Season 6, Episode 14: Jenny and Danielle talk about Mutual Aid

Donations Resources (feminine hygiene products, and diapers, etc.)

https://my.liberaforms.org/solidarity-kitchen-2

Cash Pledges (100 percent goes to families)

https://my.liberaforms.org/solidarity-kitchen-3

Here is our plan: December 2, 2025 (Tuesday), 2:30 p.m. - 7 p.m., North Point Church

Serve up to 400 to go meals for students, parents and/or family members in our school district who have experienced the government shut down, food insecurity, or just plain tight times, with inflation and the job market.

We will cook and pack to-go containers of meals, and be ready to send those off with students and/or families and/or caregivers. We will also have cash donations to put into envelopes, gift card donations to give away to those families that need additional support recovering from the shutdown or SNAP break. If folks would like to give to this, we are in process of setting up a secure format for it, in collaboration.

TRANSCRIPTS

Danielle (00:00):

Cut it off. I just is so swamped with trying to respond to people's texts and calls. We have the whole system going, but I can explain more when we talk. It's just

Jenny (00:12):

Okay. Oh my gosh. Yeah. We can do kind of a short one if that helps, or whatever feels supportive for you.

I'm doing good. I'm thinking about the American Academy of Religions Conference this weekend. It kicks off tonight and I'll be presenting on my panel tomorrow, so I've been thinking about that.

Yeah, I feel nervous, but I feel good. I feel really supported by the Purity Culture Research Collective and the colleagues and friends that I have there. So I mostly excited just to see folks coming in from all over, so I think it'll be a fun time.

Danielle (01:02):

Do you feel like you're going to be able to say what you want to say in the way you want to say it?

Jenny (01:08):

I think so. I keep reading over it again and again and tweaking it. It's hard to say what you want to say in five minutes, but,

Oh goodness. I think there's eight of us. Eight or nine, I can't remember exactly. So we each get five minutes, but then it opens up into a q and a and sort of a discussion, so I'll have more time to expand on what I'm trying to say and it'll be fun to weave it together with other people.

Danielle (01:42):

It's interesting. I feel like we're all in these different places. We are physically sometimes, but even if we're in the same city and we're doing different things towards similar goals, that really strikes me. It's one reason I get excited about what you're doing.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Well, I think I wrote in an email to friends to get it started. Basically what happened is we were at a band concert a month ago and it was the government shutdown, and my kids were talking about it and some of their classmates not having paychecks, their parents not having paychecks because we live in Kitsap County, and so there are two military, well, maybe there's three military bases in the area, so a lot of government funded work employees, the military obviously. And then also in our school district, I became aware that almost 30% of our students are either on SNAP or free and reduced lunch. So if you add that plus the level of the population of kids in our schools, either with parents in the military or in government position jobs, that's a lot of kids. And so I was like, oh, shit, what are we going to do? And I thought to myself, I was like, how can you not get on board with feeding kids? Really? They're innocent, they're young. I mean, we have plenty of riches in our county, in our country actually to do this should not be a thing. So that's kind of how it got started.

Well, now it's called the Solidarity Kitchen. I'm like one member. There's many members of the Solidarity Kitchen, and we try to make decisions collaboratively. Some of us are better at some things like I'm not going to, I did take my food handlers permit test and passed it, by the way, today. Good job. I'm not going to be in charge. I'm not the expert at that. I like cooking for masses. So although I give input, there's other people that know more than me. There's also other people that know more about organizing volunteers or creating forms, and I dabbled a little bit in the art, but there's people that know more about how art should look and the words that need to go on art. I'm out here telling people, Hey, this is what we're about.

(04:07):

Would you like to join us? And trying to make space that's big enough for a lot of people to join in. It really felt like this collective consciousnes