Cooking in the Streets

A Greek man called Mr. Polychronopoulos started the "Social Kitchen." Here is Al Jazeera's coverage of what he did.

There really is nothing to lose taking part in such an activity. Not only will people come together and help out each other and feel better, but the movement will also create an opportunity for people to discuss the political moves necessary for ending the oppression and deprivation of the poor.

I found special encouragement in Mr. Polychronopoulos' telling of how he started by asking people to give a potato or a zucchini. Many supermarkets and grocery stores have workers feeling very bad about throwing away so much food -- food that is still edible -- every day. And many thrift stores would be more than happy to donate equipment for cooking the food and delivering them to others

As Hegel put it in his Philosophy of History:

Whatever might disturb the purity of the soul, should be destroyed. So in reference to property and worldly gain, it is said: "Care not for your life, what ye shall eat and drink, nor for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" Labor for subsistence is thus reprobated: "Wilt though be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give it to the poor, so shalt thou have a treasure in heaven, and come, follow me." Were this precept directly complied with, a social revolution must take place (p.327; my emphasis).

Yes, it is even said: "Think not that I am come to send peace on the Earth. I am not come to send peace but the sword. For I am come to set a man against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law." Here then is an abstraction from all that belongs to reality, even from moral ties. We may say that nowhere are to be found such revolutionary utterances as in the Gospels; for everything that had been respected, is treated as a matter of indifference -- as worthy of no regard (p.328, emphasis in the original).