The White Dog Cafe - Review

Whole Earth, Spring, 1999 by Judy Wicks, Kevin von Klause

Judy Wicks: The White Dog Cafe is the first floor of my house in Philadelphia. Living above the shop, in the old-fashioned way, helps me see life in a more holistic way. Back when most people lived above the shop--whether a tailor shop, bakery, family restaurant, or family farm--there was an integration of family and work. Kids learned economics doing the family business. Then suddenly it was off to the factory and off to the school, making everything separate.

We strive at the White Dog to develop a sense of interconnectedness among people who are different from each other. One way is through our international program, "Table for Six Billion, Please," which started twelve years ago around the image of walking into a restaurant and asking for a place at the table for everyone in the world.

We have sister relationships with restaurants in different countries where the United States has misunderstandings. We take groups of customers to countries such as Cuba, Vietnam, and the former Soviet Union, and we see the country through the eyes of food. We visit farms, markets, and restaurants to feel how US foreign policy affects the lives of people.

We also have a local sister restaurant project with minority-owned restaurants in ghettoized areas of our city. For instance, we have a Puerto Rican sister restaurant in the barrio. Our White Dog customers, mostly from the suburbs or center city, don't usually go into an all-black or all-Puerto Rican neighborhood. We advertise sister restaurants in our newsletter, which we distribute to 18,000 customers. For example, our African-American sister restaurant in North Philadelphia is advertised along with the new women's basketball team or a play at a theater up in North Philadelphia.

We do an eco-tour each year. The last one we did was on water--where our water comes from and where and how it's purified. We did others on energy, affordable housing, and community wellness. We did a community garden and a prison tour.

We had a program at Graterford Correctional Institution with inmates who had started an organic gardening project. We took vegetables from the garden and Kevin made a vegetarian dinner. A group of our customers had dinner with the inmates. It was quite a moving experience. After dinner, the inmates talked about how gardening had transformed them. We now have have a right-wing governor in Pennsylvania who disbanded the program because he believes prisoners are there to be punished, not to be rehabilitated.

On Monday nights we do "tabletops" with speakers on issues of public concern. In fact, some people kid us that we use good food to lure innocent customers into social activism.

On Tuesday nights we sponsor storytelling. These are real stories by real people. We have a series called "Tales from Jails" where ex-offenders tell their stories. If immigration is in the news, we invite recent immigrants to tell their stories. If same-sex marriage is being debated in the news, we have a gay and a lesbian couple. It's a way of understanding together and getting a sense of interconnectedness in the city.

We have lots of events to celebrate diversity. In the summertime we have a Noche Latina in the streets, with a Latin band and a big Latin-American buffet. We also do "Rum and Reggae." It's all about eating, drinking, and dancing, celebrating in the streets. Fourth of July everybody dresses up. I dress as a pregnant colonial woman and give birth out in the street. I have a sign on my back that says, "George Washington slept here." This big beach ball is on my stomach and I'm in a clown face with a colonial dress. Under the covers I push the ball back through this hole in the bed to deliver my twins, Liberty and Justice, who hop on the stage--a black girl and a white girl--and do a tap dance to "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Then we roll out the Statue of Liberty and sing "God Bless America." It's quite a community pageant.

We have a mentoring program for inner-city high-school students interested in getting into the restaurant business. They come in and shadow our staff for most of the day.

Recently, we've been focusing on one of our sister restaurants in Chiapas, Mexico. I've gone to Chiapas four times. After the Actiel massacre, I formed a group called Businesses for Human Rights and Fair Trade in Chiapas. We work with businesses that import coffee or crafts from southern Mexico. We sent a delegation of eighteen businesses to investigate how the violence affects the lives and businesses of our trading partners. Then we held a well-attended press conference in Mexico City. Mexicans aren't used to hearing US business on the side of the Indians. So they were very shocked that US companies were concerned. It actually made the headlines: "US Firms Call for Peace in Chiapas."

We just sent another delegation down. We're trying to expand our business relationship with the Zapatistas. They have claimed certain areas as autonomous zones; the Mexican government is not recognizing these zones and has been attacking them. We're going to start a coffee company and a honey company in one of the autonomous zones, and have started a trade committee with the Social Venture Network. Through that committee and the business group, we're starting companies to promote ties and use business to achieve human rights.