Prefigurative Community Building (Part 6)

Cooking Together is Revolutionary: How to Start a Neighborhood Food Circle as a Power With Project

Food has always been more than fuel. It is the hearth of human connection, the ritual of belonging, and one of the oldest ways we care for one another. In a society where meals are increasingly privatized, commodified, and hurried, choosing to cook and eat together is a quiet act of rebellion. A Neighborhood Food Circle, a rotating meal share among neighbors or community members, is one of the simplest and most transformative ways to prefigure a world based on solidarity, not scarcity.

By preparing and sharing meals in a way that avoids hierarchy, fosters mutual trust, and centers everyone’s needs, we begin to reclaim food as a collective good and build Power With; a form of power rooted in cooperation and reciprocity, not domination or control.

We’ve already covered growing food together, setting up a Food Co-op to democratize our access to food, and setting up free access to food for those in need. Now it’s time to come together to share meal outside the presence of domination.

What Is a Neighborhood Food Circle?

A Food Circle is a small, local group of people who take turns preparing and sharing meals with each other and those in need. It can look like:

• Each person cooks one large meal a week and shares portions with the others.

• A weekly community potluck with rotating hosts.

• A neighborhood “meal train” where families help one another during illness, stress, or celebration.

The key is that no one is in charge, and everyone is valued equally, whether they cook, clean, grow food, or just show up.

Why Start One?

• Reduce food costs while increasing access to fresh, homemade meals.

• Build relationships in your local area and strengthen mutual trust.

• Create time freedom by sharing the labor of cooking.

• Support care for families, elders, or anyone in crisis.

• Break isolation and cultivate joy.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Start a Food Circle Without Power Over

1. Begin With One Conversation

Start with a few trusted friends, neighbors, or community members. Ask:

• Would you like to cook and eat together in some way?

• What would feel nourishing, not burdensome?

• What dietary needs or kitchen capacities do we have?

Don’t try to plan everything. Just listen and co-dream.

Tip: Keep it small at first—3 to 6 people is a good start.

2. Design Together, Not Top-Down

Instead of creating a “program,” co-create agreements. This avoids hierarchy.

Use consensus-based decision-making and collective input to decide:

• How often will we cook or meet?

• Will we rotate meal prep or host potlucks?

• What are our shared food values (local, plant-based, halal, etc)?

• How will we handle food costs or ingredient sharing?

Tool:
Seeds for Change – Facilitation Guide

3. Choose a Coordination Method

To avoid Power Over, avoid having a “coordinator.” Instead:

• Use a shared calendar (Google Calendar, Trello, or paper)

• Set up a group chat (Signal, WhatsApp, or SMS)

• Rotate communication duties weekly

Make sure information is always shared transparently and accessibly.

4. Start Sharing Meals

Pick a launch date. Some ideas:

• One person cooks and delivers or shares a meal weekly

• A rotating weekly potluck

• A once-a-month outdoor meal at a shared green space

Use reusable containers if possible. Share recipes if you like. Or don’t.

Keep things flexible, simple, and focused on relational nourishment.

5. Make It Mutual, Not Measured

Power With coordination rejects policing and perfectionism.

• Let people contribute how they can: cooking, setting up, cleaning, hosting, or just offering company.

• Never shame or judge someone who skips a week.

• Don’t track or enforce “fairness” by portion or labor.

Mutual trust builds over time. Start small and let it evolve.

6. Expand Gently, Not Rapidly

As your circle builds trust, you might want to:

• Invite new members slowly through personal connection

• Partner with a local community garden or grow food together

• Offer meal shares to an elder, new parent, or disabled neighbor

Avoid scaling in a way that creates structure without relationships.

Helpful Resources

• Little Kitchen Academy’s Community Cooking Model – while geared toward youth, offers structure for skill-sharing in kitchens

• The People’s Kitchen Collective – radical food justice art and community-based meal sharing

• Mutual Aid Medford & Somerville Toolkit (MA) – includes food organizing principles from grassroots groups

Real-World Examples

Queer Food Share (Los Angeles, CA)

An informal, decentralized group where queer and trans folks cook and deliver meals to each other, often during times of crisis or celebration. There’s no hierarchy, and all participation is voluntary and fluid. The emphasis is on nourishment, community, and chosen family.

🔗 @queerfoodshare on Instagram

Cooking Co-ops at Spiral Collective (Minneapolis, MN)

Small intentional communities like Spiral organize rotational cooking systems among housemates and neighbors. Each person takes on meal prep once or twice a week, feeding the entire collective. The system avoids formal leadership, centers consent and cultural food practices, and values collective rest.

🔗 spiralcollective.org (site may be archival, but model is used widely)

Why Food Sharing Is a Strategy of Resistance

Community meals are more than just a way to share food. They are a place where real connection happens. Sitting together at a table, even a folding one in a borrowed yard, dissolves the distances that capitalism and isolation have built between us. We begin to learn each other’s rhythms, stories, needs, and offerings. A pot of soup becomes a site of conversation, a place where laughter, care, and conflict resolution unfold naturally. When people gather around a meal prepared with intention, it opens space for vulnerability, trust, and even collective decision-making. Over time, these meals can become the grounding ritual of a resilient community, where bonds are not built on shared ideology but on the simple, recurring experience of nourishment and presence.

In a culture built on individualism, ownership, and productivity, coming together to share food without profit or bureaucracy is an act of defiance. It teaches us how to trust again. It reminds us that abundance is made, not hoarded. And it helps us unlearn the logic of transaction by practicing the logic of care.

To feed one another is to resist domination. It is to say: we do not need permission to survive, to belong, or to build something better.

So light a stove, knock on a neighbor’s door, and make a meal.

That’s where the revolution begins.