Join us for a night at the farm!

A visual poem/documentary film led People’s Kitchen Collective (PKC), a food-centered political education project based in Oakland/East Bay Ohlone Land. EARTH SEED, rooted in Octavia Butler’s Parables series and the legacy of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, enacts radical hospitality as a survival practice. It does so by deepening our relationships with BIPOC activists, artists, educators, farmers, youth, and elders. EARTH SEED: A People’s Journey centers a pilgrimage through California from present-day Los Angeles to Mendocino Woodlands from March – June 2023.

Excited for the first screening of our EARTH SEED Visual Poem at the Eastside Cultural Center tonight at 7pm PST. Filmed by @fox_nakai , this 5min video introduces our project that unfolded over four months last spring. Sign up for our newsletter in the link up top to be among the first to see it when it goes LIVE online. Thank you to everyone who is supporting this ongoing project!

We’re calling it “A Lil’ Life is Living” during this smaller transition year cause we have permission to gather only 300 folks in the park tomorrow.

Let us know if you’re coming through: https://lifeisliving.bpt.me/

This year there will be no vendors, activity zones, or street closures. There will be one powerful stage of performers including Jenn Johns • BushMama・ fiveminusdeuce • Yak Dancers ・Poets Mek Zou + Shannon Matesky + Nairobi Williese・DJ Aebl Dee & time for us to hear your vision for LiL Festival 2025. If you still need to register to vote, we gotchu with help from Soulbeat TV & CURYJ. Free Breakfast honoring the Black Panther Party legacy and a Free 🍉 will also be served thanks to Zella’s Kitchen, Mandela Grocery Coop, Hodo Soy, & People’s Kitchen Collective.

**Please bring your own na beverage, blanket/chair, and snacks.

COVID Safety: Please rest at home if you are experiencing any symptoms. We ask that folks wear a mask when indoors. Let us know if you have any questions. Let’s take good care of one another!

We are pleased to present a special screening of EARTHSEED: A People’s Journey of Radical Hospitality. This powerful documentary, presented by the People’s Kitchen Collective, explores models for survival and collective futures inspired by Octavia Butler’s Parables series, the Black Panther Party, and the global south diaspora.

• Learn from Director Fox Nakai and creator Jocelyn Jackson, who will join us for discussions about the film.

• Explore themes of land, power and justice as they relate to how we connect people to nature, the outdoors, and environmental education — particularly those from BIPOC or otherwise historically marginalized communities.

• Help inspire philanthropy to continue or begin funding innovative cultural and narrative projects that redefine how people connect with nature and the outdoors, as showcased by the transformative work featured in Earth Seed.

A selection of delicious snacks and drinks will be served at the start of the event. Please note that food and non-water beverages are not allowed inside the theater.

EARTHSEED: A Screening of Radical Hospitality

Come join us at The New Parkway Theater for a special screening of EARTHSEED: A People’s Journey of Radical Hospitality! A project of Oakland’s own People’s Kitchen Collective, the documentary explores models for survival and collective futures, inspired by Octavia Butler’s Parables, the Black Panther Party, and the diaspora of the global south.

Director @fox_nakai and creators @JocelynJackson, @nuocmamcham Hai Vo, @sitabhaumik and more will be in attendance to guide the audience through conversations and meditations about radical hospitality in our world today, and People’s Kitchen Collective and other friends will be providing some lovingly-made snacks.

All proceeds will go to the People’s Kitchen Collective and their work in feeding and convening the people of Oakland and beyond to create social change. **EVENTBRITE LINK IN BIO**
About Screening Partners

The Lacuna Giving Circle is a democratic philanthropic fund made up of LGBTQIA+ AAPI folks that supports organizations serving the AAPI community in California. Lacuna collaborated with PKC as a grantee in 2020, and we’re grateful to deepen that partnership through this community event that centers on the urgent, necessary, and beautiful work and vision of PKC. We’re also thrilled for the support of Philanthropy Together, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP).
(Cover photos by Bethanie Hines.)

Community Health Protocols
Please take a COVID-19 at-home test before arriving at the venue.
If you have any symptoms, please rest at home! We’d love to see you at the next screening.
Wear masks at all times (N95 masks will be provided) outside of designated eating times.

Accessibility
Find out more about New Parkway and its accessibility accommodations here: https://www.thenewparkway.com/about-2/

People’s Kitchen Collective is grateful to be a Headlands Fellow and receive support to complete our EARTH SEED projects. Join @fox_nakai and @justuskitchen tomorrow at 5:30pm to screen the film that shares the experience of the People’s Journey of Radical Hospitality - inspired by Octavia Butler’s Parable series, the Black Panther Party Survival Programs, and the present urgency for all of us to move together in solidarity toward liberation. Repost from @headlandsarts
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Visit as current artists-in-residence and fellows open their studios for public viewing, and stay for a very special screening of People’s Kitchen Collective film, EARTH SEED.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE THE TOWN! Come out and say hi to PKC at 12pm and get a free community plate that includes offerings from @mandelagrocery @minnie_bells @hodofoods and PKC Crew! Repost from @artsforeverybody
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This Saturday 7/27, 12-4pm at Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland, we gather to remember what the Town is for, why we live here, who we love. This Saturday we will be reminded of what we do and have done for our city, and what our city is doing to and for us. We gonna confront some truths, imagine together and focus on healing. We calling for generations to be present. For our ancestors and for the youth. We want to see you there . We worked a deal with the city to make parking available to all attendees at the City Center Garage for $5. 1250 MLK Way, download the park mobile app to get the discount. They have 1400 spaces so you should be good. Parking on the street can be precarious. The other lots are 8-$30 dollars. No Place Like The Town exists because you exist. Don’t let the $5 keep you from this unique experience. Hope to see you there.

Come thru on Sunday!
RSVP: bit.ly/earthseedunderstory

Solidarity Cinema with People’s Kitchen Collective

Join us for a partial screening of Earth Seed: A People’s Journey of Radical Hospitality, film by Fox Nakai! This event is a collaboration between Understory and People’s Kitchen Collective.

We are so grateful to be in community with PKC! Thank you for such beautiful and generative collaborations over the years! ❤️

7pm Doors Open | grab some free popcorn and a drink from the bar
7:30 Introduction | grounding with PKC and Understory
7:40 Screening | visual poem + partial screening of Earth Seed
8:40 Discussion and community connection time

Understory is wheelchair and ADA accessible. Screening will be indoors. Masks required. Please take a covid test before attending if possible.

Cash bar will be open

A special live stream event for the debut of PKC’s documentary, EARTH SEED: A People’s Journey of Radical Hospitality

RSVP here for livestream access

*CAAMFest will be sending out the livestream link closer to the date of the event.

CAAMFest is proud to be a community partner of this event with the People’s Kitchen Collective.

ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY
A timely inquiry, if not its own urgent prayer, “What is the future of survival?” EARTH SEED: A People’s Journey of Radical Hospitality is a pilgrimage through California from present-day Los Angeles to the Mendocino Woodlands. Lifting up the people and places who are forging models for survival and a collective future. Octavia Butler’s Parables series, the living legacies of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and the diaspora of the global south, serve as canonical wisdom for the frontlines of activists of color, artists, educators, farmers, youth, and elders who are dreaming, reimagining, and building survival practices for tomorrow. 

ABOUT CAAMFEST

The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) presents CAAMFest (formerly the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival) in May, the world’s largest showcase for new Asian American and Asian film, food and music programs, annually presenting over 100 works in San Francisco and Oakland. Since 1982, our film festival has been an important launching point for Asian American independent filmmakers as well as a vital source for new Asian cinema.

Join MECA for this special for a discussion with this panel of chefs, cookbook authors and activists for food justice to discuss current situation in Gaza and the fight for a more socially and economically just world.

Featuring: Laila El-Haddad, Jocelyn Jackson, Crystal Wahpepah, and Reem Assil in Conversation

Small nourishing bites provided by Reem’s, Mandela’s, People’s Kitchen Collective, Nyum Bai, and Wahpepah’s Kitchen.

Wednesday, March 6, 6 – 8pm
Oakstop: 2323 Broadway Oakland, CA 94612

Get tickets!

Laila El-Haddad is an award-winning Palestinian author, social activist, policy analyst and journalist. Her books include Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything In Between and critically acclaimed The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey. She writes for numerous newspapers and speaks frequently on the situation in Palestine.

Jocelyn Jackson’s passion for seasonal food, social justice, creativity, and community led her to found JUSTUS Kitchen, and co-found People’s Kitchen Collective. She creates food experiences that inspire people to reconnect with themselves, the earth, and one another with the goal of collective liberation. And she starts every meal with a song.

Crystal Wahpepah, an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Nation of Oklahoma. is acclaimed for being one of the first Native America women to own a catering business and for her business Wahpepah’s Kitchen in Oakland. She views her business as a portal to food sovereignty and a reclamation of Native ancestral knowledge.

Reem Assil is an award-winning Palestinian-Syrian speaker, author, & chef based in Oakland. With food as a tool, Reem uses Arab hospitality to build strong, resilient community. Her widely reviewed book, Arabiyya: Recipes from the Life of an Arab in Diaspora, celebrates the food and spirit of Arab cuisine.

Join People’s Kitchen Collective (PKC) as we share our experiences at the intersection of art, food and social justice. With our practice of radical hospitality, we create deeply political community meals, hold space for the lived experience of people of color, and serve flavors passed down from our ancestors. In this workshop we ask, what is your recipe for change? We invite participants to envision creative possibilities for shifting to meet the only constant.

Each year at Life is Living, People’s Kitchen Collective hosts a space for our community to feel nourished. This year, to honor the 55th anniversary of the Black Panther Party (BPP), we asked 10 year old Mila Terry-Koon and BPP alum Ericka Huggins to be in conversation about intergenerational activism and the powerful legacy of the BPP survival programs.

Join us online for this moving conversation and more on Saturday, October 9th 11am-12pm PT. Register here to attend. When you register for Life is Living, you’ll receive the link for PKC’s program.

This event will have ASL interpretation and live automatic captioning.

See you there! In the meantime, check out the brilliant bios of our incredible guest speakers:

Mila Terry-Koon

Mila Terry-Koon is a 10-year-old Black and Chinese artist and activist from Oakland, California.  She enjoys creative writing, reading dystopian fiction, cooking with family, and playing lacrosse. Mila has been studying cello since she was three years old, and for the past three years, she has been taking piano lessons and learning beat making/music production.

When Mila was five months old she attended her first protest (“Teach Banks to Share”) which was organized by the Colorful Mamas of the 99 Percent. At age four she attended her next big protest in response to police violence against Black people. At age six Mila concluded the San Francisco Trump inauguration protest by singing “This Little Light of Mine” in front of hundreds of people. Since then, Mila has participated in Asians 4 Black Lives and Reclaim MLK Day activities.  She began her first business, Creative Commonalities, with her younger sibling in 2020, designing earrings made from up-cycled materials.  Mila is committed to exploring how she can contribute to positively changing the world.

Ericka Huggins

Ericka Huggins is an educator, leading Black Panther Party member, former political prisoner, human rights advocate, and poet.

 For 50 years, Ericka has used her life experiences in service to community. From 1973-1981, she was director of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School. From 1990-2004 Ericka managed HIV/AIDS Volunteer and Education programs. She also supported innovative mindfulness programs for women and youth in schools, jails and prisons.

Ericka was professor of Sociology and African American Studies from 2008 through 2015 in the Peralta Community College District. From 2003 to 2011 she was professor of Women and Gender Studies at California State Universities, East Bay and San Francisco.

Ericka is a Racial Equity Learning Lab facilitator for WORLD TRUST Educational Services. She curates conversations focused on the individual and collective work of becoming equitable in all areas of our daily lives. Additionally, she facilitates workshops on the benefit of spiritual practice in sustaining social change.

We’ll be baking sweet potato biscuits together on IG Live (you can find the recipe on Page 12 of our Cook-A-Long program from last year) and we’ll be joined by some beloved guests. Make sure to collect your own ingredients in advance so you can bake along with us, then join us when we go live on our Instagram at 9am on Saturday morning!

“If feeding is a form of love, eating is a kind of submission. Meals are conversations and what we don’t say is left over in the food.” — Avni Doshi

Featuring Jocelyn Jackson, People’s Kitchen Collective; Conrad Guevara, artist representing Real Time & Space and Town Fridge; Larissa Gilbert, artist representing The Oxbow School in collaboration with 2727 California; and Lexa Walsh, artist representing Oakland Stock.

During the protests of summer 2020, the amount of direct-action work, community-centered work, and mutual aid skyrocketed as a direct response to create lasting change in our society. The negative impacts of capitalism, western imperialism and borderlines that divide people are arbitrary, xenophobic, and racist; this town hall attempts to uplift community work in the aftermath of the election, and celebrate people regardless of their background or status.

Food is a powerful way to bring people together, and our hope is that sharing and centering will be the theme for this town hall, amidst troubling uncertainty about the future post-election. Food is a way to invest in our communities, and invest in ourselves. It is an act of nourishment, an act of resistance. Focusing on the knowledge that food holds, and by extension, the knowledge and wisdom the land and plants hold, the knowledge people tirelessly tending to the land hold, is key. Highlighting the people growing food we eat, rather than viewing food as simply a commodity is essential to collective awareness. Food has history, the people producing the food have history and their stories and are deeply integral to shared survival in our school community and beyond. 

Growing, cooking, and eating as an act of ceremony, an act of making offerings, an act of comforting, a means to center and ground ourselves within our communities, is a way of returning. Simultaneously, thinking of food as a privilege that not everyone has access to, food in conversation with mutual aid, food in conversation with land ownership and sovereignty is critical.

This event is part of the Creative Citizens in Action initiative at CCA (CCA@CCA), and is funded by an endowment gift to support The Deborah and Kenneth Novack Creative Citizens Series, an annual series of public programs focused on creative activism.

Join People's Kitchen Collective for our annual tradition inspired by the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and their Survival Programs. This year, keeping in mind the health and safety of our community, we will be doing two distributions, a Beloved Community Bag to unhoused community members in West and East Oakland and a Cook-A-Long bag to people who RSVP for our online event 10am-12pm Saturday, October 10th.

To register for the online Cook-A-Long and be eligible to pick up your free bag of community gifts including select ingredients and a full list of recipes, RSVP here.

This Service to the People volunteer day has been postponed (exact date TBA). In the meantime, please check out East Oakland Collective’s website for a list of ways to support - including filling out a volunteer interest form (they can accommodate a few volunteers a week to assist with meal/supply distribution), donating a meal kit for a low income family, and purchasing supplies for the unhoused via their amazon wish list.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter or follow us on Instagram (@peopleskitchencollective) for updates on when this event will be rescheduled.

This event has been postponed (exact date TBA).

To support Red Bay Coffee in the meantime, we encourage you to order coffee delivered straight to your door from their website: https://www.redbaycoffee.com/

You can also subscribe to our email newsletter or follow us on Instagram (@peopleskitchencollective) for updates on when this event will be rescheduled.

This Service to the People volunteer day has been postponed (exact date TBA). Check back here soon for other ways to support Acta Non Verba in the meantime.

You can also subscribe to our email newsletter or follow us on Instagram (@peopleskitchencollective) for updates.

Join People's Kitchen Collective for our annual tradition inspired by the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and their Survival Programs. This year we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast Program with music, dance, and special guests. We'll be serving a hot, delicious, and nutritious breakfast of grits and greens, free to the community.

• 10am-12pm Breakfast at the 18 & Magnolia corner of the Little Bobby Hutton Park (aka deFremery Park)

• 12-4pm Exhibition of the Free Breakfast Program at the West Oakland Library (on the corner)

• 12-7pm  Life is Living festival presented by Youth Speaks! The festival is free and open to the public.

Many thanks to Panther Legacy Historian Billy X. Jennings of It’s About Time and Camille Safiya.

See the video from the 2016 Life is Living.

As part of our Service to the People Series, People’s Kitchen Collective will be supporting Acta Non Verba by working on their farm in Tassafaronga Park for their monthly Community Farm Day on Saturday, October 5th (12-4pm). We may also be harvesting some produce to cook for the Life is Living Free Breakfast the following week!

Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project (ANV) elevates life in the inner city by challenging oppressive dynamics and environments through urban farming. ANV’s quarter acre farm located in the City of Oakland’s Tassafaronga Park is planned, planted, harvested and sold by youth in grades K-8. One hundred percent of the proceeds are placed into individual savings accounts for those who participate.

For more details, and to sign up, email eat@peopleskitchencollective.com stating your interest in volunteering for Acta Non Verba.

Photo Credit: Pete Rosos Photography | All Rights Reserved

As part of our Service to the People Series, People’s Kitchen Collective will be supporting Planting Justice by volunteering on their farm, nursery, or garden on Wednesday, September 18th (10am-2pm).

Planting Justice is a grassroots organization with a mission to empower people impacted by mass incarceration and other social inequities with the skills and resources to cultivate food sovereignty, economic justice, and community healing. 

For more details, and to sign up, email eat@peopleskitchencollective.com stating your interest in volunteering for Planting Justice.

As part of our Service to the People Series, People’s Kitchen Collective will be supporting GLIDE’s Daily Free Meals program by serving breakfast and prepping the kitchen for lunch on Tuesday, July 30th (7am-11:30am you must be available for the whole shift, no exceptions). We have 15 volunteer slots to fill!

To sign up, email eat@peopleskitchencollective.com stating your interest in volunteering for GLIDE’s Daily Free Meals program.

Celebrate Mandela Grocery’s 10th Anniversary at their Pop-Up Village!

More information below:

First Fridays at Mandela Grocery

Mandela Grocery Cooperative
Center Street and 7th Street
Oakland, CA 94607

The Pop-Up Village brings Healing Massage, Acupuncture, Yoga, Herbal Medicine, Food, Cooking Demonstrations, Blender-Bike Smoothies, Youth Activities, Five Keys Mobile Classroom, Women’s Refuge Trailer, Free Books, Barber, Pop-Up Shops, Live Music, & more…

Mandela needs volunteers are needed to support vendors, greeting, set-up, and break down. To sign up directly with Pop-Up Village visit https://popupvillage.org/volunteer/

This is a Mandela Grocery Cooperative event! PKC is helping spread the word.

Join the People's Kitchen Collective for our annual tradition inspired by the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and their Survival Programs. We'll be serving a hot, delicious, and nutritious breakfast of grits and greens, free to the community. This meal is a part of the annual Life is Living festival presented by Youth Speaks!

Video from 2016 Life is Living