Waging Nonviolence · 5 days ago

Cooking for My Incarcerated Community Affirms Our Shared Humanity

Ron Guier learned to cook as an eight-year-old out of necessity, burning ramen while his mother and stepfather were away, but those early experiments became something far more profound when he was incarcerated seven years later. In prison, armed with only a microwave and commissary ingredients, he began recreating dishes that transported his fellow inmates beyond the walls-like the pozole he made for Josue's birthday, which tasted so much like home that "his eyes closed and as he exhaled his posture softened," a moment of being "warm, safe and loved" in one of the harshest places imaginable. Through shared meals, Guier discovered that food dissolves the boundaries that divide people by race, affiliation, or belief, creating a community where men "invested in community are less likely to offend against it because they value it." What began as survival-a hungry child learning to feed himself-became a quiet form of resistance, a way of insisting on connection and dignity in a system designed to strip both away.