A Call to ACTION
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.
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