Bryant Terry isn’t interested in lecturing anyone. But he’s still got plenty to say. For the last ten years the activist, cookbook author and chef has been a passionate advocate for sustainable food in the communities of color most likely to be isolated from healthy food options. His argument? White people didn’t invent healthy cooking and sustainable eating. And the traditional foodways of people of color have the answers to the pressing food justice issues we’re facing today.

These days Terry’s interested in sharing the deep pleasures of healthy cooking and sustainable eating as a way to support grassroots organzing to increase poor folks and people of color’s access to sustainable food. Healthy, sustainable food doesn’t need to be snooty or tasteless, and in Terry’s hands, it’s neither. 

With his latest book, ”The Inspired Vegan,” out this week from Da Capo Press, and a new web series called “Urban Organic,” Terry offers inventive, easy, exciting ideas for integrating healthy, sustainable cooking into everyday life. He caught up with Colorlines to talk about his new book, and shared a recipe from “The Inspired Vegan” just for Colorlines readers, available at the end of the interview.

The revolution, Terry argues, will begin at people’s kitchen tables. It might as well be a delicious one. 

Can you tell me what inspired this book? It feels so fresh.

Most of the book was written when my wife was pregnant with our daughter, and the final stages of the editing work were done during the first seven weeks of her life. My daughter drove the vision for this book. I wanted to write a book that in 40 years she could look at, and have as a snapshot of the world, this movement I’m so active in. I also wanted her to get a deeper sense of who I am at 38 years old. Who are my heroes? What are my values? What are the things I’m working to change in this world to make it a better place?

And in terms of my approach as an educator and activist, for so many people, starting with the heady intellectual ideas, starting with the politics, that doesn’t do it for them. And for many people who have had experiences with people trying to encourage them to eat more healthfully or more sustainably, their experience is that of being harangued, or having finger-wagging nannies tell them what to do. So I understand those types of triggers. I used to be that kind of person.

When I was in high school and I started learning about factory farming and animal rights and starting thinking about my own consumption patterns. I was that guy that I just despise now, yelling and screaming at my parents, and really having this level of compassion for animals and the environment, but not for the people around me. 

So I just feel like for me as an adult, as someone who’s truly invested in making change, it’s not about me being the most righteous person, this is about me growing this movement, and being someone who has a wider platform who can build a base for those that are working on the ground doing the grassroots organizing.

Using food as an entryway, bringing people together through the central pleasures of the table, and getting people more invested in and excited about eating healthful, sustainable food, is a way to change people’s habits and attitudes, and their politics eventually. 

That seems to explain why this book also reads like a recipe for a party. There’s a playlist for every recipe, there’s also a reading list of suggested books. There are links to all sorts of community organizations and activist groups throughout the book. It’s really inviting. 

I understand that these are very political issues, and we have to keep one eye on the policy changes that need to take place to change these food systems, and we have to understand the need for grassroots organizing. When we consider that many of the social movements of the 20th century, the educating and the organizing, it all took place in people’s homes. So it only makes sense to me that the food justice movement will start in people’s home kitchens, and move outward. 

You say in the book that there’s a hidden narrative of African-American cooking and that you want to reclaim the popular idea that African-American cuisine is just red velvet cake and macaroni and cheese. Can you say more about that? 

When people talk about African-American cuisine, they talk about soul food, and when people hear soul food, I think most often they’re talking about the comfort food of the cuisine: the high-fat meats, the sugary desserts, the things people enjoy on holidays. And what often is evoked is the antebellum survival food. To generalize and say that is the whole of African-American cuisine, even during that period, is historically inaccurate.

African-American cuisine is very diverse and complex and the reality is it’s constantly evolving and changing. 

It goes back to my own connection with food and growing up in a family in Memphis, Tennessee who had roots in the rural South. And we’re talking working class African Americans. My grandparents were working poor African Americans who were growing their own food, often times raising animals in their backyard. It wasn’t anything cool or hip, it was just way that they lived. 

You talk very honestly about food access issues, and the fact that just locating a grocery store can be a challenge for people. So I wonder, who did you write this book for? 

Let me put it like this. There have been communities that I visited like five years ago, and for all intents and purposes people would describe it as a food desert. Five years ago there wasn’t a farmers market, or even a supermarket where people could get a lot of staple ingredients. So I feel like it’s very patronizing and cynical for me to write a book and imagine that, well, you know, I’m not going to include ingredients that aren’t available in XYZ neighborhoods, because I go back to these same communities now, and community organizations have been working on the ground for several years, and there is a farmers market. 

And so now, whereas five years ago you might not be able to find dandelions within three miles of a neighborhood, you can get dandelion greens there. Whereas there might not be certain staple products like black eyed peas in a neighborhood I’ve seen people ask the grocer to stock it, and now they do. 

What’s one practical tip you would give to people who are interested in changing how they eat? 

One of the major messages I want to impart to people that we can’t do it alone. For many of the problems that we want to address — the public health crisis we’re seeing, issues of food and consumption — things would be so much easier if we do it in community, with family and friends and comrades. If we do it in a community things would be so much easier.

We do need to be building more community, we do need to be exchanging with those that we love and live around. 

One thing that I always talk about is having food parties. You know, understanding that people work two or three jobs sometimes, it’s hard to come home and make a homecooked meal. So people can purchase food collectively, pull people together to share the cost and share the ingredients. That addresses the cost issue. If everyone’s doing one or two dishes, and everyone’s working on prep and everyone’s helping clean up, it’s much more manageable than if it’s just one or two people doing it. And with food parties, having people say: You make a stew, Julianne, I do a casserole, somebody else does a big vat of peas, and someone else does collards, people come together and divvy them up among the group and then you have food throughout the week that you can pop in the oven and heat up. 

And you’re building community. You’re having fun, you’re getting to know people. These kind of communal spaces outside of commercial spaces are so important for everyone. 

—–

Two-Rice Congee with Steamed Spinach and Other Accompaniments by Bryant Terry, from “The Inspired Vegan”

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Soundtrack: “Into the Wind” by Bei Bei and Shawn Lee from “Into the Wind”

Book: “Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections Between African Americans and Asian Americans,” edited by Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen

Congee is a type of rice porridge popular in many Asian countries. Alone it is pretty simple, but the array of condiments that are sprinkled over the dish give it more flavor and complexity. It can be enjoyed sweet, but I prefer it savory adding shoyu, caramelized onions, preserved turnips, roasted peanuts, minced cilantro, and fried bread sticks known as youtiao (or Chinese doughnuts as my wife calls them). While I call for specific additions in this recipe, feel free to add whatever your mouth desires that day. Think of the congee as your blank canvas and the accompaniments as a colorful palate from which you create. Since this is a big batch, you can continue experimenting with things to add to the porridge throughout the week (think: breakfast porridge).  This recipe starts with uncooked rice, but you can also add water to leftover cooked rice and simmer until it has a creamy texture. It also freezes well, and can be eaten at a later date. 

Congee 

1/4 cups short-grain white rice, soaked in water overnight 

3/4 cup short grain brown rice, soaked in water overnight 

Two 1/4-inch rounds of fresh ginger 

9 cups vegetable stock 

Freshly ground white pepper 

Accompaniments 

Shoyu 

Toasted sesame oil 

Chili oil 

1 cup caramelized onions 

blanched or steamed spinach 

2 scallions, thinly sliced 

1/4 cup minced cilantro 

For the congee 

Drain the rice and set aside.

In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, combine the rice, ginger, and 6 cups of stock.  

Bring to a boil, then immediately reduce the heat to low and simmer, whisking occasionally, for 30 minutes. Add the remaining stock, and simmer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours more, until the rice is broken up and has the texture of porridge. Remove the ginger with a fork. Whisk the congee vigorously for 1 minute, and season with a few turns of white pepper right before serving. 

For the accompaniments 

Serve the accompaniments in small bowls along with the congee.

For Los Angeles teen Perla Gutierrez, a trip with her classmates to visit Harvard was not just her first time visiting the East Coast. It was her first time in an airplane.

She and three classmates from Boyle Heights’ Roosevelt High School head there, in a video series put together by Politik Media, to explore the campus and consider a path most of her peers don’t take after high school: pursuing a college degree at an Ivy League university. As their teacher says in the videos, many high school graduates from the neighborhood don’t go on to college, and even Roosevelt students with strong academics tend to head straight to a community college or a state university nearby to stay close to home.

But on their trip to Harvard they meet a fellow Boyle Heights kid who made it to Harvard, and they get to step outside their close-knit communities for a second. It’s a lovely look at a moment in these young people’s lives when the future is an exciting, mysterious expanse before them.

But be sure to start at the beginning of the series (at the top of the page) when Gutierrez and her classmates introduce their neighborhood of Boyle Heights, an immigrant community on the east side of Los Angeles, where all of their stories begin. They talk about their beloved community and their courageous families who immigrated to the country to give them better opportunities.

“It’s not the best neighborhood to live in, but I mean, you can’t complain,” says Gutierrez, of the Boyle Heights. “Everyone’s welcoming. Everyone’s there for you.”

We’re ending the day as often as possible by celebrating love. We welcome your ideas for posts. Send suggestions to submissions@colorlines.com, and be sure to put Celebrate Love in the subject line. You can send links to videos, graphics, photos, quotes, whatever. Or just chime in to the comments below and we’ll find you. Be sure to let us know you’ve got the rights to share any media you send.

To see other Love posts visit our Celebrate Love page.

No Child Left Behind turned 10 years old this week, and few threw it a joyous birthday. The landmark law called for all U.S. schoolchildren to be proficient in math and reading by the year 2014, but it was hardly successful. It turns out that idealistic goals attached to punitive sanctions levied without adequate support aren’t an equation for success.

The law explicitly highlighted the racialized achievement gap, but set about ameliorating it with a set of punitive measures based on competition and other market principles. 

Most significantly, it solidified the centrality of testing as the way to measure student achievement and demand accountability. The law was the first to require states to report annual testing data to show how much, or how little, progress students are making. In doing so, it ignored the myriad social factors that impact students’ ability to learn; students facing homelessness or whose parents were dealing with joblessness are expected to perform just as well on tests as students who got three hot meals a day and had a quiet, stable place to do their homework every night. Critics have argued that NCLB, in its quest to eradicate educational inequality, has actually only solidified and further entrenched them.

In the decade since No Child Left Behind has been on the books, income inequality has worsened and economic disparities have meant that communities of color, who are disproportionately poor, have gotten squeezed tighter and tighter by policies that ignore their everyday reality.

The troubling case of a 15-year-old U.S. citizen’s wrongful deportation has raised alarm about what immigration agents have long known is a serious problem: increased enforcement has led to the wrongful detention and deportation of U.S. citizens. And young people are at particular risk in a system where detainees have few rights and immigration agents wide discretion.

This week, 15-year-old Dallas native Jakadrien Turner is back home with her joyful family, but last week she was, according to immigration officials, Tika Lanay Cortez, a 22-year-old they had confidently deported to Colombia last April. Turner, who speaks no Spanish, was deported to the South American country after she was arrested for shoplifting in Houston and told officials she was a Colombian woman and identified herself as Cortez.

Cortez, it turned out, was wanted on separate warrants, and even though Turner’s fingerprints didn’t match up with those of the actual Cortez, immigration officials got Colombia to agree to issue the teen travel documents. Turner lived in Colombia for nearly a year, working at a call center until her grandmother’s furious search for her led to the girl’s release and return to the U.S.

The bizarre details of Turner’s case make it uniquely outrageous, but immigration experts insist that the phenomena–of U.S. citizens mistakenly getting deported–is not uncommon. And with the expansion of enforcement programs like Secure Communities absent any increased protections for people facing deportations, U.S. citizens have gotten caught up in the dragnet.

“Part of it is the push for so many deportations, which the Obama administration has ratcheted up,” said Mark Silverman, director of immigration policy at the San Francisco-based Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “If the priority is deporting people then there’s less priority on scrutinizing whether someone should be deported.”

Aside from the political pressures driving increasingly sloppy enforcement, immigration experts explain that the structural mechanisms of the immigration system facilitate these kinds of terrible oversights.

“One of the major weaknesses is there is no due process,” said Maricela Garcia, an expert in how unaccompanied minors navigate the U.S. immigration system and the director of capacity building at the National Council of La Raza. “We place in our democracy a lot of value on due process but most don’t have access to legal representation because they have to pay for it and the government is not going to provide it.”

Because immigration violations are technically a civil issue, immigrants in detention have no right to an attorney even though the consequences–deportation–can be much worse than for those facing criminal proceedings. Multiple reports in recent years have found that the bulk of immigrant detainees navigate the labyrinthine immigration system on their own, or are isolated in far-flung detention centers out of reach to legal aid services which are concentrated in urban areas.

Young people become uniquely vulnerable in these situations.

“A lot of children are scared and their age and developmental experience doesn’t allow them to understand what is expected of them or the legal remedies that they might otherwise be eligible for,” Garcia said. “Often minors do not know what they are agreeing to or how to present their cases.”

In many cases, there is no requirement that detainees see a judge, which only compounds the problem.

“These two massive deficiencies, that you have no lawyer to help advocate for you and no guarantee you can see a judge, mean that very low level ICE agents are in many cases the first and last arbiter of your citizenship claim,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, deputy legal director at the ACLU of Southern California. Too often, he said, immigration agents don’t believe or bother checking people’s stories, even when they might make valid claims of citizenship.

One or both of these checks would certainly have helped someone verify Turner’s actual identity before she got deported, Arulanantham said.

The federal government is clearly aware of the trend, though. In 2009 ICE director John Morton issued a memo providing guidance on how agents should treat detainees who make a claim for citizenship. And just last week ICE announced it would launch a 24-hour hotline for people who thought they’d been wrongfully detained and others to get up-to-date information about their cases.

“The hotline is bleated recognition of the overwhelming evidence that immigration agents are detaining U.S. citizens,” Arulanantham said. “Obviously they don’t need a hotline if it’s a one-off problem.”

For Turner, this chapter of her story comes to a close, even though basic questions about her case remain unanswered. ICE spokesperson Carl Rusnok said in a statement that, “ICE is fully and immediately investigating this matter in order to expeditiously determine the facts of this case.”

There is no guarantee that others might not face Turner’s fate in the future.

“As long as we approach every case as a potential deportee and we rob them of opportunities for due process and an opportunity for them to show why they are here, we are more prone to making the horrible mistake of deporting even U.S. citizen children,” Garcia said.

Jakedrien Turner, the 15 year old African-American girl who was mistakenly deported to Colombia by ICE last April, is on a flight back to the U.S. and could be home by today.

Dallas’ WFAA reports that Jakadrien’s grandmother Lorene Turner, who waged a relentless campaign to locate her granddaughter, received a phone call last night informing her that her Jakadrien would be returned to U.S. officials this morning. From WFAA:

“Trying to catch my breath,” said Lorene Turner, Jakadrien’s grandmother. “You just don’t know how I feel. I’m just speechless.”

Thursday night she received a call from Bogota. It was the answer to a prayer.

The Colombian government agreed to hand over Turner’s granddaughter, Jakadrien, to the U.S. Embassy.

“Oh I feel good,” she said. “It was worth it.”

The Dallas teen, who spoke no Spanish and is a U.S. citizen, reportedly told police that she was a native of Colombia after she was arrested for shoplifting last year. According to news reports, the name she gave immigration officials matched that of a person who was wanted on other charges, and even though Turner’s fingerprints didn’t match, ICE deported her anyway. Turner’s been living in Colombia since April of last year and making a living working at a call center.

For now, it seems the worst of Turner’s harrowing experience is over. The questions surrounding her alarming case–including how a minor was deported from the U.S. without immigration officials confirming her identity–continue to swirl.