Working Side by Side With Latinos

This is kind of a funny story.  I was working at Ninth Street Bakery in the Fall of 2009.  I was mixing bread and doing the oven work, baking off the loaves.  And one day, when baking the challah, I forgot to set my timer correctly, and the loaves came out 10 minutes too dark.  And the customer refused the loaves and requested replacements, asap.  So after a 10 hour baking day that started at 4:30am, I drove back from Carrboro to Durham to mix another batch.  Around 7pm, the dough was ready to shape.  Except I had never formed round challah before (it was Rosh Hashana time, when round challahs are traditionally made).  I asked Antonia, one of the bread formers (she knew how to make all the dough shapes), to help me.  Antonia, a native of Honduras, was helping me, an East Coast Jew, make challah for Rosh Hashana.  The irony was not lost on me.  The loaves were made and baked off for the customer.  But the image of standing there while Antonia instructed me stuck in my mind to this day.

President Trump seems to find the mere existence of Latinos, legal or otherwise, to be problematic.  If he knew who is on the job sites of America, or if he had worked side by side with Latinos, I wonder if he would gain an appreciation for their work ethic and skills.  As is typical for many restaurants, the Latino workers at the Bakery, all eight of them, are some of the hardest working and reliable employees I have.  To denigrate them rather than celebrate them is misguided and racist.

We are working with El Futuro to give away free cookies and coffees to patients who meet certain treatment goals.  This is a small and seemingly insignificant way to support the Latino community in Durham, but I think when Latino families come into the Bakery, it reminds me that all are welcome and that we (and by we I mean the service industry) have a collective responsibility to serve every race and income class.  I hope we can do more in the future.

More here on immigrants in restaurant kitchens: https://lifeandthyme.com/video/migrant-kitchen-ep1-chirmol/