Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Why we should cook big

Why we should cook big

A community gathers for dinner in the Nelsonville, Ohio, town park.

Dottie Fromal

The Aspen Institute’s Weave: The Social Fabric Project tackles the problem of broken trust that has left Americans divided, lonely, and in social gridlock. Weave connects and invests in grassroots leaders stepping up to weave a new, inclusive social fabric where they live. This is the second in an ongoing series telling the stories of community weavers from across the country.

Plata is communications manager for Weave: The Social Fabric Project.

If it’s Thursday night in Nelsonville, Ohio, and the weather is fine, you probably have dinner plans. Neighbors in the city of 5,000 people in the Appalachian Mountains gather — at the firehouse, the park, or somewhere else — around big vats of food prepared by volunteers.

“Everyone is welcome to help. We serve one another,” says Dottie Fromal, one of the original organizers of the dinners that started over six years ago. The size of the dinners vary, but up to 350 folks have joined in — about 7 percent of the town’s population. Fromal says in 2020 they served over 19,000 meals.


“It’s two to three hours of chaos, but magical chaos. When we eat the same food, look each other in the eyes, and sit at the same table, magic happens. We can see how much power there is in our community when we show up for each other,” she says.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Nelsonville residents have needed that power as they have watched mining jobs disappear, young folks leave, and opioid addictions rise. “People in this town go through so much that we now start every meal by sharing something positive that happened in our lives,” says Fromal. “As we’ve built trust, people started sharing very intimate things, things that you would share with your family.”

For many weavers, food is the path to opening hearts and creating connections that can then turn into after-school programs, friendships across race or class, support for immigrants or neighbors returning from prison, and any number of other weaving projects. And while it might feel like magic, there’s proof that shared food helps build trust.

Two researchers at the University of Chicago ran a series of experiments to see the effects of eating the same food during negotiations. In one experiment, they asked participants to play the role of a manager and a union representative during salary negotiations. During their discussion, they were served snacks. When the pairs ate the same food, they got to agreement much quicker than when they ate different foods. Sharing food, the researchers found, promotes trust and cooperation.

It’s nice when science backs up what we already know intuitively — that food is a form of love. Yet how to cook for a crowd of a few dozen or a few hundred to kickstart a community is not obvious. We asked Dottie Fromal to share a few suggestions from Nelsonville that work at scale. She mentioned that tacos and baked potato bars are some of the town’s favorites, as they are inexpensive, easy to cook and adaptable to dietary restrictions.

"For tacos, we start with tortilla shells and folks add whatever toppings they want. We usually arrange the food so that vegan and vegetarian options are first and meat options are at the end of the table,” she said. “It’s fun to see the kids try new things, like cilantro. And the adults sometimes try something new, too. Our baked potato bar is similar — we start with a baked potato and then the toppings are arranged so folks can choose what they like.”

This story first appeared in Weave’s weekly newsletter.

Read More

Hand waving an American flag

"Freedom, a word that should inspire, has been distorted to justify the unchecked pursuit of individual interests at the expense of collective well-being," writes Johnson.

nicoletaionescu/Getty Images

Redefining America's political lingua franca

Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.

A seismic shift has occurred in America's race, identity and power discourse. Like tectonic plates beneath the Earth's surface, long-held assumptions are adjusting and giving way to a reimagined lingua franca for civic engagement. This revived language of liberation redefines the terms of debate. It empowers us to reclaim and reinvigorate words once weaponized principally against marginalized communities.

Keep ReadingShow less
Blue donkey and red elephant facing off
kbeis/Getty Images

Why Democrats hate Texas and Republicans detest California

Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”

A few years ago, a class of senior honors students at the University of Louisville learned firsthand the harsh reality of political stereotypes. They developed an ad for a hypothetical candidate running for Congress to get the reaction of 1,500 randomly selected people across the country. Two versions were created from the same script, using two different actors. One with a Southern accent, the other with the flat Midwestern delivery.

The students asked a couple of questions: Do you think this person is trustworthy, intelligent? Would you vote for this person? What political viewpoint would you ascribe to this person?

The students were taken aback when the Southern speaker got trashed.

Keep ReadingShow less
Caleb Christen

Meet the change leaders: Caleb Christen

Nevins is co-publisher ofThe Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of theBridge Alliance Education Fund.

A lawyer by trade, Caleb Christen has served in the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps since 2007, including two deployments to the Middle East. He is now a senior officer in the Navy Reserve. Attending seminary and an executive education program in organizational leadership helped Christen identify that communities are not thriving as they were intended and that people must work together to transform American democracy and civic health.

As a result, Christen co-founded the Inter-Movement Impact Project to promote organizing for collective impact. His new focus is on “Better Together America,” a collaborative network providing support to the local democracy hubs that are emerging in communities across the United States.

Keep ReadingShow less
Mismatched letters speelling out "respect"
Thinglass

The power of disrespect: Introducing the Return2Respect movement

Marinace is the coordinator of the Return2Respect movement.

My first thought was to extol the virtues of respect. However, we all know respect is good and right and necessary. But do we really know the impacts of disrespect on individuals and our democratic principles?

Disrespect manifests itself through incivility, impacting how people relate to one another. A 2012 survey conducted by PRRI showed 82 percent of Americans believed lack of civil discourse among politicians was a serious problem. By 2023, a Pew study showed it still at 84 percent.

Keep ReadingShow less
Red and blue heads colliding
wildpixel/Getty Images

Toxic political talk undermines the foundations of our country

Johnson is a United Methodist pastor, the author of "Holding Up Your Corner: Talking About Race in Your Community" and program director for the Bridge Alliance, which houses The Fulcrum.

The 2024 presidential race is heating up and, with it, an alarming trend has emerged in how we as a nation are talking to each other. It's not just a matter of political strategy; it's a crisis that demands our immediate attention.

Keep ReadingShow less