Liz Storm is a newly minted graduate of our local high school, a multi-creative social justice poet, wood carver, educator in-training, firefighting apprentice, world-traveler, notable scholarship recipient, youth leader, and a member of the Haida tribe. She has a lot of insights and wisdom to share about local BIPOC youth experience and leadership. We are lucky to have her in our community and lucky that she wants to return back here after she completes her full education.

Listen to Liz talk about her experience as a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Color) youth at our local high school and what might be some small shifts that could make the future better still. She is very clear on the importance of student voice, and in a community that was most recently imagined largely for retirees, her admiration and respect for peers, elders, and traditions of her people, can remind us of the kind world we might want that will need to be led by our youth.

In this episode, Liz also provides a testimonial of joy for a program created straight from the heart of FoodLove and offered only with the deep help and collaboration of Amanda at the Farmers Market (which served as the fiscal sponsor for the program), advisors to the BIPOC student union (Melissa and Azurite), Oceana Sawyer, Michelle Hagewood (for her amazing world-building notebooks that we gave to youth to inspire creativity and use of their authentic voices), Mrs. Cruz at the high school’s culinary kitchen classroom, Darrell Thomas, Wellness Director at the Port Townsend High School, Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, and Chef Wyatt, or my new Oppa. The program, called Food Feast: Tracing Cultural Roots and Identity through cuisine and spoken word, was funded by a grant from Jefferson County’s Public Health Department. (It does take a whole village to raise our youth, particularly in the lingering effects of the pandemic.) Thank you to all of you who helped make this happen!

I designed the program to teach BIPOC and LGBTQ+ youth and their friends who don’t identify as such to cook and to amplify their voices rooted in their identity. We focused on farm fresh ingredients to eat in season in keeping with the Tao of Food. The gift to us as facilitators of the program was all the joy and full-hearted connection with amazing young people— the next generation of leaders coming up in life with all the compassion, grace, energy, and grit to take on the world.

Below is Liz’s poem contained in the podcast:

A-Z ON OUR ECONOMY

by Elizabeth Storm

Abuse from the outside world

Banned to do what we want

Constantly told who we are is wrong

Diversity between communities

Each and everyday we get told that’s a sin

For every mother and father who turns away from their child they lose a life

Gender identity crisis

Hanging above those who can’t speak up lose a life

Illegal marriages are told to be the same sex marriges and

Justice has not been brought to the countless lives that we have lost

Killings of the youth and old are spread out so they look random

Looked over as not connected to each other

Merely to be put in files, in a room locked up

No matter how much we fight for equality economy wins

Open fire if they fit this description

Proceed to have diverse communities

Quick he’s got a gun shoot

Raise your arms and give us your life

So we look like heros

Taken down for doing nothing, you are

Under arrest for your differences

Violation of the white supremacy you are guilty

Without a doubt you were in the wrong

X-rays of the mind after you lied are hidden

You can’t fight the supremacy

Zero remorse is put on the innocent

WHERE CAN YOU HEAR US NEXT?

Liz and I collaborate on social justice spoken word and poetry events in an ever-evolving collective of poets nicknamed “Shattering Glass,” and we’ll be performing together again at Soundcheck, a pre-Thing thing in PT. Come hear our provocative poetry interlude on social and environmental justice at Key City Theater on August 18, 2023 (6:30 to 8 p.m.). It’s called “Conjuring Climate Shift: The Alchemy of Elemental Forces—Rage, Grief, and Rituals of Wonder.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO SUPPORT BIPOC AND LGBTQ+ YOUTH?

As you listen, if you are moved to fund graduation stoles for BIPOC youth for next year, please contact Port Townsend High School’s Director of Well-Being, Darrell Thomas.

If you are interested in supporting more Food Feast programs or the production of this podcast through sponsoring an episode, please contact Rufina at foodlovetao@gmail.com.

WHAT ELSE CAN I LEARN?

Stay tuned for postings of simple cooking videos and recipes for beginners as part of the final pieces of the Food Feast program (which is beyond budget at this point) but nevertheless a good thing for those youth who couldn’t make it to the live cooking demonstrations. I’ll feature some food items that can make for some easy and nutritious meals.

FoodLove: Elizabeth Storm

The Shape of Land