What will Asian America eat after the revolution? From hunger and greed to love and nourishment What will we eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner before, during, and after this great transformation? What can we eat that will not contradict movements for freedom will not support another’s greed rob us of our pocketbooks screw with our minds and momentarily numb us of the present horrors What will we eat that keeps us strong and rooted Could we grow and prepare our own foods? Collect rain water and re-vegetate the L.A. River? Support the people who cut, pick, prune, and hoe the land Let Thai restaurants cook without catering to potato palates Turn golf courses into animal sanctuaries letting weeds and brush run wild Not allow our children to be reared in the clutches of Happy Meals but read to them our foreparent’s haiku sing them songs about "freeing the land" and guide young fingers over taunt koto strings Supermarkets turned into co-ops growing vegetables on their roofs Mc Donald’s turned into free medical clinics Kentucky Fried Chicken and El Pollo Loco chickens set free Pizza Hut and Dominos choking on each other’s tasteless dry crust as they scramble to flee neighborhood control 69 cents half-cooked logo wrapped Taco Bells, stripped and turned into youth centers with arts supplies reading rooms and warm couches to "talk story" with community elders Imagine subdividing mansions converting their spacious lawns into gardens and parks providing food and energy for their former servants		No longer allow Minute Maid to burn 40% of its oranges to control supply and demand But will we demand justice from the bottom up Demand not only a piece of the pie, but to bake thousands together so rich and thick that everyone eats and grows But remember, transformation will not happen with a flip of a switch real democracy is not fast food we must to turn the soil for tomorrow’s harvest Today, we only plant the rice for our children’s children but what a simmering feast they will inherit What can we eat now that says we want to be free struggling to be free, laying bricks to be free continuing our ancestor’s fight to be free Plastic spoons plastic knives plastic forks plastic cups plastic earth plastic lives Shrink-wrapped generic one for all and all for one land-grabbing crunchy munchies There is something healthier more filling more nutritious than their germ drenched assimilationist meat We will not lose the caring and sharing inherent in our chests Do we have the courage to ask who in our community is not eating to resist material bulimia and together attack the reasons why we all hunger to support a gluttonous few Do we?
	This piece was written early in my relationship with Tony. I didn't fully understand what he was writing about at the time. I thought it was a little nutso. But when I went to Cuba in August 2001, I immediately thought about this piece. Ideas that seemed radical and unattainable to me then, were profoundly visible in Cuba, with free medical clinics, subdivided mansions, youth centers and organic farming.-- Jenni Kuida Originally published in The Rafu Shimpo, October 31, 1995 Updated: 8/17/02