| | | | |  | | By Ella Creamer | With help from Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz
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Politico illustration/Getty Images | Hey there, Recast reader! The death of Roe v. Wade, the Jan 6. committee hearings and the Supreme Court ruling on the EPA are giving us lots to chew on. But since a food-focused holiday – July 4 – is fast approaching, today we're chatting with a chef-cum-activist about the politics of our plates. For chef Sophia Roe, food means politics, and politics means food. Her work is underpinned by an awareness that some go hungry while others do not — a knowledge she's said is informed by her own experience with food insecurity as a child. Roe has forged an unconventional path through the world of food. Dropping out of the Culinary Institute of America to take a "cool kitchen job," she worked in restaurants and private catering for years before pivoting her focus online in 2018. On Instagram, Roe shares vibrant recipes alongside candid observations that range from the personal — including her experiences navigating shelters and the foster care system as a child — to the political. Her digital advocacy is equally expansive, serving up both tips on donating food and pointed political messages.
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| In the process, she's amassed hundreds of thousands of followers. Roe also landed a hosting and production gig with VICE, becoming the face of "Counter Space," a show probing the intersection of food and social issues. One episode looked at the structural racism embedded in food systems ; another examined the impact of Covid on kids' ability to access to food. Last month, Roe won a James Beard Foundation award as an "emerging voice" in broadcast media. She's also been nominated for two Daytime Emmy Awards, becoming the first Black woman to be included in the culinary category. The fashion world has also scooped Roe under its wing. Anna Wintour personally invited her to the Met Gala — in an interview, Roe recalled thinking the email was spam. On Instagram, she recently collaborated with Stella McCartney on a fungi-based recipe inspired by the style giant's Summer 2022 collection. I chatted with Roe, who brought her dynamism to the table to discuss food access, activism — and what most frustrates her about the current political moment. ◆◆◆ This interview has been edited for length and clarity. THE RECAST: Why is food a political issue? ROE: Everything is a political issue. We are governed by these entities, are we not? Right now, in the United States, my uterus is a political issue. So you bet your butt that babies having formula and me being able to maybe get food or maybe not get food [are too]. I think now we're understanding how all of these things really do tie back to politics. Even baby formula. You can buy stock in baby formula, right? Government is what allows that to be a thing. They're saying "go start a business if you want to start a business," and that's a good thing — I'm not proposing that the government handle everything — however I think people need to understand that those freedoms are also coming from a political place.
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| Every week, we sit down with diverse and influential characters who are shaking up politics. Who should we profile next? Let us know. Email us at therecast@politico.com.
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THE RECAST: You just won a James Beard Award for food broadcasting — congrats! The VICE series you present, "Counter Space," includes an episode titled "Food Justice ." What's your take on food access in the U.S. right now?
ROE: I live in New York City. There's not even a grocery store in my neighborhood. I don't want to say there's not food in my neighborhood — there's food. There's fast food everywhere. There's McDonald's, there's Burger King, there's Popeyes. There's food. But when we talk about hunger, and we say people need food, we need to be specific. On the flip side, we can't just give people fresh produce and fresh ingredients, because we've created this person that now has to be hyper-consumed with capitalism so they don't know how to cook fresh ingredients any more. Government has told them that "You don't have time to cook … Now you can be more productive; you can stay at work longer because you've got the microwave." I don't remember asking for that.
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| [It's] so much deeper than just not giving people access to fresh food — it's literal cultural eradication. It's like capitalism by proxy of bouillon cube. It's colonialism by proxy of spice packet. You can't just give people tons of tomatoes and tons of cucumbers. You also have to give people back that education. When you take away an agrarian society from a group of people, you make them reliant on capitalism and consumerism in a way that's never existed before. And that to me is terrifying. It's not just that people are going hungry [in] their bellies — their brains are going hungry too. THE RECAST: To what extent does food injustice have a racial dimension in the U.S.? ROE: Everything, always will go back to race when you are in a country that was founded by people who were racist. To me, it just seems so weird that it's that alarming of a conversation. We need to be having bigger conversation about cultural erasure in general, because that to me is what it feels like is actually happening when we eradicate the right to reproductive care, the right to food sans hormones and sans chemicals — when we eradicate those things, we're essentially saying you don't deserve to be a healthy living person.
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Briana Balducci Photography | THE RECAST: How do you think politicians typically think about issues such as food and housing security, and do you have any recommendations for them? ROE: My number one recommendation is the people you appoint to handle any given topic need to understand that topic firsthand. If your goal is to eradicate homelessness, then you need to put someone in a leader[ship] position that has been homeless. It's the same for the Department of Agriculture. If you don't know anything about what a growth cycle is, or crop rotation, or why industry consolidation isn't good, why we should have other options, you really should not have those positions. That's what it is for everything else — if I'm opening a hair salon, do I hire a bunch of makeup artists? No. I grew up in the foster care system, so I wanted a therapist who specialized in dealing with clients who had a loss of both parents, or didn't have both parents in the home. That isn't a wild idea, that is not a fringe concept. That is how you get the best care possible. So when we're looking to eradicate these issues, we need to go to the people who have the most understanding, so that we can get the best outcome possible.
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Roe speaks onstage during the 2022 Creative Arts & Lifestyle Emmys at Pasadena Convention Center, California on June 18. | Kevin Winter/Getty Images | THE RECAST: You have nearly half a million followers on your Instagram , where you post recipes, discuss mental health, and collaborate with large brands such as Stella McCartney. What are your thoughts on Instagram activism, as opposed to offline activism? ROE: Internet activism is wonderful, especially from an accessibilities perspective. Not everybody can be out there in the field getting their advocacy on. So I do think that there's a place for it. However, I do sometimes worry that people think that they're really getting something done when they're having comment wars with someone. Sometimes it becomes just a bunch of people mad about things. We need to be really mindful and aware — alright, we're mad, we're pissed off. Now let's put our heads together and come up with some solutions. I also think we need to go backwards, which means we need to go back to a place where the world didn't have all this plastic, it didn't have all these issues. Sometimes the internet forgets this hasn't always been a problem. Plastic hasn't always just been roaming the Earth. In order to really fix a lot of the problems that we have, we're going to have to go a little analogue, we're going to have to go granular, we're going to have to talk to some elders, we're going to have to talk to some Indigenous ancestors to see the way that they did things.
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Roe speaking at POPSUGAR Play/Ground at Pier 94 on June 23, 2019 in New York City. | Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for POPSUGAR and Reed Exhibitions | THE RECAST: What drives you crazy about politics right now? And what gives you hope? ROE: I'm very frustrated with politicians saying they care about me, or that they care about us, but then create legislation that so blatantly says that they don't. So many of these states that are looking to abolish reproductive care are some of the states that have more children hungry than any other states. If we're going to enforce birth, we need to enforce food. I don't see how that's an unreasonable ask. For every woman who's made to have a baby that she doesn't want, that baby should be fed [by the government] until that baby is 18 years old. That's probably a wild idea to people, but policing my uterus is a wild idea to me. I also am tired of how we talk about hunger in this country only as an emergency. Hunger has been a problem in this country and all over the world for so long. I'm no longer hearing about this emergency food. You need to fix these systems that you say work. There aren't many political things right now that give me hope. I think the things that give me hope are young people, because young people are more informed than ever before. It's a Catch-22: the phones are killing us, but the phones are also making us more informed than ever. I also feel like that fearlessness to be who you want to be is very inspiring to me. THE RECAST: What's your favorite dish to cook right now? ROE: It's summer in New York, so I am all about any kind of recipe that doesn't require me to put on an oven. Anything that's covered in an acidic, rich, herbaceous, fatty vinaigrette — let's go with that. Love it. I want it on tomatoes, I want it on zucchini, I want it on leafy greens and all the shallots and the fresh garlic and the alliums. I want everything in its raw, as-nature-intended state. I'm not even ready for a grill. I just want big, crunchy, raw, crispy, delicious roughage covered in fatty rich vinaigrette. That's what I want. ◆◆◆ It's been an intense week for politics and policy, to say the least. But! Today marks the start of a long holiday weekend, which we are planning to enjoy to the fullest. We hope you do, too, and to that end, we've got an expanded list of weekend to-dos for you. Have at it and we'll see you on Tuesday! Maya Rudolph's Apple TV series, "Loot," in which she plays the newly divorced wife of a megabillionaire,is a hoot. Michelle Zauner — lead vocalist for Japanese Breakfast and author of the hit memoir "Crying in H Mart" — shows us a week in her wardrobe.
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Michelle Zauner and Japanese Breakfast perform in Austin, Texas, on March 16. | Jack Plunkett/Invision/AP | Look out for a new short story collection "Self-Portrait with Ghost" publishing Tuesday, crafted by Meng Jin (who brought us "Little Gods" in 2020.) Los Tigres del Norte, the godfathers of norteño, are the subjects of a new Amazon Prime documentary, "Historias Que Contar" ("Stories to Tell"). Usher pulls it out of the bag — as always — with his NPR Tiny Desk concert. We love the band, too. If you haven't seen J. Lo's "Halftime" documentary on Netflix, watch it ASAP. The megastar is vulnerable and honest as she takes us through one of her biggest years, prepping for the Super Bowl show right after pushing out the movie "Hustlers." The hit Spanish Netflix series "Money Heist" is back — this time as "Money Heist: Korea — Joint Economic Area." "Beauty," a new film directed by Andrew Dosunmu and written by Lena Waithe, tells the tragic, troubled story of Whitney Houston — without exactly telling her story. Meanwhile, "Down With the King," starring real-life rapper Freddie Gibbs, explores the life of a reluctant hip-hop star. Conan Gray finds dating a "Disaster." No disagreement here …
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| Watching Kendrick Lamar performing "Humble" — a song from the album that won him a Pulitzer Prize — at Glastonbury Festival will likely give you major FOMO. Buckle up: It's time to sing along to the latest Carpool Karaoke episode featuring Lizzo.
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| Lil Nas X — a Recast Power Lister — is out with a new single, "Late to Da Party," in which he's got some choice words for BET, which snubbed him for the BET Awards on Sunday. (Let the listener beware: tons of F-bombs heading your way.)
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| TikTok of the day: Bad Bunny's summer
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