A CALL TO ACTION for Chefs, Restaurants and Food Industry workers to host dinners nationwide this October 26, 2026 to Get Out The Vote and 86 Fascism.
Visit CAFE.vote now!
In the kitchen, when something has to go, we 86 it. We cut it from the menu and it’s gone.
On Monday, October 26, we are calling on as many restaurants as we can to join us to organize dinners across the nation to help unite and protect our food industry workers ahead of the midterm vote. Let’s 86 fascism together.
I’ve created CAFE.vote as a website space to unite, organize, and amplify our voices together. It is now live and working, so please visit and sign up if you are a restaurant owner, chef, food service worker, or ally. That includes anybody who wants to help amplify the need to vote wisely and against those that support authoritarian actions we’ve seen committed in our country this year against farm workers, food processors, restaurant workers, grocery workers, institutional food industry workers and basically everybody who has been targeted by ICE because of the color of their skin.
October 26 is coming fast, we know. We're asking every person who grows, picks, packs, processes, hauls, cooks, serves, or sells food in this country to help set a table on the same night, eight days before the midterms. One night, kitchens across the nation with the same message: 86 Fascism, Unite the Industry, Get Out the Vote!
Here’s why.
Last winter I wrote here about what was happening in Minneapolis, MN. Operation Metro Surge sent thousands of federal agents into Minneapolis and St. Paul. They called it immigration enforcement. We lived it as a violent occupation, our city under siege and our community threatened with violence, imprisonment and death.
Restaurants felt it first. Cooks stopped coming to shifts because they were afraid to leave the house. Dishwashers who had worked the same line for ten years disappeared from the schedule. Regulars stopped coming in. The mercados on Lake Street went quiet. Somali cafes that are usually full at midnight sat empty. Owners turned their back doors into safe pickup points. Our group chats went from talking about specials to talking about where agents had been seen that morning and who was in need of food relief or safe transportation.
Then the killing started. On January 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Renée Good, a U.S. citizen and a mother, in South Minneapolis. On January 24, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, during a protest. Two of our neighbors were killed by our own government on our own streets in the same month.
I keep coming back to how fast it happened. A whole industry ground to a halt in a matter of weeks because fear was used on purpose, by people who wanted us afraid and obedient.
I wrote back then that weaponizing hunger is an authoritarian tactic, but it can be defeated by feeding people and standing with them. I still believe that. But feeding people isn’t enough on its own. We also have to vote while we still can.
In January right after Alex Pretti’s murder I put out a call for action on my Substack. I asked the food industry to help sign a letter to Congress, asking our leaders not to hand more money to the Department of Homeland Security while it was terrorizing our neighbors and citizens were being murdered and brutalized with no accountability.
2,800 of you signed. Line cooks. Farmers. Servers. Owners. Food writers. On January 29, I carried those signatures to Senator Tina Smith in Washington, D.C., that same day, the Senate blocked the DHS funding.
It was a real win at that moment. It mattered but it didn’t last. On March 5, Congress passed H.R. 7744 and fully funded DHS anyway.
If we want the people in power to stop treating our workers as disposable, we have to change who holds that power. Our next shot is this November 3, the midterm vote.
Let me be clear about what C.A.F.E. is. Chefs Against Fascism Everywhere is not a party. It’s not a campaign arm for anybody. It’s nonpartisan in the truest sense of the word.
We don’t care what letter sits next to your name or what color your campaign poster is. We care whether you stand with working people or against them. C.A.F.E. stands against fascism. Against authoritarianism. Against racism. Against a billionaire class that buys elections, writes the rules, and then tells the rest of us to be grateful for scraps.
If you’re a Republican who believes in the Constitution, in due process, and in treating every person like a human being and has the backbone to stand up for what is right and break party loyalty, then you have a seat at our table. If you’re a Democrat who folds every time it gets hard, we’ll call you out too. That’s the line. It isn’t left or right. It’s humanity or cruelty.
Our tagline says it plain. Feed the resistance. Save democracy.
Look at who actually puts food on America’s table. Farm workers picking lettuce at dawn. Crews on the line in meatpacking and poultry plants. People in canneries, bakeries, and processing facilities. Truck drivers and warehouse crews. Line cooks, dishwashers, servers, and bussers. Caterers and food truck owners. The folks running school cafeterias, hospital kitchens, and senior meal programs. Grocery workers. Farmers market vendors. Seed savers.
This industry runs on immigrants, people of color, with many LGBTQ community among us. Some may be undocumented, but they are still humans trying to make a better life for themselves and their families and should be treated as such and given paths towards citizenship. Many immigrants are the most essential workers we have and the least protected. When they raid an immigrant community, they raid our kitchens. When they deport workers, they empty fields and shutter restaurants. Every attack on our immigrant communities is an attack on our whole industry. There is no version of the American food system that works without them and the actions that ICE was taking were going to collapse not only our industry, but our entire economy.
I’m an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota. As Lakota, there isn’t much patience for descendants of immigrants calling other immigrants illegal while on stolen land. Our food systems rely on diversity and we must learn to celebrate diversities rather than attempting to homogenize or ethnically cleanse out of xenophobia.
Here’s the ask. On Monday, October 26, sign up on CAFE.vote and host a C.A.F.E. dinner. Hundreds of tables, same night, all across the country.
We picked a Monday on purpose. A lot of restaurants are closed Mondays. Open that empty dining room. And this isn’t only for restaurants. Host it at a farm stand, a food truck, a coffee shop, a brewery, a union hall, a church basement, a school cafeteria, a community kitchen, or your own backyard. If you feed people, you can host. Then share your food, your inclusiveness and your voices loudly across social media.
Invite your community. Bring in local organizers and immigrant rights groups. Bring in the get-out-the-vote groups already doing the work in your town. Invite local leaders, influencers, and anyone with a microphone who will use it for good. Let the people who have been carrying this fight speak.
Then get to work. Here’s what can happen at your table:
Make a plan to vote early. Early voting is open in most states by then. Check registration at the table. Look up polling places. Pick a day to go together that week.
Bring three. Every guest commits to bringing three more people to vote.
Share stories without names. Workers write what this year has been like on a card and drop it in a jar. The host reads a few out loud. People get heard without being exposed.
Protect workers. Set up a Know Your Rights table with a local immigrant rights group. Run a supply drive for families hit by raids. Give a percentage of the night’s sales to an immigrant legal defense fund.
Build for Election Day. Recruit poll workers. Write postcards to infrequent voters over dessert. Put the C.A.F.E. poster in your window and leave it up through November 3. Then tag three more places and ask them to host.
A few house rules keep everyone safe. Dinner is open to everyone, period. Food is never tied to registering or voting. Nobody gets asked about immigration status. Take photos of the table, not people’s faces, unless they say yes. Candidates are welcome as guests, but no fundraising, and if you invite one candidate in a race, feel free to invite their opponents too. And 86 only ever goes next to the words fascism, racism, and billionaires.
Supporters are counted only in total by state and by job. Never named. Your presence still counts. You can cook, drive, organize, and tell your story. This movement needs you, the country needs you if you care about humanity.
The dinner is the kickoff. Election Day is the rush. And nobody handles a rush like a kitchen.
Open your space as a staging point for people to go vote together. Coordinate rides to the polls for folks who need them. Pledge paid time off for your staff to vote, and post that pledge in your window. That’s legal everywhere. It’s not buying votes. It’s respecting your people.
Adopt a polling place and send food to the poll workers. They work long days for little pay so the rest of us can have a democracy. Feed the workers, never the voters standing in line. Some states have strict rules about that, so keep it clean.
If you haven’t checked your own registration, do it today. Several state deadlines land this month. CAFE.vote links you straight to HeadCount, a nonpartisan resource, to register, check your status, and find your polling place.
Fear shut my city down once. What brought it back wasn’t a press release or a politician. It was people showing up for each other. Cooks covering shifts for coworkers who couldn’t leave home. Owners driving staff to and from work. Neighbors delivering groceries to families afraid to open the door. That’s what this industry does best. We take care of people every single day because we care.
Now we need to do it at scale. Imagine every farm, every packing plant, every kitchen, every food truck, and every cafeteria in this country standing together on the same night. That’s not a protest, it’s a movement. And it’s a voting bloc that nobody in power can afford to ignore.
The people pushing authoritarianism are counting on us to be tired, confused and scared. They’re counting on us to stay in our kitchens and keep our heads down. Let’s show them what an industry looks like when it stands up.
Go to CAFE.vote. Sign up your space. Sign up as a supporter. Host a dinner on October 26. Bring three, bring your community, celebrate humanity together. Then vote, and help everyone around you do the same. Let’s vote this nation back toward humanity and sanity.
Feed the resistance. Save democracy.
86 fascism.
C.A.F.E. was created by The Sioux Chef and this post reflects my personal views, not NATIFS.org.
Sign up on CAFE.VOTE today!
Thanks for reading The Sioux Chef by Sean Sherman! This post is public so feel free to share it.
TOMORROW👇 Wear Orange, too.
READ MORE:
https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/orange-shirt-day-2026-events-and-gatherings
My sibling Ronnie Chappelle
By Trace L Hentz, Blog Editor
I just had a birthday. I wasn't expecting a call from Alabama where my brother Ronnie lives. On my 9-9 birthday, his wife told me that Ronnie had died in his sleep on Sept. 6, how he'd been real sick. His funeral was happening the next day (Sept. 10, 2026.)
I was not going to make it all the way down to Alabama to be there, obviously.
Ronnie and I have the same dad, Earl Bland. Earl was 18 when Ronnie was born and his new baby boy was adopted by a maternal aunt. Growing up, Ronnie was miserable, his daughter told me. Even raised in your own family, being adopted by a relative can have its own drawbacks, as many of you have told me.
Ten years later, Earl was 28 when I was born. Earl knew I existed, too, and I explained in my memoir what he told me, how he would have raised me.
The sad truth is my brother Ronnie and I never met. We talked on the phone. His daughter found me after my memoir ONE SMALL SACRIFICE was published. When I met Earl when I was 38, he told me I had a brother, but little else. Ronnie was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Earl didn't tell me his name or didn't know. Earl thought he was a lawyer in New Orleans but wasn't sure. He was wrong. A Navy man, Ronnie had a long military career.
I didn't think I'd ever find him. He found me.
Now he's gone.
Here's the kicker: Ronnie is the second brother I have lost (in the past few years), and I am not mentioned in their obits. Ronnie's OBIT: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/ronnie-chappelle-obituary?id=62373423
Who ever does genealogy needs to be aware that this happens to adoptees. In my case, TWICE!
I need to take a break from blogging here. I may have to tear apart my kitchen again or do some mosaic tiling and hard labor to process this. I know how to grieve, yes, cry, yes, but this pain is more anger.
Check your local listings in the US for NOVA- airs WEDNESDAY, Sept, 23, 2026
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Nova: Knowledge Keepers |
If you’re looking for something to watch or cook this weekend, there are two good Indigenous food options.
Vision Maker Media is streaming Spirit Plate free throughout September. The series follows award-winning chef Pyet DeSpain (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) as she visits Indigenous communities to gather, fish, hunt, and cook with local foods. The 15-minute episodes include spearing Pacific lamprey with the Yurok Tribe, a bison stew for the Potawatomi Gathering, a feast with Onondaga seed keepers and matriarchs, halibut cooked for Haida elders in a longhouse, a Hawaiian underground-oven pig roast, and Tlingit beach asparagus and salmon.
And if you’re ready to cook, Crystal Wahpepah (Kickapoo Nation) published A Feather and a Fork this year, with 125 intertribal recipes including sweet blue cornbread, strawberry-sumac salad, bison roast with chokeberry rub, and acorn muffins. Tommy Orange wrote the foreword.
Vision Maker Media, Spirit Plate link
A Feather and a Fork: 125 Intertribal Dishes from an Indigenous Food Warrior, Crystal Wahpepah
Frances Bones and Fannie Gibson are among a dozen Indigenous children expected to return to their communities after passing away at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The school led the way for others in the country, striving to assimilate nearly 7,800 children by isolating them from their communities and cultures.
Bones was 14 years old when she left her mom and dad in the winter of 1894 to attend Carlisle. Comanche Nation Chairman Forrest Tahdooahnippah said she was the daughter of one of the tribe's chiefs, "Cho-nip (Tsunipu), which means 'bones,' and his wife Cha-yah."
"At that time, in the early days of Carlisle, the children of tribal leaders were the focus of the conscription efforts for boarding schools," Tahdooahnippah said in an emailed statement.
A physician in her area called the young Comanche member healthy a couple of days before she arrived in Pennsylvania to start school. Six months later, she passed away. Her cause of death is not listed in the Carlisle Digital Archive.
"Our community still struggles with the legacy of boarding schools, and I hope that her return home provides healing and closure for her family and for our entire community," Tahdooahnippah said.
Gibson will be returning home to the Absentee Shawnee Tribe.
She arrived at Carlisle on Christmas Eve in 1899 at the age of 17. She studied there for about one year before passing. ICT reports that Gibson died from tuberculosis, the most common cause of death for the students currently being repatriated.
The Chief Executive Officer at the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, Nikki Santos (Cour D'Alene Tribe), said the grief that comes with losing children who were taken from their homes and never came home has rippled across generations.
"We call on institutions entrusted with the care of Native children's remains and cultural belongings to carry out this work with transparency, respect, consultation and accountability," Santos said in a statement. "These children were loved, they mattered, and their lives and stories must never be forgotten."
This is the ninth year the U.S. Army has worked to reunite Indigenous families with their loved ones who passed away at Carlisle. Throughout their years doing this work, there have been disinterment issues due to past operational mistakes — notably, a Wichita boy named Alfred Charko, whose remains couldn't be reinterred because they weren't where the plot maps indicated.
"Navigating the disinterment and return process requires the highest level of professional care and compassion and we are committed to providing the expert assistance needed to return their loved ones to their families and communities," said Director of the Office of Army Cemeteries Renea Yates.
All boarding school students will be honored on Sept. 30 during Orange Shirt Day, an annual day of truth and reconciliation aimed at raising awareness about the Indian boarding school system that impacted Indigenous people across the U.S. and Canada.
The Absentee Shawnee Tribe declined to comment.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
Link to video is here.
From NCAI’s YouTube channel:
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, Tribal Nations face critical decisions about how to protect their natural resources, safeguard Tribal data sovereignty, and ensure emerging technologies align with Tribal values. By exercising governance over AI, Tribal Nations can also harness these tools to preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages, strengthen self-determination, and create high-quality economic and workforce opportunities for Native people.
Whether your Tribal Nation chooses to regulate, leverage, or reject AI, this session provides the clear-eyed roadmap you need to make informed decisions. Hear directly from the foremost Indigenous tech experts on protecting our resources and governing AI on our own terms.
Featured Speakers:
The Risks: Land & Water — Cora Tso, Arizona State University
The Risks: Data & DNA — Dr. Krystal Tsosie & Joe Yracheta, Native BioData Consortium
The Opportunity: Workforce — Danielle Forward, Natives Rising
Innovation: Language — Michael Running Wolf, FLAIR
The webinar was recorded live on July 22, 2026.
Written and directed by Joey Clift (Cowlitz Indian Tribe) and created by a largely Indigenous team of Native animation professionals and allies, POW! is an 8 minute animated short about a Native kid scrambling to charge his video game console at a powwow.
The film screened at close to 100 festivals and won top animation honors at almost two dozen, including Best Native American Film at the 2026 Tonkawa Film Festival.
A 28 minute podcast interview with Joey Clift is available here, where he talks about the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, storytelling and animation, and Native comedians.
By Trace Hentz, Blog Editor
My birthday is on 9-9. So 25 years ago we went to New York City to celebrate! I wanted to go to the top of the Empire State Building. (Remember my husband is from Harlem and hates doing tourist stuff.) But we went up and I shot photos of the World Trade Center, of course. (I have so many really special photos in boxes...)
So I went home to Connecticut and was in an editorial meeting for the Pequot Times and we all ran to the television to watch what happened today, on 9-11 in New York, 25 years ago.
As a journalist I had to go back, so 12 days later I took this photo.
I am 70 now.
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Greenland's justice minister has said the government cannot conclude whether genocide was committed against the Inuit community after experts examined the use of forced contraception in the 1960s and 70s.
"We cannot say, on behalf of the government, whether there was genocide," Marianne Paviasen told reporters. "This is something we can continue to debate."
Two reports on the practice were released on Friday, a year after Denmark apologised for the treatment of Inuit women and girls in its autonomous territory.
Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said a "reconciliation commission" would be set up while Danish PM Mette Frederiksen promised the governments would work together.
Denmark has passed a compensation law to pay 300,000 Danish crowns (£34,404; $46,800) to each woman affected by the policy.
Records from the national archives show that, between 1966 and 1970, 4,500 Greenlandic women and girls, some as young as 13, had an intra-uterine device (IUD) implanted under a birth-control programme administered by Danish doctors.
In recent years, many women came forward to say they had been fitted with an IUD without their knowledge or consent.
Use of the birth control was so widespread that Greenland's population growth severely slowed.
Frederiksen issued an apology last August to Greenlandic women and their families affected by "systematic discrimination".
In 2024, a former prime minister of Greenland, Mute B Egede, described the practice as "genocide".
Under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, one definition of genocide is "imposing measures intended to prevent births" within a "national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
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A three-month-long federal inquiry into racism, hate and violence directed at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people wrapped up in Naarm/Melbourne on August 7.
It received hundreds of written submissions, detailing widespread abuse, harassment and structural discrimination against First Nations people.
Editor’s note: As a member of Discourse Community Publishing, The Discourse uses quotation marks around the word “school” because the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found residential “schools” were “an education system in name only for much of its existence.”
Snuneymuxw Elder and Knowledge Keeper C’tasi:a (Geraldine Manson) has dedicated much of her life to learning and sharing traditional knowledge with community members.
A residential “school” and Sixties Scoop survivor, C’tasi:a told The Discourse she was mentored by Snuneymuxw Elders who “felt that they wanted to take the wild stallion out of [her] and replace it with culture and a life of traditional values.”
She spent her time shadowing her Elders, travelling with them and sitting by their side in meetings. She wasn’t allowed to take notes and instead learned through repetition about the land, resources and the history of her people.
In 2008 her auntie, the late Ellen White, Kwulasulwut, retired from her role as Elder in Residence at Vancouver Island University and selected C’tasi:a to replace her. It’s there that C’tasi:a shared her knowledge with students and faculty for 17 years.
She retired from her Elder in Residence role in April 2025 but felt she had another calling.
Interview and more: KEEP READING: https://thediscourse.ca/nanaimo/snuneymuxw-elder-ctasia-shares-traditional-plant-knowledge-in-new-book
The nonpartisan Uniform Law Commission — which drafts and promotes the enactment of consistent state laws — proposes an update for ICWA, the federal statute passed in 1978 to protect tribal children and families.
After years of study, the nonpartisan commission that proposes model state laws has released recommendations for updating and clarifying the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Since ICWA was enacted in 1978 to better protect tribal families in child welfare cases, compliance has been inconsistent nationwide, and Native American children continue to be overrepresented in the foster care system.
Seventeen states, however, have strengthened ICWA provisions by passing their own laws.
The commission’s draft Uniform State Indian Child Welfare Act, released July 15, is designed as a template for states that have not passed local ICWA laws, and details best practices. If enacted by state legislatures, the proposed rules would strengthen requirements that social workers make “active efforts” to prevent family separation, such as prioritizing tribal kin for out-of-home placements and providing Indigenous parents more opportunities to reunite with children before their parental rights are terminated. It would also ensure that parental abuse or neglect findings are not solely based on “community or family poverty.”
Though it is nonbinding unless states enact the model law, the uniform state ICWA proposal is more expansive and detailed than the federal law. It offers clearer guidance on cultural competency, including addressing language barriers in child welfare proceedings. It also clarifies that tribal law should carry the same weight as state law.
“Differences in how states interpret and implement ICWA have created a patchwork of requirements that can hinder effective advocacy.”
— Domingo DeGrazia, ICWA attorney for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe
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Nobody handed Sixties Scoop survivors a language for loving themselves as Indigenous people. Separated as children from family, culture, community, land and their own languages, many of them built one anyway.
Dr. Marlyn Bennett, PhD, wants that understood as a gain. Not what was left over after everything else was taken, but something survivors made and added to their own lives. And now, she says, they are passing it on.
"I wanted to look at it from a strengths perspective," says Bennett, herself a Sixties Scoop survivor, a member of Sandy Bay Ojibway Nation, and a researcher at the University of Calgary who is researching this dark period in Canadian history through this very novel lens.
Most research and public conversation about the Sixties Scoop begins and ends with what was taken and the harms perpetrated. Families separated. Cultures disrupted. Identities fractured. Those accounts are essential, Bennett says, and they must continue to be told. But when absence becomes the whole story, survivors appear in it only as people that things were done to.
Instead, Bennett wants to know what sustained survivors of that period — beginning in the 1950s and into the 1980s — when child-welfare authorities removed more than 24,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children from their families and placed them in non-Indigenous foster and adoptive homes. The extension of provincial child-welfare jurisdiction onto reserves in 1951 saw removals of children climb sharply in the decades that followed, overlapping with residential schools, Indian hospitals and forced displacement from homelands. Children were placed in homes across Canada and, in many cases, in the United States and overseas.
According to Bennett, her research project, Exploring the Language of Love Across Generations: The Lived Experiences of Sixties Scoop Survivors and Their Families, doesn’t diminish any of that record. Instead, Bennett asks how, despite everything, did survivors learn to love themselves as Indigenous people? What did they teach themselves that no one was there to teach them? And what happens to that knowledge when it reaches the next generation?
KEEP READING: https://ucalgary.ca/news/what-sixties-scoop-survivors-built-and-are-teaching-forward-their-children-and-grandchildren
Your History Class Was a F*cking Lie by Sean Sherman (Or: How the American Educational System Has Always Been a Racist Propaganda Program...
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