Sticky Rice Dumplings
for Palestine
Brooklyn, NY, 2024/6A Dumpling-making workshop that combines collective food-making and fundraising for Palestine.
On June 15th 2024, CAO Collective and community members made zongzi (sticky rice dumplings) together to fundraise for an 18-year-old Palestinian girl Rahaf Nasser, who urgently needed money for evacuation and daily survival.
The Dragon Boat festival originates from folk practices of mourning, praying, and celebration. As we gather to protest the proposed Chinatown Mega Jail site, we are reminded of the sticky webs of community care that continue to hold and sustain us. At the same time, we cannot celebrate abolition without reminding ourselves that many Palestinian families under genocide cannot celebrate with their loved ones.
A zongzi can only hold itself together when the sticky rice grains are interdependent and connected with each other. We see prison abolition in Chinatown as intimately connected to Palestinian liberation and the abolition of all colonial apparatuses. With these hopes and beliefs, CAO community members sold collectively made zongzi with colors resembling the Palestinian flag as an entry point for solidarity building rooted in food and community care.
Although many of us were not familiar with making zongzi, we were able to teach each other and wrap our care and love tightly into the palm-sized rice dumplings. In the fragrance of green bamboo leaves soaked overnight, the white and black sticky rices, and the dried red dates, we made a total of 97 zongzi and decorated them with white, black and red strings, all being colors of Palestine.
We tabled at W.O.W. Project’s “springs from below” evening celebration for the whole evening and sold our zongzi to community members and passers-by, while making meaningful new connections. In the end, we were able to raise a total of $1127 USD or Є1054 Euros. Continue support Rahaf and her family here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-rahaf-for-her-education
