A Feast of Ideas
(Page 2 of 5)
November / December 2007
by J. Trout Lowen
It’s breakthrough moments of clarity like this that keep people coming back to Marnita’s Table, a four-year-old experiment in building social capital through food, fellowship, and cross-cultural communication. Part salon and part dinner party, Marnita’s Table is a place where the high and mighty nosh next to the just folks—often as many as can squeeze in the door.
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There are no name tags, and few rules: Eat. Talk. Move. Don’t stay long in the same chair or in the same conversation. Civility is expected, but there are no sacred cows as all manner of topics are served up for examination over steaming bowls of Asian hot pot, savory plates of Mexican mole, Argentine mixed grill, or thick Irish stew.
“It arouses many points in your mind that make you think,” says Cecil Gassis, a 27-year-old immigrant from Sudan who attended a May table on immigration. “It basically all comes to one point, which is making where you live a better place.”
In a society seemingly famished for authentic interaction, Marnita’s Table is a place for stick-to-your-ribs conversation on issues like the Iraq War, affordable housing, immigration, and AIDS. But Schroedl and her husband, Carl Goldstein, say their mission isn’t just to nourish a few select people’s need for stimulating conversation; it’s to build a model for social change that others can replicate.
At the base of Marnita’s Table is the idea that social networking is fundamental to social change. Who we know shapes everything from who we hire to who we vote for to who we choose to live next door to. And in our increasingly self-selecting society, those networks are becoming smaller, more insular, and less welcoming. Breaking bread together helps strangers find common ground with “the other.”
“It’s not going to do any good to seat people in a room and tell them to like someone who’s different,” Schroedl says. “But if I’m a white person living in [a suburb] and you’re a black person living in [the inner city] and we have something in common, now we have a way to talk. Now maybe I’m going to your neighborhood, you’re going to mine, and maybe it’s easier for me to see why I should fund the schools on your block.”
Schroedl and Goldstein are themselves a study in difference. Short and round with a head of close-cropped black curls, Schroedl exudes energy and personality. She talks with her hands, laughs freely, and has the in-your-face directness that comes from parenting teenagers.
Her biological father was of African American and Latin descent, her mother a Danish Jew, but she was adopted as a toddler by a white couple and grew up the only black-skinned person in a small town in rural Washington.
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