being cocoa farmers or chocolate makers.
How do you stay grounded in your craft, and navigate the persistent colonialism in the chocolate industry?
When we launched Sol Cacao, there were few people of color in the industry, so we had no choice but to jump into it and learn the process. We would dream about someday being on a cacao farm and picking the beans to make chocolate, a dream our grandparents were never able to fully realize for themselves. For these reasons we viewed chocolate making as a culture and family legacy, which gave us inspiration to pave our own way in the chocolate industry.
As a chocolate maker in the 21st century, we carry the responsibility to correct some of the historical injustices which have taken place in the cacao industry. One way chocolate makers are doing this is through traceability and transparency in their chocolate-making process. It starts with where and how the cacao beans are grown and harvested by sourcing organic or fair-trade cacao. Through purchasing fair-trade cacao, we ensure the cacao farmers get the correct compensation to have a livable wage to make change back in their local communities, to global effect.
Damaris Ronkanen
Founder, Cultura Craft Chocolate, Denver, Colorado
Eater: What family memories have informed your perception of chocolate?
Damaris Ronkanen: My abuelita would always have fresh tortillas and atole in the morning. She would get up early and take her nixtamal [cooked corn] to the molino, where they would grind the corn into fresh masa. When she came back she would make tortillas by hand and use a little bit of the masa to make a fresh batch of atole. Whenever I was there she always made sure to make champurrado (a chocolate atole) since she knew it was my favorite. She would toast cacao beans on her comal and grind them by hand using her metate. She would then blend the chocolate into the steaming hot atole and use her molinillo to whisk it until it was super frothy. The process was mesmerizing.
Juan Fuentes, courtesy Ronkanen
Damaris Ronkanen
Unfortunately, I could never replicate this to be quite the same when I was back in the U.S. There weren’t molinos to grind your corn, and people didn’t make their own nixtamal, and there definitely weren’t cacao beans freshly toasted and ground by hand.
How has your business model evolved since its inception?
When we started out making chocolate, the big guys of the chocolate-making industry defined what craft chocolate was, so we felt the pressure to make bars in order to succeed. Still, I was pulled by my Mexican roots, and the memories of market visits and fresh champurrado with my grandmother.
There was a huge difference between my grandmother’s texture and European texture. When we officially started Cultura, I wanted to get back to my heritage, so we introduced drinking chocolate. I knew in order to honor my grandmother, and to move my business forward, I would need to define what I was doing on my own terms and decide what impact my business could have on my community. As successful as the bars were at the wholesale level, they weren’t speaking to my soul.
What is your approach in how you communicate about chocolate in your work?
After experiencing such a pivotal moment in 2018, opening Cultura, connecting with my roots helped define not only what I wanted to create, but how I talk about chocolate too. Our local community in Westwood is composed largely of Mexican immigrants, and we made it part of our mission to create a non-intimidating space where families could feel at home with familiar flavors. They might not immediately connect with the single-origin bars we offer, but they definitely get excited about the drinking chocolate, which opens a door to educate about origin, terroir, and processing.
Even in the way we designed our logo, and chose a mural for the outside of our building, people in the community feel welcome. It becomes a true form of empowerment for our community when they take part in hands-on classes, teaching everything from where the cacao originates to making beverages to explaining what the molinillos they may have seen around their grandparents’ houses are actually used for.
How have you been able to find success while avoiding the elitist mentality around chocolate making?
We focus on culturally relevant chocolates. I’ve learned to not try and emulate the style of chocolates other companies were making, but instead to make chocolate that our community appreciates, and that highlights my heritage. Without having real experience, these other companies construct their narratives around their sourcing, creating a false reality of how much impact they really have on the groups of people they feature on their social media feeds. These stories are used for marketing and to drive up pricing. There’s a certain elitism in craft-chocolate making that fetishizes authenticity through communication and packaging in order to make their product accessible for white people.
We don’t have the influence and reach of these other companies, but that isn’t the goal either. It has taken a lot of effort for people to understand why we do things the way we do, but I’ve always known there was so much more my business is capable of in terms of making chocolate accessible and engaging our community.
How can we leave the door open to create more diversity in the chocolate making world?
The question we’ve always asked of ourselves is: What impact can our company have? A conversation I would like to see happen is of the limited entrepreneurial spirit and access in America. In Mexico, the opportunity is available to everyone to continue family traditions in business. Here, there is a lot of intimidation and difficulty in making your own path. So in order to positively influence this issue, we exclusively hire women from within the community. We offer classes to youth who otherwise don’t have access to craft chocolate — this is their space too. We are bilingual, so there aren’t any language barriers to learning or curiosity.
Jill Fannon/Eater
Jinji Fraser
Jill Fannon/Eater
The lingering question is: What actionable steps might we take to inspire a new generation of BIPOC chocolate makers, and how can they feel justified in exploring the craft of chocolate making in their own ways without intimidation or judgment?
“BIPOC makers need to organize and create their own BIPOC chocolate makers association, in which we spend time and resources educating, supporting, and uplifting each other, and where many ways of expressing chocolate can coexist,” McNeil-Rueda says. As for me, my earliest experience in chocolate making was at the International Chocolate Show in Paris in 2012. I learned then, and have known through my career, that an impeccable bar is one whose texture is smooth and melt is indiscernible from one’s own body temperature. Perfection and accolades are both sought through thousands of dollars of stainless-steel equipment and, importantly, an agreement and an eidetic memory of European technique.
My most recent experience of chocolate making in Guatemala was categorically different, and wildly more satiating: Indigenous women slow-roasting beans over an open flame, then hulling them using friction and the wind, before using a molcajete to grind the beans into a paste heavy with grit and fragments of all the cacao ever to pass that stone bowl, ready for drinking. In that moment of awed observation, I felt that this technique and experience should be allowed to live in those Highlands, and with their descendants; respected without appropriation, lauded with curiosity and intrigue. I knew it was upon me to discover what methods and practices are innate to me, and then to educate my community on a broader vision of good chocolate.
As it relates to chocolate, one should be able to choose their pleasure. However, this is not a journey that can be void of education. There must be support for the idea that chocolate takes on many different forms, and freedom for each form to exist means respect for all who make it. “Positions of leadership in craft chocolate companies should be held by Black and brown people in order to heal the whitewashing of our cultural roots,” says Ronkanen. Indeed, that would be a collective effort to decolonize chocolate and acknowledge the ancestral pathways critical to making the industry whole.
Jinji Fraser is a Baltimore-based writer and chocolate-maker at Pure Chocolate by Jinji.
from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3kgZVpA https://ift.tt/3m5Q9qO
Jill Fannon/Eater
Chocolate makers Jinji Fraser, Karla McNeil-Rueda, Damaris Ronkanen, and Daniel Maloney on how ancestry informs what they do, and how to eradicate cultural erasure in the industry
Over a perfect omelet brimming with spring ramps and morels, I found myself stunned mid-chew as I listened to the words of my father. Moments earlier, I learned from him that my grandfather’s final bit of travel before he died was to Guyana, where our ancestors had lived, and where he had arranged to meet with a distant family member. Between bites, my dad continued, “there’s a Fraser family land trust outside of Georgetown...”
As a student of geography, I knew the region he’d begun to describe to be a major coastal export hub of Guyanese hinterland treasures, like gold, diamonds, and rice. As a chocolate maker, I knew Georgetown to be just west of cacao-rich rainforest. And right there, as I absently mopped up omelet sweat with a hunk of crusty bread, I felt the dissolution of the intimidation I had often felt while making chocolate in a male, white-dominant landscape. Our family land signified an ancestral connection to the greater sacred cacao story, which I suddenly found myself belonging to, creating a new grounding in my career. No longer was my work a radical dissent from the mainstream. It was now an homage to all who had come before me, passed down from generations ago through my DNA, and into my hands.
Even as my own story continues to unfold — through family lineage research and eventual travel to Guyana to see what has come of our land — I became fascinated with the ethnic diversity of the craft chocolate industry. I began to wonder about the ancestral rites of passage by BIPOCs (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) whose inclusion and celebration as chocolate makers has been marginalized in the media while the contributions of white men are normalized and bolstered. The narrow lens through which craft chocolate is seen is not only to the detriment of Indigenous chocolate makers globally, but also robs consumers of the chacne to experience the multitude of ways chocolate is produced. Healing the short-sightedness of our already fragile industry works toward universal fair-trade practices, equitable treatment of women farmers and producers, and the celebration of the work of BIPOC makers worldwide.
I spoke with Karla McNeil-Rueda (Cru Chocolate), who focuses on drinking chocolate, drawing from her own family experience while bringing attention to the undeniable influence of Mesoamerican heritage on the chocolate industry. Damaris Ronkanen (Cultura Craft Chocolate) also brought family nostalgia to our discussion, grounding herself solidly in community activism by educating the youth in chocolate making. Finally, I talked with Daniel Maloney (Sol Cacao), whose Trinidadian roots inspire him to continue his family lineage in cacao, as well as encourage an industrywide commitment to fair-trade practices. Altogether, we investigate how ancestry informs what they do and how they do it, as well as how we might eradicate cultural erasure in chocolate making, creating visibility and opportunity for more diversity.
The following interviews have been edited for clarity and length.
Karla McNeil-Rueda
Co-Founder, Cru Chocolate, Sacramento, California
Eater: Did you find chocolate, or did chocolate find you?
Karla McNeil-Rueda: A bit of both. Chocolate, and cacao to be more specific, has always been here; it’s part of who we are, like corn, like a family member — it’s part of our DNA. Growing up in Honduras, we had many cacao- and chocolate-based drinks in different seasons with as many names as there were flavors, so this is a big part of our diet.
Keba Konte, courtesy McNeil-Rueda
Karla McNeil-Rueda
In the U.S., the chocolate-making space is dominated by white men. How do you find your own way?
Yes, it is true that what most people understand as chocolate making in the U.S. is represented mostly by white men, but we have no interest in fitting into that category. What they call chocolate is different to us; chocolate is our heritage and part of what we are. It is health, pleasure, an everyday ritual, a state of mind and a way of being. So we will never find our way in the chocolate industry; we must remain true to our own way. Chocolate in the U.S. and Europe needs the romance and the exotic appeal of a faraway land. For us, those lands are our homes, and that makes a big difference in our approach.
We also choose to only work with people who think differently, and [who] value the contribution of small and local businesses. These are people who also want to work with us, and don’t need to receive a container full of cacao in order to feel fulfilled — just how I don’t need to have a mega factory in order to find value in my work. It takes more time, more phone calls, more resources, more fun, more humanity, more everything — but that is what I love, that is the joy of freedom.
How does your ancestry inform what you do and the way you do it?
For me, ancestry is made up of the seeds and foods that fed those before us, including the agreements they made and work that they did in keeping each other alive through thousands and thousands of years.
So as we cook, our kitchens can become temples and our pantries can transform into altars, which opens our space for the feelings, emotions, memories and questions that arise. That is why I like to cook with music. It helps me have a sensibility,
This is how I feel my ancestry speaks, through food and especially through cacao. I notice how my thoughts change as the roasting or the grinding changes. We can better accompany our foods by listening as they go through these changes, because in the same way, they have accompanied us as we experience change in our daily lives.
How do we reconcile being chocolate makers when the industry is still entrenched in colonialism?
I think that the industry as a whole is dominated by many people, many colors, and many genders across the supply chain. There are many white women replicating colonial systems here in the U.S., and there are also many brown men enforcing this system at the farm level. The lack of fairness and equal opportunity in the chocolate industry has its roots in extraction, and that thrives in separation and in the erasing of others.
Import and export of crops are entrenched in colonialism, but cacao is an ancient native food, so you can also find many people still growing and making chocolate who are originally from the land in which cacao grows.
Colonialism is real, but so are the Indigenous people of these places. They are alive and thriving even with an imposed system, because they belong there. Colonialism is strong, but I believe our ancestral ways are stronger. We must have faith in the survival of these Indigenous groups; we must look for them, we must awaken a sincere desire for them to thrive.
It requires work, time, relationships, knowing each other’s culture, knowing each other’s languages, and courtship. That’s why colonialism is so appealing to many: You don’t have to know anything in order to participate and make money. A big lie of colonialism is the belief that there are no buying options; there’s only one way, the original people are gone, and what’s left is the colony. This is not true.
How do we create more diversity in the chocolate-making world?
First we must acknowledge the chocolate-making world is very diverse. In any city where you find immigrants from Mesoamerica, I guarantee you they are making chocolate.
That said, why is it easy for people to recognize a white man who had never seen a cacao tree before becoming a chocolate maker? And what makes it so hard to see a woman from Mesoamerica who has been making chocolate for generations as a chocolate maker? Why do people celebrate one and condemn the other?
I think when people rethink chocolate ... things will change. As long as people only chase the industrial candy bar, the craft chocolate bar, or the sugar- and cream-filled bon-bons, chocolate as a way of living among BIPOC will remain invisible. Misrepresenting chocolate creates social, environmental, and cultural problems, which at their core create disease and poverty for farmers and consumers.
Daniel Maloney
Co-Founder, Sol Cacao, the Bronx, New York
Courtesy Sol Cacao
Sol Cacao co-founders and brothers Dominic, Nicholas, and Daniel Maloney
Eater: Did you find chocolate, or did chocolate find you?
Daniel Maloney: At Sol Cacao, we believe chocolate found us. Growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, one of our most memorable moments was our grandmother carrying a basket of vegetables in both hands and a bowl of herbs balancing on her head. She would do this ritual everyday, even after turning 99. She would show my brothers and I all the vegetables she would pick, and their nutritional benefits. These early memories would leave a major impression and seed our interest in food security and sustainable and renewable agriculture. Before my brothers and I enrolled in college, our father began telling stories of our grandparents and how they practiced farming for over 35 years. Their favorite crops were sugarcane and the cacao tree. After learning these stories, we saw it in ourselves that we are capable of being cocoa farmers or chocolate makers.
How do you stay grounded in your craft, and navigate the persistent colonialism in the chocolate industry?
When we launched Sol Cacao, there were few people of color in the industry, so we had no choice but to jump into it and learn the process. We would dream about someday being on a cacao farm and picking the beans to make chocolate, a dream our grandparents were never able to fully realize for themselves. For these reasons we viewed chocolate making as a culture and family legacy, which gave us inspiration to pave our own way in the chocolate industry.
As a chocolate maker in the 21st century, we carry the responsibility to correct some of the historical injustices which have taken place in the cacao industry. One way chocolate makers are doing this is through traceability and transparency in their chocolate-making process. It starts with where and how the cacao beans are grown and harvested by sourcing organic or fair-trade cacao. Through purchasing fair-trade cacao, we ensure the cacao farmers get the correct compensation to have a livable wage to make change back in their local communities, to global effect.
Damaris Ronkanen
Founder, Cultura Craft Chocolate, Denver, Colorado
Eater: What family memories have informed your perception of chocolate?
Damaris Ronkanen: My abuelita would always have fresh tortillas and atole in the morning. She would get up early and take her nixtamal [cooked corn] to the molino, where they would grind the corn into fresh masa. When she came back she would make tortillas by hand and use a little bit of the masa to make a fresh batch of atole. Whenever I was there she always made sure to make champurrado (a chocolate atole) since she knew it was my favorite. She would toast cacao beans on her comal and grind them by hand using her metate. She would then blend the chocolate into the steaming hot atole and use her molinillo to whisk it until it was super frothy. The process was mesmerizing.
Juan Fuentes, courtesy Ronkanen
Damaris Ronkanen
Unfortunately, I could never replicate this to be quite the same when I was back in the U.S. There weren’t molinos to grind your corn, and people didn’t make their own nixtamal, and there definitely weren’t cacao beans freshly toasted and ground by hand.
How has your business model evolved since its inception?
When we started out making chocolate, the big guys of the chocolate-making industry defined what craft chocolate was, so we felt the pressure to make bars in order to succeed. Still, I was pulled by my Mexican roots, and the memories of market visits and fresh champurrado with my grandmother.
There was a huge difference between my grandmother’s texture and European texture. When we officially started Cultura, I wanted to get back to my heritage, so we introduced drinking chocolate. I knew in order to honor my grandmother, and to move my business forward, I would need to define what I was doing on my own terms and decide what impact my business could have on my community. As successful as the bars were at the wholesale level, they weren’t speaking to my soul.
What is your approach in how you communicate about chocolate in your work?
After experiencing such a pivotal moment in 2018, opening Cultura, connecting with my roots helped define not only what I wanted to create, but how I talk about chocolate too. Our local community in Westwood is composed largely of Mexican immigrants, and we made it part of our mission to create a non-intimidating space where families could feel at home with familiar flavors. They might not immediately connect with the single-origin bars we offer, but they definitely get excited about the drinking chocolate, which opens a door to educate about origin, terroir, and processing.
Even in the way we designed our logo, and chose a mural for the outside of our building, people in the community feel welcome. It becomes a true form of empowerment for our community when they take part in hands-on classes, teaching everything from where the cacao originates to making beverages to explaining what the molinillos they may have seen around their grandparents’ houses are actually used for.
How have you been able to find success while avoiding the elitist mentality around chocolate making?
We focus on culturally relevant chocolates. I’ve learned to not try and emulate the style of chocolates other companies were making, but instead to make chocolate that our community appreciates, and that highlights my heritage. Without having real experience, these other companies construct their narratives around their sourcing, creating a false reality of how much impact they really have on the groups of people they feature on their social media feeds. These stories are used for marketing and to drive up pricing. There’s a certain elitism in craft-chocolate making that fetishizes authenticity through communication and packaging in order to make their product accessible for white people.
We don’t have the influence and reach of these other companies, but that isn’t the goal either. It has taken a lot of effort for people to understand why we do things the way we do, but I’ve always known there was so much more my business is capable of in terms of making chocolate accessible and engaging our community.
How can we leave the door open to create more diversity in the chocolate making world?
The question we’ve always asked of ourselves is: What impact can our company have? A conversation I would like to see happen is of the limited entrepreneurial spirit and access in America. In Mexico, the opportunity is available to everyone to continue family traditions in business. Here, there is a lot of intimidation and difficulty in making your own path. So in order to positively influence this issue, we exclusively hire women from within the community. We offer classes to youth who otherwise don’t have access to craft chocolate — this is their space too. We are bilingual, so there aren’t any language barriers to learning or curiosity.
Jill Fannon/Eater
Jinji Fraser
Jill Fannon/Eater
The lingering question is: What actionable steps might we take to inspire a new generation of BIPOC chocolate makers, and how can they feel justified in exploring the craft of chocolate making in their own ways without intimidation or judgment?
“BIPOC makers need to organize and create their own BIPOC chocolate makers association, in which we spend time and resources educating, supporting, and uplifting each other, and where many ways of expressing chocolate can coexist,” McNeil-Rueda says. As for me, my earliest experience in chocolate making was at the International Chocolate Show in Paris in 2012. I learned then, and have known through my career, that an impeccable bar is one whose texture is smooth and melt is indiscernible from one’s own body temperature. Perfection and accolades are both sought through thousands of dollars of stainless-steel equipment and, importantly, an agreement and an eidetic memory of European technique.
My most recent experience of chocolate making in Guatemala was categorically different, and wildly more satiating: Indigenous women slow-roasting beans over an open flame, then hulling them using friction and the wind, before using a molcajete to grind the beans into a paste heavy with grit and fragments of all the cacao ever to pass that stone bowl, ready for drinking. In that moment of awed observation, I felt that this technique and experience should be allowed to live in those Highlands, and with their descendants; respected without appropriation, lauded with curiosity and intrigue. I knew it was upon me to discover what methods and practices are innate to me, and then to educate my community on a broader vision of good chocolate.
As it relates to chocolate, one should be able to choose their pleasure. However, this is not a journey that can be void of education. There must be support for the idea that chocolate takes on many different forms, and freedom for each form to exist means respect for all who make it. “Positions of leadership in craft chocolate companies should be held by Black and brown people in order to heal the whitewashing of our cultural roots,” says Ronkanen. Indeed, that would be a collective effort to decolonize chocolate and acknowledge the ancestral pathways critical to making the industry whole.
Jinji Fraser is a Baltimore-based writer and chocolate-maker at Pure Chocolate by Jinji.
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Calls to Action for Safeguarding Seven Generations in Times of Food, Social, and Ecological Crises– Reporting on the Outcomes of the 2023 UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum (UNPFII Side Event).
Indigenous Youth leaders of the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus with Indigenous Youth leaders who attended the second session of the biennial UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum will report on the outcomes and calls to action deliberated at the Forum.
186 Indigenous Youth from the seven socio-cultural regions, 54 countries, and more than 100 Indigenous Peoples – gathered for a week at the FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy in October 2023 for the first in-person gathering of the UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum. From a week of discussions with Indigenous Youth, Indigenous Chefs, Member State Countries, UN agencies, foundations, NGOs, universities, and research centers they distilled clear calls to action, and recommendations as it relates to the future of Indigenous Peoples' food and knowledge systems in the context of the intersection of food, social, and ecological crises that humanity is facing. The Coalition on Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems, the Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems, and the Youth Hub of the Mountain Partnerships participated in UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum and will share their commitments to partner and advance the work with Indigenous Youth globally. Indigenous Youth are taking action in their communities, and they are ready for organizations, Member States and UN Agencies to listen and support their advancements.
Watch the Calls to Action for Safeguarding Seven Generations in Times of Food, Social, and Ecological Crises – Reporting on the Outcomes of the 2023 UN Global Indigenous Youth Forum (UNPFII Side Event)
#Indigenous Youth#leaderships#Global Indigenous Youth Caucus#Indigenous Youth leaders#biennial#Global Indigenous Youth Forum#outcomes#call to action .#social issues#food crisis#economic crisis#ecological crisis#panel discussion#food & knowledge
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New Zealand- Enjoy While You Are Alive
TRIP TO NEW ZEALAND FOR TRAVEL LOVER
Auckland: Sailors Heaven
On the North Island of New Zealand, you'll find Auckland, a large city place around stunning inlets and bays. Unsurprisingly, most of these Auckland's most celebrated activities are to do together with drinking water. Included in these are supper cruises in the refuge and also swimming with dolphins.
Shipping: how to do around and there:
Newzealand's main worldwide airport is situated in Auckland. Flights additionally operate domestically from the South Island into Auckland.
Auckland town covers an extensive area, therefore, it is wise to circumvent making use of a bicycle or taxi. To reach different attractions and towns, you will find bus and rail providers.
Climate
Owing to its location from the southern hemisphere, summer in New Zealand is from November to April. In summertime temperatures are approximately 20 C and also sunlight is fairly light since it doesn't ordinarily suspend.
Lodging: Luxurious budget remains
The net provides some of the best information around the price tag, scope, and site of all accommodations in Auckland.
Sights & Occasions
There are functions held annually in Auckland, even though the city comes to life in the summertime.
Decision Sports lovers can appreciate January together with the Open Tennis Championships as well as also the Captain Hobson Salon Day Regatta.
Conclusion In March, Western Springs holds the Pasifika Festival with Polynesian performances and music.
Auckland Botanical Gardens have a show in November called the Ellerslie Flower Show.
Wellington: Exquisite town of viewpoints Home towards the main federal government properties, Wellington also has a bustling restaurant and amusement culture.
Transport: the best way to do there and around:
Domestic flights from Auckland and Christchurch, as well as some other destinations, connect with Wellington airport. A ferry additionally makes it possible to reach the south island city of Picton.
A big bus route runs from Auckland to Wellington. For around in and around the city there are regional train and bus services, in addition to taxies.
Weather Conditions
Located on the coast, Wellington could suffer from windy weather.
Accommodation: Luxurious funding stays
The web provides some of the greatest advice about the price tag, range, and site of lodges in Wellington.
Attractions & Activities
Numerous cultural and sporting events happen while in the capital city, listed below are just a few.
Throughout January, the town hosts Wellington Cup Week together with style, live songs not to mention horse racing.
The Jazz festival and Fashion Festival are equally throughout October.
Christchurch: Have pleasure with character
Of Christchurch, it is possible to get character and have pleasure in New Zealand's lakes, lakes, mountains, and beaches. Getting the largest city in the Southern Island, you will find always attractions for people like the Antarctic Centre, wildlife showcases, gondola excursions and more.
Transport: how to do there and around:
The international airport in this South Island is currently in Christchurch, connecting with Australia and several different locations. Air New Zealand serves other domestic places. Navigating around is simple using the town's cost-effective bus support and also a reliable railroad system.
Lodging: Luxury to funding remains
The web provides the optimal/optimally advice around the cost, scope and site of lodges in Christchurch.
Attractions & Functions:
A global festival of flowers is held in Christchurch throughout the month os February.
Fine audio, food, and wine may be appreciated throughout Augusts International Jazz Festival
Even though occasionally times from the shadow of its inner neighbor, NewZealand is worlds besides some other adventure seen everywhere plus it's geographically significantly further inland than many men and women visualize. Newzealand is really a former British colony, even using fascinating ethnic influences as a result of its spot in southern Polynesia. Massive swaths of black meadows, screaming geysers, creaking glaciers, and also endless stretches of enchanting beaches invite visitors to create the long drag across seas to gratify at the disarming normal magnificence of NewZealand year annually.
Newzealand was among the very last landmasses to become occupied, just found out in 800 advertisements by Egyptian navigator Kupe. The discovery initiated a regular flow of migration out of French Polynesia before Dutch Abel Tasman last but not least James prepare came round the temples and maintained them to get its British Crown, dominated by Australia. The indigenous Maya men and women continue to be a significant minority, so accentuating the cultural weather of this predominantly European (Pakeha) state.
Cinematic Sanctuaries and also Bungy* leaping Buffs
NewZealand's tradition is broken up to 2 leading metropolitan islands. Based on the place you traveling and some time of the year, those things to do and topography will vary radically. The South Island is known because of its one of a kind relics of this past Ice Age, '' the Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers, that dive just under the Hawaiian island's tallest summit within the Southern Alps, Mount prepare. All these glaciers are especially striking since they keep to stream by means of temperate volcano strikingly near Sealevel. Cold temperatures from the Alps location is good for ski, mountaineering, and film-making -- scenes in The Chronicles of Narnia had been filmed right here. To get an exciting wildlife adventure, don't overlook out the South Island's Otago Peninsula at which you may delight in a comfy breakfast and bed one of the sea turtles, sea turtles, and penguin lands, to list a couple.
The North Island is warmer throughout summertime and warmer all calendar year. Put your self on border' using a day at calm Lake Taupo,'' which likewise appears to meet without the caldera of a few among the biggest super-volcanoes on earth. Extreme outside sports tack on both the islands, as NewZealand could be your initial inventor of Bungy Jumping (additionally bought at Lake Taupo) one of other visually dangerous pursuits. The west coasts are acutely popular for blackwater rafting or else called cave rafting. This thrilling encounter shouldn't be missed by the newcomer. When a fresh hub speed is perhaps not everything it is you're interested in finding, create your holiday approach to Ninety Mile beachfront in the exact north of this island; even the title isn't deceiving along with the adventure will be complete paradise at the summertime. The good Barrier Island into the east is really a mind-blowing submerged underwater adventure for the majority of scuba divers and also an equally magnificent escape for its sand-bound.
Newzealand can be a vacation destination for many reasons, together with activities exposing the components along with cities that are progressive to maintain yourself updated with people of more quickly tempo. Newzealand may possibly be a long ways from many places from the planet, nonetheless, it's undoubtedly worthwhile almost any amount of traveling to relish the benefits with the country's presence. Go to New Zealand and practical experience on your own.
SOUTH ISLAND NEW ZEALAND
Exhilaration is not far apart from the South Island. Quickly flowing rivers run throughout the rugged ravines, subsequently growl throughout deserts stripped from the Southern Alps. Exotic lakes deliver boundless diversions, along with also the assorted substances which sweep over the eastern and western coasts take food along with a wide range of striking marine daily life.
Up while from the north gold sand and also innumerable un-touched coves bring a stable field of sea kayakers and canoeists into Abel Tasman National Park.
Only across the corner, the profoundly incised slopes of the Marlborough appears to draw boaties along with fisher-folk into it really is fiords and inlets.
The combination of cold and hot currents and also the diving continental shelf attract bees, minke, humpback, and southern right whales into over a couple of areas of this Kaikoura shore, together side orcas, dolphins, and other creatures.
One of their absolute most dramatic rides are located on the Shotover and also Kawarau rivers nearby Queenstown, the hotel called the venture capital of the earth, at which in fact the drivers estimate openings into this meter and play thrilling twists and finishes out.
For all individuals following having a marginally slower tempo, whitewater rafting may draw the exact whoops and cries of glee.
From the profound temperate corner of the South Island, the powerful fiords of Fiordland do have significantly more openings, as thick rain makes a coating of black stained fresh-water, underneath which certainly is a wide scope of corals, fish, and sponges.
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A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas
Lia Jones had passed the introductory and certified examinations for the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas (CMSA), garnered her level-three Wine & Spirit Education Trust award, and been certified through the Sommelier Society of America. She was highly credentialed when, in 2014, she decided to go for CMSA’s advanced certification. She had her eye on the coveted Master Sommelier title after that. For support through the process, Jones went looking for a mentor.
“They didn’t have any Black female MSs,” she says, so she contacted one of the Court’s few Black males. “I realized everybody that’s Black is probably reaching out to him. He’s one person in the spotlight getting all these diverse people asking for mentorship,” she recalls. “He didn’t say he wouldn’t mentor me, but he wanted to see effort. What do I aspire to do?”
That was tough for Jones to show because in New York, where she lived, she had been looking in vain for a wine gig. The Court requires both current restaurant employment and two years of restaurant work within the seven years prior to applying for the advanced. She was turned down for 76 jobs. “I kept every email,” she says, “because that is crazy. If you’re certified and can’t get a job, what do you do?”
Moving to Los Angeles, she found the market as tough. Finally, in 2018, she landed a position at NoMad LA. But she needed letters of recommendation for her advanced course application. Though the Court’s executive director, Kathleen Lewis, says those didn’t have to come from MSs, Jones says that they did. She wrote to the few she could find in Southern California. No one replied.
In an organization that prides itself on mentorship, no one helped Lia Jones — not with mentorship, recommendations, or even acknowledgement of her emails. Says Jones, founder and executive director of Diversity in Wine and Spirits, an organization that assists companies in the hospitality industry with diversity and inclusion initiatives: “The barriers for me as a Black female were different from my white male counterparts. I wondered, ‘What is my need to become an MS when there are so many barriers?’”
Though the Court has since dropped the recommendations requirement, Jones’ story is not unique. It is illustrative of the problems with access, inclusion, transparency, and diversity for which the CMSA now finds itself called out. Shrouded in pomp and circumstance, made famous by the “SOMM” film series, the Court is the nation’s premiere wine educator. It confers the MS title; it has taught tens of thousands of aspiring sommeliers. It is a powerful influencer in an industry that, critics say, has ignored Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) talent. Now, BIPOC wine professionals and their allies are demanding that the CMSA board of directors work on diversity and equity within the Court and across the industry. To do so, this elite organization must acknowledge its implicit biases, overhaul its structure, and fix its culture to support an increasingly diverse talent pool — and to stay relevant in a food and drink landscape that is evolving.
With high-profile resignations and leadership fumbles igniting a debate about the organization’s very need to exist, it’s do-or-die time for CMSA. As sommelier Tahiirah Habibi, founder of HUE Society, a hub for BIPOC wine pros, puts it: “You are either anti-racist or you support racism. You’re fixing it, or you are going to get caught on the not-OK side.” As a newly appointed diversity committee begins its work amid tumult, the Court of Master Sommeliers is scrambling to wake and do right.
‘They Were Botching This Thing’
On May 25, when protests erupted over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, “within the wine industry, people were adamant that there is no more patience for gradual changes,” says Vincent Morrow, MS, the wine and service director at San Francisco’s ONE65, and one of few persons of color in the Court. “We need stuff to happen now.”
Across social media, organizations quickly pledged to work on anti-racism. The Court was not among them. On June 7, CMSA board chairman Devon Broglie, the global beverage buyer for Whole Foods, finally emailed the 172 Master Sommeliers who were the Court’s members, then quietly posted an anti-racism statement to its website. It contained few specifics as to the diversity actions he and the other leaders would take. The board stayed silent over social media until June 17, when it finally announced to members and the public that it was forming a diversity committee “to determine best practices for diversifying our member pool.” But by then, the damage had been done.
Earlier, Habibi had posted a video in which she related her horror, as a Black woman, at being told during her CMSA introductory exam a decade prior to address the proctor as “Master.” She detailed how the Court had added insult to injury by including the Hue Society in its initial anti-racism statement. The unsolicited mention looked, erroneously, like an endorsement from her organization. Afterward, Broglie revised his statement, removing Hue Society from it and outlining the Board’s initial steps toward diversity and inclusion.
Master Sommeliers resigned over the board’s stalling and missteps: First Richard Betts, co-owner of An Approach to Relaxation wines and Casa Komos Beverage Group, and a 17-year veteran of the Court; then Brian McClintic, owner of Viticole Wine Club and a star of the “SOMM” films; and Nate Ready, co-owner of Oregon’s Hiyu Wine Farm, who had been an MS since he was 28. Others, like Dustin Wilson, co-owner of bicoastal retailer Verve Wine, took to social media “to get in the board’s face,” he says. “They were botching this thing. It reflected on everybody who has the MS title. Just because I’m a Master Sommelier doesn’t mean I’m involved in their communications. I have zero control over that.”
Wilson’s frustration bespeaks problems with transparency and structure that everyone I interviewed, from board members to resigned MSs and outside observers, said are endemic to the Court. These issues, argues Habibi, can derail diversity efforts. “You don’t want to bring inclusion into a structure that’s still racist and broken. You have to fix your systems first,” she says.
‘There’s Really No Need for Secrecy’
There was no ill intent behind the Court’s slow response, says CMSA board member Christopher Bates, MS, co-owner of Upstate New York’s F.L.X. Hospitality. “The board is a volunteer position. I don’t want it to come off as an excuse, but there are thousands of fires in everybody’s life, trying to find our way through Covid. Things also take time, and I think it’s important that we took time to consider what to do.”
But as Jill Zimorski, MS, senior specialist of education with Strategic Group, representing Moët Hennessy, points out, “the longer you’re silent, the longer people can interpret your silence.”
Rumors flew. In his resignation letter, McClintic stated that the board’s heel-dragging was in part because decisions were required to be unanimous. Broglie says that’s untrue; under his tenure, the board operates by majority vote. “But it is important that we have a strong consensus when we make big moves,” he told me. “Rather than the performance of social media, we wanted to make sure that we were taking constructive action. But the statement on social media didn’t come fast enough, with hindsight.”
Zimorski isn’t buying it. Even while you’re considering larger changes, how hard can it be to speak out against racism? “This is an organization of humans that does exams for other humans. Our industry is about taking care of people,” she says. “I don’t think it’s very complicated.”
Time and again, MSs have spoken out against the CMSA board’s inscrutability. It played out in 2018 when, following the disclosure that a blind-tasting proctor had fed answers to a small group of examinees. The board revoked the MS title from all 23 who passed. The decision “put this credential over human lives and screwed with people’s ability to earn a living,” says Betts. “We said, ‘We need accountability, facts. You serve the membership.’ All we got was a stonewall.”
Zimorski was among the 23. She re-tested the following year. “This is an organization that administers wine tests,” she says. “There’s really no need for secrecy, except with the wines we’re blind tasting.”
‘How Are You Going to Hold Us Accountable?’
If the workings of the Court are mysterious for members, they’re more so for the rest of the wine world. “They’ve created this allure,” says Larissa Dubose, director of education for the just-launched talent resource, Black Wine Professionals, and a CMSA-certified sommelier. “This isn’t the time to be enigmatic. Let’s see what you’re doing to promote inclusivity.”
With MSs Alpana Singh, owner of Evanston, Ill.’s Terra & Vine and Chicago’s AMT Hospitality consulting firm; Jonathan Ross, co-owner of Legend Imports; and Emily Wines, who runs the wine programs at Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants, Zimorski circulated a petition on the Court’s internal forum, gathering signatures to force the board to act on diversity. “There was so much initial pushback,” says Zimorski. “People said, ‘This isn’t a political group.’ I said, ‘This isn’t a political matter. This is about identity, who you are, and what you love.’”
The petitioners prevailed, and the CMSA board took up many of their suggestions. It raised $10,000 through the first of its virtual tastings to benefit a scholarship fund for BIPOC students. It announced the end of the “Master” address. As co-chairs of the diversity committee, it appointed June Rodil, a partner at Houston-based Goodnight Hospitality, and board member Thomas Price, estate division educator for Jackson Family Wines. The co-chairs chose five other MSs, including Morrow, Wines, and Carlton McCoy, president and CEO of Napa’s Heitz Cellars, who had taken to Instagram after Betts’ resignation to declare that quitting was a privilege that he, as a Black man, did not have or desire. He was staying on to transform the Court for the sake of Black candidates after him.
Three weeks in, the committee has hired poet, activist, and noted corporate trainer Azure Antoinette — a TedX speaker whom Forbes magazine calls “the Maya Angelou of the Millennial generation” — as the membership’s implicit bias trainer. They are looking to her for lasting effects. Says Rodil, “We asked her, ‘How are you going to hold us accountable and give us the skills to continue to do this as we move forward and not just have a training session be, ‘I learned this. I’m good?’”
‘Being Color Blind Isn’t Being Diverse’
The Court has long thought itself equitable, despite the sea of white male faces in the MS lookbook. “We’ve believed that the organization has been entirely inclusive, that we’ve held to a strict non-discrimination policy, and that the meritocracy of our exams speaks for itself,” says Broglie. “In the past month, we’re learning that’s not enough.”
Inclusion work involves probing questions, says Jones: “Do you have a diversity policy? Who structured it? How did you choose the diversity committee? Who is on your board? Who is implementing other programs? Where are you giving the exams? Are they accessible? Who are your students?”
CMSA is hard-pressed to answer that last one. Says Thomas Price: “When I passed in 2012, I was pretty sure I was the only person of African-American descent to ever do it. I called our PR department and said, ‘You need to check this for me, if I’m going to say it to people.’ They vetted it really well.”
That may be, but why wasn’t this information transparent? In 2019, when I was working on a profile of Court founder Fred Dame, Lewis could tell me that 28 Master Sommeliers were women. She could not say how many women had studied or examined at any level, only that “the Court is gender-neutral when it comes to examinations and enrollment.” But if the Court kept statistics, perhaps it could follow the trajectory of women students, see where they fell off in the process, and examine why a demographic that’s more than half the U.S. population has only 16 percent of the Court’s memberships.
There’s even less information about race and ethnicity. In her experience with the Court, says Dubose, “I’ve never been asked who I am. Maybe my pronouns, but never ethnic background or race. Being color blind right now isn’t being diverse because that shows there isn’t any color in the organization.”
Broglie says demographics collection is now on the table. Rodil wants the questions to go further: “One big thing is getting a better database of our students and information on the mentorships they seek. Many MSs were interested in being on the diversity committee, so we asked them for a commitment to mentorship, and they all said yes for BIPOC students.”
Mentorship is crucial to navigating the MS exam. “I never would’ve passed if I hadn’t been surrounded by people who gave me the code,” says Nate Ready, who was working at MS Bobby Stuckey’s restaurant Frasca at the time. “You didn’t just study wine. Someone on the inside had to give you insight on what kind of knowledge was important. That can be used to control who gets in.”
Over the years, the Court has circled wagons around the MS credential, sacrificing pedagogy for an increasingly impossible test, says Betts. “Do you have 10 years and $10,000 dollars for a 3 percent chance to pass? No one would make that bet,” he says.
The diversity committee, says Wines, will “take a hard look at teaching materials, examinations, and the ways we interact with candidates to make sure there’s no implicit bias or anything we are doing unintentionally or intentionally that stops them from pursuing our programs.”
Wilson says that will involve a shift in the Court’s self-image. “Leadership’s first order of business is always communicating to the membership,” he says. “That’s simply Master Somms up to date on dues. The board doesn’t think about others that have a vested interest, people who’ve taken first, second, or third level. By the time they’re advanced, they’ve been giving us money and studying for years. You can’t tell someone who wears that advanced pin on the floor of their restaurant that they’re not part of the organization.”
‘It Should Not Just Be Old White Guys’
In 2018, in the wake of the cheating scandal, says Wilson, “it became clear that the board doesn’t think in the same way that younger, more progressive members think.” Fired up, he considered running, until he realized he wasn’t eligible. He had spent eight years in the Court proctoring at other levels, but he hadn’t observed at an MS exam, a prerequisite for a board seat. Echoing the words of Lia Jones, he says, “The barrier to entry is very high.”
Broglie acknowledges the problem. “It takes 16 years on average to pass the MS exam. Then it takes five or six years to become eligible to run for the board. Someone is in their 40s before they can even run. So how do we capture fresh perspectives?” The sticking point for him is balancing new voices with a proven commitment. “Are you willing to take the time to work through the system to prove that you have the dedication?” he asks.
Wilson says the high bar leads to board elections with just a handful of candidates. “You get this revolving door of similar people,” he says. “You get less connected with what’s happening on the ground, what young somms are thinking and care about.”
Wines is more blunt: “It should not just be old white guys.”
‘We Need to Be Less Myopic’
The diversity committee serves an advisory role. To get things done, it must go to the board. But its members are trying to shake the board out of an in-group mentality. “The diversity committee is identifying for us that there is a perceived aloofness,” says Broglie.
The Court’s social media platforms are just two years old, and they’ve been used to broadcast, not interact. That’s not how new generations communicate, say critics, and the Court has a responsibility to dialogue with the industry. To be more inclusive, says Rodil, “we need to be less myopic.”
Essential to the task is the question of access. “We’ve had a policy that the door is open to everyone. We’ve come to be sensitive that not everybody has access to that door in the first place,” says Wines. “How can we reach out to other communities, proactively increasing diversity in our industry?”
Covid-19 has done some of that accessibility work by pushing the Court into online learning. The diversity committee is also talking about developing wine programs at historically black colleges and universities. Then there’s economic access. CMSA courses are costly, and blind tasting takes practice.
“The dirty secret is you need to taste thousands of dollars of wine to pass,” says Singh, who is the CMSA’s only MS of South Asian descent. “The bullshit that I had to go through, it shouldn’t be that difficult.” Unlike her white male counterparts, she says, “I was not getting invited to tastings, panels, conferences. The only thing you can muster up is they’re white and a man. We’re in similar buying positions, but they’re friends with the distributor? There was an assumption that you’re not going to turn the opportunity into dollars for them. How many good men and women have we lost because they didn’t feel welcome?”
Morrow wants CMSA to use its clout as a bully pulpit for inclusion. “We have to change the industry, not just the Court. That’s how you make a lasting impact.”
Habibi agrees. “The Court happens to be at the top of the wine world, and if they get their shit together, others flow,” she says.
‘There’s a Tectonic Shift, Then There’s an Earthquake’
Right now, with the hospitality industry stalled, “Covid-19 has provided the Court with this padding,” says Ross. “This is the first year we won’t have an MS exam, and it’s an opportunity to regain trust.”
But the pandemic is a double-edged sword. Though she commends the Court for its diversity efforts, Jones says, “I don’t think people are going to pay that amount of money for certification for a job that’s becoming obsolete under Covid-19.”
The wine world has long been transforming. “The Court was born out of a different era when it was all European wines and white guys at auctions or high-end restaurants,” says Wines. “We did not take into account back then the middle tier we see today, the range around the world, and the fact that a lot of somms are not white, male, or straight. There’s diversity in the community and kinds of restaurants.”
What’s happening, Singh says, is “a tectonic shift from the old generation to the new. There’s a tectonic shift, and then there’s an earthquake. Sometimes it’s a little quibble, but other times, there’s a shaking up.”
For the Court, the current moment is a 10 on the Richter scale. “Gen Z does not mess around,” Singh says. “They want equality, diversity, fairness. And the wine buyer of tomorrow is probably a BIPOC sommelier.” The CMSA should be thinking ahead, Singh contends, putting itself in the position of a Black MS candidate and thinking about the factors she needs to be successful. That means helping candidates with access and opportunity, and making sure they see themselves represented in the Court’s membership.
“Otherwise,” Singh says, “we’re just outdated.”
The article A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas appeared first on VinePair.
source https://vinepair.com/articles/reckoning-race-court-of-master-sommeliers-americas/
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A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas
Lia Jones had passed the introductory and certified examinations for the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas (CMSA), garnered her level-three Wine & Spirit Education Trust award, and been certified through the Sommelier Society of America. She was highly credentialed when, in 2014, she decided to go for CMSA’s advanced certification. She had her eye on the coveted Master Sommelier title after that. For support through the process, Jones went looking for a mentor.
“They didn’t have any Black female MSs,” she says, so she contacted one of the Court’s few Black males. “I realized everybody that’s Black is probably reaching out to him. He’s one person in the spotlight getting all these diverse people asking for mentorship,” she recalls. “He didn’t say he wouldn’t mentor me, but he wanted to see effort. What do I aspire to do?”
That was tough for Jones to show because in New York, where she lived, she had been looking in vain for a wine gig. The Court requires both current restaurant employment and two years of restaurant work within the seven years prior to applying for the advanced. She was turned down for 76 jobs. “I kept every email,” she says, “because that is crazy. If you’re certified and can’t get a job, what do you do?”
Moving to Los Angeles, she found the market as tough. Finally, in 2018, she landed a position at NoMad LA. But she needed letters of recommendation for her advanced course application. Though the Court’s executive director, Kathleen Lewis, says those didn’t have to come from MSs, Jones says that they did. She wrote to the few she could find in Southern California. No one replied.
In an organization that prides itself on mentorship, no one helped Lia Jones — not with mentorship, recommendations, or even acknowledgement of her emails. Says Jones, founder and executive director of Diversity in Wine and Spirits, an organization that assists companies in the hospitality industry with diversity and inclusion initiatives: “The barriers for me as a Black female were different from my white male counterparts. I wondered, ‘What is my need to become an MS when there are so many barriers?’”
Though the Court has since dropped the recommendations requirement, Jones’ story is not unique. It is illustrative of the problems with access, inclusion, transparency, and diversity for which the CMSA now finds itself called out. Shrouded in pomp and circumstance, made famous by the “SOMM” film series, the Court is the nation’s premiere wine educator. It confers the MS title; it has taught tens of thousands of aspiring sommeliers. It is a powerful influencer in an industry that, critics say, has ignored Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) talent. Now, BIPOC wine professionals and their allies are demanding that the CMSA board of directors work on diversity and equity within the Court and across the industry. To do so, this elite organization must acknowledge its implicit biases, overhaul its structure, and fix its culture to support an increasingly diverse talent pool — and to stay relevant in a food and drink landscape that is evolving.
With high-profile resignations and leadership fumbles igniting a debate about the organization’s very need to exist, it’s do-or-die time for CMSA. As sommelier Tahiirah Habibi, founder of HUE Society, a hub for BIPOC wine pros, puts it: “You are either anti-racist or you support racism. You’re fixing it, or you are going to get caught on the not-OK side.” As a newly appointed diversity committee begins its work amid tumult, the Court of Master Sommeliers is scrambling to wake and do right.
‘They Were Botching This Thing’
On May 25, when protests erupted over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, “within the wine industry, people were adamant that there is no more patience for gradual changes,” says Vincent Morrow, MS, the wine and service director at San Francisco’s ONE65, and one of few persons of color in the Court. “We need stuff to happen now.”
Across social media, organizations quickly pledged to work on anti-racism. The Court was not among them. On June 7, CMSA board chairman Devon Broglie, the global beverage buyer for Whole Foods, finally emailed the 172 Master Sommeliers who were the Court’s members, then quietly posted an anti-racism statement to its website. It contained few specifics as to the diversity actions he and the other leaders would take. The board stayed silent over social media until June 17, when it finally announced to members and the public that it was forming a diversity committee “to determine best practices for diversifying our member pool.” But by then, the damage had been done.
Earlier, Habibi had posted a video in which she related her horror, as a Black woman, at being told during her CMSA introductory exam a decade prior to address the proctor as “Master.” She detailed how the Court had added insult to injury by including the Hue Society in its initial anti-racism statement. The unsolicited mention looked, erroneously, like an endorsement from her organization. Afterward, Broglie revised his statement, removing Hue Society from it and outlining the Board’s initial steps toward diversity and inclusion.
Master Sommeliers resigned over the board’s stalling and missteps: First Richard Betts, co-owner of An Approach to Relaxation wines and Casa Komos Beverage Group, and a 17-year veteran of the Court; then Brian McClintic, owner of Viticole Wine Club and a star of the “SOMM” films; and Nate Ready, co-owner of Oregon’s Hiyu Wine Farm, who had been an MS since he was 28. Others, like Dustin Wilson, co-owner of bicoastal retailer Verve Wine, took to social media “to get in the board’s face,” he says. “They were botching this thing. It reflected on everybody who has the MS title. Just because I’m a Master Sommelier doesn’t mean I’m involved in their communications. I have zero control over that.”
Wilson’s frustration bespeaks problems with transparency and structure that everyone I interviewed, from board members to resigned MSs and outside observers, said are endemic to the Court. These issues, argues Habibi, can derail diversity efforts. “You don’t want to bring inclusion into a structure that’s still racist and broken. You have to fix your systems first,” she says.
‘There’s Really No Need for Secrecy’
There was no ill intent behind the Court’s slow response, says CMSA board member Christopher Bates, MS, co-owner of Upstate New York’s F.L.X. Hospitality. “The board is a volunteer position. I don’t want it to come off as an excuse, but there are thousands of fires in everybody’s life, trying to find our way through Covid. Things also take time, and I think it’s important that we took time to consider what to do.”
But as Jill Zimorski, MS, senior specialist of education with Strategic Group, representing Moët Hennessy, points out, “the longer you’re silent, the longer people can interpret your silence.”
Rumors flew. In his resignation letter, McClintic stated that the board’s heel-dragging was in part because decisions were required to be unanimous. Broglie says that’s untrue; under his tenure, the board operates by majority vote. “But it is important that we have a strong consensus when we make big moves,” he told me. “Rather than the performance of social media, we wanted to make sure that we were taking constructive action. But the statement on social media didn’t come fast enough, with hindsight.”
Zimorski isn’t buying it. Even while you’re considering larger changes, how hard can it be to speak out against racism? “This is an organization of humans that does exams for other humans. Our industry is about taking care of people,” she says. “I don’t think it’s very complicated.”
Time and again, MSs have spoken out against the CMSA board’s inscrutability. It played out in 2018 when, following the disclosure that a blind-tasting proctor had fed answers to a small group of examinees. The board revoked the MS title from all 23 who passed. The decision “put this credential over human lives and screwed with people’s ability to earn a living,” says Betts. “We said, ‘We need accountability, facts. You serve the membership.’ All we got was a stonewall.”
Zimorski was among the 23. She re-tested the following year. “This is an organization that administers wine tests,” she says. “There’s really no need for secrecy, except with the wines we’re blind tasting.”
‘How Are You Going to Hold Us Accountable?’
If the workings of the Court are mysterious for members, they’re more so for the rest of the wine world. “They’ve created this allure,” says Larissa Dubose, director of education for the just-launched talent resource, Black Wine Professionals, and a CMSA-certified sommelier. “This isn’t the time to be enigmatic. Let’s see what you’re doing to promote inclusivity.”
With MSs Alpana Singh, owner of Evanston, Ill.’s Terra & Vine and Chicago’s AMT Hospitality consulting firm; Jonathan Ross, co-owner of Legend Imports; and Emily Wines, who runs the wine programs at Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants, Zimorski circulated a petition on the Court’s internal forum, gathering signatures to force the board to act on diversity. “There was so much initial pushback,” says Zimorski. “People said, ‘This isn’t a political group.’ I said, ‘This isn’t a political matter. This is about identity, who you are, and what you love.’”
The petitioners prevailed, and the CMSA board took up many of their suggestions. It raised $10,000 through the first of its virtual tastings to benefit a scholarship fund for BIPOC students. It announced the end of the “Master” address. As co-chairs of the diversity committee, it appointed June Rodil, a partner at Houston-based Goodnight Hospitality, and board member Thomas Price, estate division educator for Jackson Family Wines. The co-chairs chose five other MSs, including Morrow, Wines, and Carlton McCoy, president and CEO of Napa’s Heitz Cellars, who had taken to Instagram after Betts’ resignation to declare that quitting was a privilege that he, as a Black man, did not have or desire. He was staying on to transform the Court for the sake of Black candidates after him.
Three weeks in, the committee has hired poet, activist, and noted corporate trainer Azure Antoinette — a TedX speaker whom Forbes magazine calls “the Maya Angelou of the Millennial generation” — as the membership’s implicit bias trainer. They are looking to her for lasting effects. Says Rodil, “We asked her, ‘How are you going to hold us accountable and give us the skills to continue to do this as we move forward and not just have a training session be, ‘I learned this. I’m good?’”
‘Being Color Blind Isn’t Being Diverse’
The Court has long thought itself equitable, despite the sea of white male faces in the MS lookbook. “We’ve believed that the organization has been entirely inclusive, that we’ve held to a strict non-discrimination policy, and that the meritocracy of our exams speaks for itself,” says Broglie. “In the past month, we’re learning that’s not enough.”
Inclusion work involves probing questions, says Jones: “Do you have a diversity policy? Who structured it? How did you choose the diversity committee? Who is on your board? Who is implementing other programs? Where are you giving the exams? Are they accessible? Who are your students?”
CMSA is hard-pressed to answer that last one. Says Thomas Price: “When I passed in 2012, I was pretty sure I was the only person of African-American descent to ever do it. I called our PR department and said, ‘You need to check this for me, if I’m going to say it to people.’ They vetted it really well.”
That may be, but why wasn’t this information transparent? In 2019, when I was working on a profile of Court founder Fred Dame, Lewis could tell me that 28 Master Sommeliers were women. She could not say how many women had studied or examined at any level, only that “the Court is gender-neutral when it comes to examinations and enrollment.” But if the Court kept statistics, perhaps it could follow the trajectory of women students, see where they fell off in the process, and examine why a demographic that’s more than half the U.S. population has only 16 percent of the Court’s memberships.
There’s even less information about race and ethnicity. In her experience with the Court, says Dubose, “I’ve never been asked who I am. Maybe my pronouns, but never ethnic background or race. Being color blind right now isn’t being diverse because that shows there isn’t any color in the organization.”
Broglie says demographics collection is now on the table. Rodil wants the questions to go further: “One big thing is getting a better database of our students and information on the mentorships they seek. Many MSs were interested in being on the diversity committee, so we asked them for a commitment to mentorship, and they all said yes for BIPOC students.”
Mentorship is crucial to navigating the MS exam. “I never would’ve passed if I hadn’t been surrounded by people who gave me the code,” says Nate Ready, who was working at MS Bobby Stuckey’s restaurant Frasca at the time. “You didn’t just study wine. Someone on the inside had to give you insight on what kind of knowledge was important. That can be used to control who gets in.”
Over the years, the Court has circled wagons around the MS credential, sacrificing pedagogy for an increasingly impossible test, says Betts. “Do you have 10 years and $10,000 dollars for a 3 percent chance to pass? No one would make that bet,” he says.
The diversity committee, says Wines, will “take a hard look at teaching materials, examinations, and the ways we interact with candidates to make sure there’s no implicit bias or anything we are doing unintentionally or intentionally that stops them from pursuing our programs.”
Wilson says that will involve a shift in the Court’s self-image. “Leadership’s first order of business is always communicating to the membership,” he says. “That’s simply Master Somms up to date on dues. The board doesn’t think about others that have a vested interest, people who’ve taken first, second, or third level. By the time they’re advanced, they’ve been giving us money and studying for years. You can’t tell someone who wears that advanced pin on the floor of their restaurant that they’re not part of the organization.”
‘It Should Not Just Be Old White Guys’
In 2018, in the wake of the cheating scandal, says Wilson, “it became clear that the board doesn’t think in the same way that younger, more progressive members think.” Fired up, he considered running, until he realized he wasn’t eligible. He had spent eight years in the Court proctoring at other levels, but he hadn’t observed at an MS exam, a prerequisite for a board seat. Echoing the words of Lia Jones, he says, “The barrier to entry is very high.”
Broglie acknowledges the problem. “It takes 16 years on average to pass the MS exam. Then it takes five or six years to become eligible to run for the board. Someone is in their 40s before they can even run. So how do we capture fresh perspectives?” The sticking point for him is balancing new voices with a proven commitment. “Are you willing to take the time to work through the system to prove that you have the dedication?” he asks.
Wilson says the high bar leads to board elections with just a handful of candidates. “You get this revolving door of similar people,” he says. “You get less connected with what’s happening on the ground, what young somms are thinking and care about.”
Wines is more blunt: “It should not just be old white guys.”
‘We Need to Be Less Myopic’
The diversity committee serves an advisory role. To get things done, it must go to the board. But its members are trying to shake the board out of an in-group mentality. “The diversity committee is identifying for us that there is a perceived aloofness,” says Broglie.
The Court’s social media platforms are just two years old, and they’ve been used to broadcast, not interact. That’s not how new generations communicate, say critics, and the Court has a responsibility to dialogue with the industry. To be more inclusive, says Rodil, “we need to be less myopic.”
Essential to the task is the question of access. “We’ve had a policy that the door is open to everyone. We’ve come to be sensitive that not everybody has access to that door in the first place,” says Wines. “How can we reach out to other communities, proactively increasing diversity in our industry?”
Covid-19 has done some of that accessibility work by pushing the Court into online learning. The diversity committee is also talking about developing wine programs at historically black colleges and universities. Then there’s economic access. CMSA courses are costly, and blind tasting takes practice.
“The dirty secret is you need to taste thousands of dollars of wine to pass,” says Singh, who is the CMSA’s only MS of South Asian descent. “The bullshit that I had to go through, it shouldn’t be that difficult.” Unlike her white male counterparts, she says, “I was not getting invited to tastings, panels, conferences. The only thing you can muster up is they’re white and a man. We’re in similar buying positions, but they’re friends with the distributor? There was an assumption that you’re not going to turn the opportunity into dollars for them. How many good men and women have we lost because they didn’t feel welcome?”
Morrow wants CMSA to use its clout as a bully pulpit for inclusion. “We have to change the industry, not just the Court. That’s how you make a lasting impact.”
Habibi agrees. “The Court happens to be at the top of the wine world, and if they get their shit together, others flow,” she says.
‘There’s a Tectonic Shift, Then There’s an Earthquake’
Right now, with the hospitality industry stalled, “Covid-19 has provided the Court with this padding,” says Ross. “This is the first year we won’t have an MS exam, and it’s an opportunity to regain trust.”
But the pandemic is a double-edged sword. Though she commends the Court for its diversity efforts, Jones says, “I don’t think people are going to pay that amount of money for certification for a job that’s becoming obsolete under Covid-19.”
The wine world has long been transforming. “The Court was born out of a different era when it was all European wines and white guys at auctions or high-end restaurants,” says Wines. “We did not take into account back then the middle tier we see today, the range around the world, and the fact that a lot of somms are not white, male, or straight. There’s diversity in the community and kinds of restaurants.”
What’s happening, Singh says, is “a tectonic shift from the old generation to the new. There’s a tectonic shift, and then there’s an earthquake. Sometimes it’s a little quibble, but other times, there’s a shaking up.”
For the Court, the current moment is a 10 on the Richter scale. “Gen Z does not mess around,” Singh says. “They want equality, diversity, fairness. And the wine buyer of tomorrow is probably a BIPOC sommelier.” The CMSA should be thinking ahead, Singh contends, putting itself in the position of a Black MS candidate and thinking about the factors she needs to be successful. That means helping candidates with access and opportunity, and making sure they see themselves represented in the Court’s membership.
“Otherwise,” Singh says, “we’re just outdated.”
The article A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas appeared first on VinePair.
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A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas
Lia Jones had passed the introductory and certified examinations for the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas (CMSA), garnered her level-three Wine & Spirit Education Trust award, and been certified through the Sommelier Society of America. She was highly credentialed when, in 2014, she decided to go for CMSA’s advanced certification. She had her eye on the coveted Master Sommelier title after that. For support through the process, Jones went looking for a mentor.
“They didn’t have any Black female MSs,” she says, so she contacted one of the Court’s few Black males. “I realized everybody that’s Black is probably reaching out to him. He’s one person in the spotlight getting all these diverse people asking for mentorship,” she recalls. “He didn’t say he wouldn’t mentor me, but he wanted to see effort. What do I aspire to do?”
That was tough for Jones to show because in New York, where she lived, she had been looking in vain for a wine gig. The Court requires both current restaurant employment and two years of restaurant work within the seven years prior to applying for the advanced. She was turned down for 76 jobs. “I kept every email,” she says, “because that is crazy. If you’re certified and can’t get a job, what do you do?”
Moving to Los Angeles, she found the market as tough. Finally, in 2018, she landed a position at NoMad LA. But she needed letters of recommendation for her advanced course application. Though the Court’s executive director, Kathleen Lewis, says those didn’t have to come from MSs, Jones says that they did. She wrote to the few she could find in Southern California. No one replied.
In an organization that prides itself on mentorship, no one helped Lia Jones — not with mentorship, recommendations, or even acknowledgement of her emails. Says Jones, founder and executive director of Diversity in Wine and Spirits, an organization that assists companies in the hospitality industry with diversity and inclusion initiatives: “The barriers for me as a Black female were different from my white male counterparts. I wondered, ‘What is my need to become an MS when there are so many barriers?’”
Though the Court has since dropped the recommendations requirement, Jones’ story is not unique. It is illustrative of the problems with access, inclusion, transparency, and diversity for which the CMSA now finds itself called out. Shrouded in pomp and circumstance, made famous by the “SOMM” film series, the Court is the nation’s premiere wine educator. It confers the MS title; it has taught tens of thousands of aspiring sommeliers. It is a powerful influencer in an industry that, critics say, has ignored Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) talent. Now, BIPOC wine professionals and their allies are demanding that the CMSA board of directors work on diversity and equity within the Court and across the industry. To do so, this elite organization must acknowledge its implicit biases, overhaul its structure, and fix its culture to support an increasingly diverse talent pool — and to stay relevant in a food and drink landscape that is evolving.
With high-profile resignations and leadership fumbles igniting a debate about the organization’s very need to exist, it’s do-or-die time for CMSA. As sommelier Tahiirah Habibi, founder of HUE Society, a hub for BIPOC wine pros, puts it: “You are either anti-racist or you support racism. You’re fixing it, or you are going to get caught on the not-OK side.” As a newly appointed diversity committee begins its work amid tumult, the Court of Master Sommeliers is scrambling to wake and do right.
‘They Were Botching This Thing’
On May 25, when protests erupted over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police, “within the wine industry, people were adamant that there is no more patience for gradual changes,” says Vincent Morrow, MS, the wine and service director at San Francisco’s ONE65, and one of few persons of color in the Court. “We need stuff to happen now.”
Across social media, organizations quickly pledged to work on anti-racism. The Court was not among them. On June 7, CMSA board chairman Devon Broglie, the global beverage buyer for Whole Foods, finally emailed the 172 Master Sommeliers who were the Court’s members, then quietly posted an anti-racism statement to its website. It contained few specifics as to the diversity actions he and the other leaders would take. The board stayed silent over social media until June 17, when it finally announced to members and the public that it was forming a diversity committee “to determine best practices for diversifying our member pool.” But by then, the damage had been done.
Earlier, Habibi had posted a video in which she related her horror, as a Black woman, at being told during her CMSA introductory exam a decade prior to address the proctor as “Master.” She detailed how the Court had added insult to injury by including the Hue Society in its initial anti-racism statement. The unsolicited mention looked, erroneously, like an endorsement from her organization. Afterward, Broglie revised his statement, removing Hue Society from it and outlining the Board’s initial steps toward diversity and inclusion.
Master Sommeliers resigned over the board’s stalling and missteps: First Richard Betts, co-owner of An Approach to Relaxation wines and Casa Komos Beverage Group, and a 17-year veteran of the Court; then Brian McClintic, owner of Viticole Wine Club and a star of the “SOMM” films; and Nate Ready, co-owner of Oregon’s Hiyu Wine Farm, who had been an MS since he was 28. Others, like Dustin Wilson, co-owner of bicoastal retailer Verve Wine, took to social media “to get in the board’s face,” he says. “They were botching this thing. It reflected on everybody who has the MS title. Just because I’m a Master Sommelier doesn’t mean I’m involved in their communications. I have zero control over that.”
Wilson’s frustration bespeaks problems with transparency and structure that everyone I interviewed, from board members to resigned MSs and outside observers, said are endemic to the Court. These issues, argues Habibi, can derail diversity efforts. “You don’t want to bring inclusion into a structure that’s still racist and broken. You have to fix your systems first,” she says.
‘There’s Really No Need for Secrecy’
There was no ill intent behind the Court’s slow response, says CMSA board member Christopher Bates, MS, co-owner of Upstate New York’s F.L.X. Hospitality. “The board is a volunteer position. I don’t want it to come off as an excuse, but there are thousands of fires in everybody’s life, trying to find our way through Covid. Things also take time, and I think it’s important that we took time to consider what to do.”
But as Jill Zimorski, MS, senior specialist of education with Strategic Group, representing Moët Hennessy, points out, “the longer you’re silent, the longer people can interpret your silence.”
Rumors flew. In his resignation letter, McClintic stated that the board’s heel-dragging was in part because decisions were required to be unanimous. Broglie says that’s untrue; under his tenure, the board operates by majority vote. “But it is important that we have a strong consensus when we make big moves,” he told me. “Rather than the performance of social media, we wanted to make sure that we were taking constructive action. But the statement on social media didn’t come fast enough, with hindsight.”
Zimorski isn’t buying it. Even while you’re considering larger changes, how hard can it be to speak out against racism? “This is an organization of humans that does exams for other humans. Our industry is about taking care of people,” she says. “I don’t think it’s very complicated.”
Time and again, MSs have spoken out against the CMSA board’s inscrutability. It played out in 2018 when, following the disclosure that a blind-tasting proctor had fed answers to a small group of examinees. The board revoked the MS title from all 23 who passed. The decision “put this credential over human lives and screwed with people’s ability to earn a living,” says Betts. “We said, ‘We need accountability, facts. You serve the membership.’ All we got was a stonewall.”
Zimorski was among the 23. She re-tested the following year. “This is an organization that administers wine tests,” she says. “There’s really no need for secrecy, except with the wines we’re blind tasting.”
‘How Are You Going to Hold Us Accountable?’
If the workings of the Court are mysterious for members, they’re more so for the rest of the wine world. “They’ve created this allure,” says Larissa Dubose, director of education for the just-launched talent resource, Black Wine Professionals, and a CMSA-certified sommelier. “This isn’t the time to be enigmatic. Let’s see what you’re doing to promote inclusivity.”
With MSs Alpana Singh, owner of Evanston, Ill.’s Terra & Vine and Chicago’s AMT Hospitality consulting firm; Jonathan Ross, co-owner of Legend Imports; and Emily Wines, who runs the wine programs at Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants, Zimorski circulated a petition on the Court’s internal forum, gathering signatures to force the board to act on diversity. “There was so much initial pushback,” says Zimorski. “People said, ‘This isn’t a political group.’ I said, ‘This isn’t a political matter. This is about identity, who you are, and what you love.’”
The petitioners prevailed, and the CMSA board took up many of their suggestions. It raised $10,000 through the first of its virtual tastings to benefit a scholarship fund for BIPOC students. It announced the end of the “Master” address. As co-chairs of the diversity committee, it appointed June Rodil, a partner at Houston-based Goodnight Hospitality, and board member Thomas Price, estate division educator for Jackson Family Wines. The co-chairs chose five other MSs, including Morrow, Wines, and Carlton McCoy, president and CEO of Napa’s Heitz Cellars, who had taken to Instagram after Betts’ resignation to declare that quitting was a privilege that he, as a Black man, did not have or desire. He was staying on to transform the Court for the sake of Black candidates after him.
Three weeks in, the committee has hired poet, activist, and noted corporate trainer Azure Antoinette — a TedX speaker whom Forbes magazine calls “the Maya Angelou of the Millennial generation” — as the membership’s implicit bias trainer. They are looking to her for lasting effects. Says Rodil, “We asked her, ‘How are you going to hold us accountable and give us the skills to continue to do this as we move forward and not just have a training session be, ‘I learned this. I’m good?’”
‘Being Color Blind Isn’t Being Diverse’
The Court has long thought itself equitable, despite the sea of white male faces in the MS lookbook. “We’ve believed that the organization has been entirely inclusive, that we’ve held to a strict non-discrimination policy, and that the meritocracy of our exams speaks for itself,” says Broglie. “In the past month, we’re learning that’s not enough.”
Inclusion work involves probing questions, says Jones: “Do you have a diversity policy? Who structured it? How did you choose the diversity committee? Who is on your board? Who is implementing other programs? Where are you giving the exams? Are they accessible? Who are your students?”
CMSA is hard-pressed to answer that last one. Says Thomas Price: “When I passed in 2012, I was pretty sure I was the only person of African-American descent to ever do it. I called our PR department and said, ‘You need to check this for me, if I’m going to say it to people.’ They vetted it really well.”
That may be, but why wasn’t this information transparent? In 2019, when I was working on a profile of Court founder Fred Dame, Lewis could tell me that 28 Master Sommeliers were women. She could not say how many women had studied or examined at any level, only that “the Court is gender-neutral when it comes to examinations and enrollment.” But if the Court kept statistics, perhaps it could follow the trajectory of women students, see where they fell off in the process, and examine why a demographic that’s more than half the U.S. population has only 16 percent of the Court’s memberships.
There’s even less information about race and ethnicity. In her experience with the Court, says Dubose, “I’ve never been asked who I am. Maybe my pronouns, but never ethnic background or race. Being color blind right now isn’t being diverse because that shows there isn’t any color in the organization.”
Broglie says demographics collection is now on the table. Rodil wants the questions to go further: “One big thing is getting a better database of our students and information on the mentorships they seek. Many MSs were interested in being on the diversity committee, so we asked them for a commitment to mentorship, and they all said yes for BIPOC students.”
Mentorship is crucial to navigating the MS exam. “I never would’ve passed if I hadn’t been surrounded by people who gave me the code,” says Nate Ready, who was working at MS Bobby Stuckey’s restaurant Frasca at the time. “You didn’t just study wine. Someone on the inside had to give you insight on what kind of knowledge was important. That can be used to control who gets in.”
Over the years, the Court has circled wagons around the MS credential, sacrificing pedagogy for an increasingly impossible test, says Betts. “Do you have 10 years and $10,000 dollars for a 3 percent chance to pass? No one would make that bet,” he says.
The diversity committee, says Wines, will “take a hard look at teaching materials, examinations, and the ways we interact with candidates to make sure there’s no implicit bias or anything we are doing unintentionally or intentionally that stops them from pursuing our programs.”
Wilson says that will involve a shift in the Court’s self-image. “Leadership’s first order of business is always communicating to the membership,” he says. “That’s simply Master Somms up to date on dues. The board doesn’t think about others that have a vested interest, people who’ve taken first, second, or third level. By the time they’re advanced, they’ve been giving us money and studying for years. You can’t tell someone who wears that advanced pin on the floor of their restaurant that they’re not part of the organization.”
‘It Should Not Just Be Old White Guys’
In 2018, in the wake of the cheating scandal, says Wilson, “it became clear that the board doesn’t think in the same way that younger, more progressive members think.” Fired up, he considered running, until he realized he wasn’t eligible. He had spent eight years in the Court proctoring at other levels, but he hadn’t observed at an MS exam, a prerequisite for a board seat. Echoing the words of Lia Jones, he says, “The barrier to entry is very high.”
Broglie acknowledges the problem. “It takes 16 years on average to pass the MS exam. Then it takes five or six years to become eligible to run for the board. Someone is in their 40s before they can even run. So how do we capture fresh perspectives?” The sticking point for him is balancing new voices with a proven commitment. “Are you willing to take the time to work through the system to prove that you have the dedication?” he asks.
Wilson says the high bar leads to board elections with just a handful of candidates. “You get this revolving door of similar people,” he says. “You get less connected with what’s happening on the ground, what young somms are thinking and care about.”
Wines is more blunt: “It should not just be old white guys.”
‘We Need to Be Less Myopic’
The diversity committee serves an advisory role. To get things done, it must go to the board. But its members are trying to shake the board out of an in-group mentality. “The diversity committee is identifying for us that there is a perceived aloofness,” says Broglie.
The Court’s social media platforms are just two years old, and they’ve been used to broadcast, not interact. That’s not how new generations communicate, say critics, and the Court has a responsibility to dialogue with the industry. To be more inclusive, says Rodil, “we need to be less myopic.”
Essential to the task is the question of access. “We’ve had a policy that the door is open to everyone. We’ve come to be sensitive that not everybody has access to that door in the first place,” says Wines. “How can we reach out to other communities, proactively increasing diversity in our industry?”
Covid-19 has done some of that accessibility work by pushing the Court into online learning. The diversity committee is also talking about developing wine programs at historically black colleges and universities. Then there’s economic access. CMSA courses are costly, and blind tasting takes practice.
“The dirty secret is you need to taste thousands of dollars of wine to pass,” says Singh, who is the CMSA’s only MS of South Asian descent. “The bullshit that I had to go through, it shouldn’t be that difficult.” Unlike her white male counterparts, she says, “I was not getting invited to tastings, panels, conferences. The only thing you can muster up is they’re white and a man. We’re in similar buying positions, but they’re friends with the distributor? There was an assumption that you’re not going to turn the opportunity into dollars for them. How many good men and women have we lost because they didn’t feel welcome?”
Morrow wants CMSA to use its clout as a bully pulpit for inclusion. “We have to change the industry, not just the Court. That’s how you make a lasting impact.”
Habibi agrees. “The Court happens to be at the top of the wine world, and if they get their shit together, others flow,” she says.
‘There’s a Tectonic Shift, Then There’s an Earthquake’
Right now, with the hospitality industry stalled, “Covid-19 has provided the Court with this padding,” says Ross. “This is the first year we won’t have an MS exam, and it’s an opportunity to regain trust.”
But the pandemic is a double-edged sword. Though she commends the Court for its diversity efforts, Jones says, “I don’t think people are going to pay that amount of money for certification for a job that’s becoming obsolete under Covid-19.”
The wine world has long been transforming. “The Court was born out of a different era when it was all European wines and white guys at auctions or high-end restaurants,” says Wines. “We did not take into account back then the middle tier we see today, the range around the world, and the fact that a lot of somms are not white, male, or straight. There’s diversity in the community and kinds of restaurants.”
What’s happening, Singh says, is “a tectonic shift from the old generation to the new. There’s a tectonic shift, and then there’s an earthquake. Sometimes it’s a little quibble, but other times, there’s a shaking up.”
For the Court, the current moment is a 10 on the Richter scale. “Gen Z does not mess around,” Singh says. “They want equality, diversity, fairness. And the wine buyer of tomorrow is probably a BIPOC sommelier.” The CMSA should be thinking ahead, Singh contends, putting itself in the position of a Black MS candidate and thinking about the factors she needs to be successful. That means helping candidates with access and opportunity, and making sure they see themselves represented in the Court’s membership.
“Otherwise,” Singh says, “we’re just outdated.”
The article A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas appeared first on VinePair.
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JACOBIN MAGAZINE
A few years ago, when the 2008 global financial crisis was just one or two years old, a coworker and I were talking about the increasingly common sight of homeless people in Auckland, New Zealand. While homelessness in Auckland was nothing new, we agreed that we were seeing more and more men and women curled up in doorways, draped in layers of old clothes and blankets, and holding up tattered signs asking passers-by for money on Queen Street, the city’s main commercial hub.
It was sad, I remarked, that while the problem seemed to be getting worse, the government seemed to be doing very little to help these people escape poverty. She too expressed sympathy for the poor and stressed the importance of giving them a leg up, but confessed she found it difficult to feel bad for homeless people. After all, New Zealand had a generous welfare state that made sure no one was left behind.
“I mean, if you can’t make it in New Zealand,” she said, “then there must be something really wrong with you.”
Her attitude is not particularly unusual — millions of New Zealanders share it. The image of New Zealand as a kind-hearted social democracy, a Scandinavia of the South Pacific, is deeply engrained in its culture.
In fact, this view extends far beyond the country’s borders. A Kiwi in the United States is likely to field three common queries: questions about the country’s natural beauty, about The Flight of the Conchords, and about how much more progressive New Zealand is than America. (There’s an occasional fourth that has something to do with Lord of the Rings.)
To be clear, New Zealand has earned this reputation. Its quality of life is consistently ranked among the highest in the world. In metric after metric — whether examining corruption or life expectancy — it rates well above average. Perhaps most significantly, New Zealanders themselves report extreme satisfaction with their lives.
All of these accolades cover up another truth, however: New Zealand hasn’t been a social-democratic paradise for a long time now. Often considered a “social laboratory,” New Zealand eagerly adopted radical neoliberal reforms in the 1980s like few countries before or since. Nevertheless, its kindly image persists, in and out of the country.
A Social-Democratic Laboratory
All countries have narratives. In the United States, it’s the “American Dream,” the idea that hard work makes millionaires. In New Zealand, it’s the idea that a benevolent, liberal state will look after its people.
This self-image can be traced back to the period between 1890 and 1920, when the country became known as the “social laboratory of the world.” By then, New Zealand already had a long egalitarian streak: it established government life insurance in 1869 to help those who couldn’t afford private plans, assisted new immigrants, and embarked on an expensive public works scheme to lay roads and railway lines. But in 1879, a severe depression dented New Zealanders’ widespread belief in the free market and individualism.
The Liberal governments of Richard Seddon and then Joseph Ward, which first took power in 1893, passed a flurry of social welfare reforms, including distributing free textbooks, improving workplace conditions, establishing food and drug standards, and breaking up large estates to provide land for settlers. The Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894 instituted a guaranteed minimum wage and a system of compulsory arbitration for settling industrial disputes. The 1898 Old Age Pensions Act created one of the world’s earliest public pension schemes, even if it was small, means-tested, and only applied to “persons of good character.” (Much of this came at the expense of the indigenous Maori, who were dispossessed of more and more of their land to make way for English settlers and railroad lines).
Foreign visitors returned with tales of an egalitarian paradise and “a country without strikes.” American Progressives drew on New Zealand’s example to push for similar changes back home.
(Continue Reading)
#politics#the left#new zealand#Social Democracy#neoliberalism#social welfare#welfare state#privatization
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