--- type: Article title: 'No, Not Like That: How Food Became Performance Art' slug: no-not-like-that-how-food-became-performance-art url: https://commons.livingsys.org/no-not-like-that-how-food-became-performance-art.md resource: https://commons.livingsys.org/no-not-like-that-how-food-became-performance-art.md published: 2025-09-10 modified: 2026-04-09 category: implementation-guides register: memoir audience_pain_vectors: - community-food-organizer - resource-constrained-household - smallholder-needs-market - watershed-water-security-community domains: - food - water - waste - community - coordination thesis_tags: - supermarket-myth - upstream-intervention - coordination-as-infrastructure - blast-chiller - humisoil - structural-vacuum - vendor-not-advocate receipts: - 1992 LA riots / 32nd Street Market (USC property) protected by National Guard - Freakonomics 2019 episode; historian Shane Hamilton; economist Peter Timmer on supermarkets as Cold War propaganda - On Common Ground formed 2016; Five Star nightclub (2006-2017) - Clarence Birdseye blast chiller (1920s); ThreeSquare / MGM Grand food rescue - Baja/Ensenada colonias upstream RO water filtration - Kenya (1 Zoom call) vs. Colorado nonprofit sector (4 years) key_reframe: Communities that used to feed themselves started performing food security instead. Food deserts aren't policy failures — they're where Cold War propaganda stopped being profitable but we never rebuilt the coordination infrastructure. whimsy_marker: I have this twisted habit of happening to be in interesting places at precisely the wrong time. Or maybe the right time, depending on how you look at it. thread_anchor: https://shannondobbs.com/the-thread description: Communities that used to feed themselves started performing food security instead. Food deserts aren't policy failures — they're where Cold War propaganda stopped being profitable but we never rebuilt the coordination infrastructure. tags: - supermarket-myth - upstream-intervention - coordination-as-infrastructure - blast-chiller - humisoil - structural-vacuum - vendor-not-advocate - food - water - waste - community - coordination timestamp: '2026-04-09' --- # No, Not Like That: How Food Became Performance Art *A Field Guide to American Food System Insanity (For my International Friends Who Can't Believe This Is Real)* I'm old enough to remember when video killed the radio star, and I can pinpoint exactly where the fracture occurred: we stopped dancing for the sake of dancing and started learning to perform instead. Didn't happen all at once, and a few folks still dance just to dance—that's why I've been gravitating toward raves since the '90s and burner culture ever since. These remain some of the last bastions where people show up to vibe, not merely to be seen vibing. Somewhere along the way we let the same thing happen to food. Communities that used to feed themselves started performing food security instead. My friends in Kenya, Trinidad, and elsewhere keep asking me the same question: "Why is food so f#%*ing complicated in America?" Let me tell you a story. ## The Accidental Education of a Systems Detective I have this twisted habit of happening to be in interesting places at precisely the wrong time. Or maybe the right time, depending on how you look at it. ### Act I: The Dropout's Guide to Crisis Management (1992) Spring 1992, Los Angeles California, where your protagonist was until a few months before a film student at the University of Southern California. I was a college dropout at risk of homelessness with campus admin breathing down my neck about past rents, waiting to ship out for Army basic training as a linguist for a PSYOPS reserve unit down in Orange County, when the Rodney King verdict drops and LA explodes into riot. There I was for nearly two weeks, camping out on the 7th floor in a friend's USC dorm while the city burned outside. Here's the thing about being the uninvited addition to any party—you get to observe without anyone caring what you think. What I watched: The 32nd Street Market (Property owner USC later comes in as an important character in multiplying regional food insecurity) being protected by National Guard troops called out by the governor to protect the last remaining retail distribution point for food in South Central LA, with instructions to "only allow in specific numbers of people." Three black pastors representing the community also stood vigil, coalescing a united front to de-escalate and deflect the crowd from storming the resource and save the last remaining retail food access in South Central. Communities organizing themselves when official systems failed, and official systems recognizing the importance of collaboration with communities in one lesson. My contribution to the chaos? I had four years of Marine Military Academy ROTC behind me, so I knew where to go for intel. Convinced my dorm friends to help me expand our dining hall "procurement operations" to include the National Guard troops across the street. Traded stolen donuts for information about what was actually happening versus what the media was saying. First pattern recognition: Communities don't need institutions to organize. They do need support from government but can do without if circumstances arise. ### Act II: Learning the Science of Bullshit (1992-2005) Enlisted after graduation with that 3.87 GPA and honors from one of the toughest service academies in the US. Learned civil affairs and psychological operations—suddenly had frameworks for what I'd witnessed during the riots. Turns out there's actual science behind creating "climates of opinion" and spotting when communities are organizing versus when they're being managed. Got out in 1998, washed up in Vegas like a bedraggled cat looking for a home. Seven years navigating through back doors and service entrances, from Marriott LAX bartending at 19 (passed my military dependent ID to HR, they didn't double-check the expiration dates) to day shift manager at Spearmint Rhino. Nearly lost them their license in 1999 when our after-party DJ got busted selling ecstasy to undercover cops during a sting operation. I was just the promotion guy hanging with Laser Vida underground art collective, but apparently being in the wrong place at the wrong time was becoming my specialty. Watched Mayor Goodman discover how successful our First Friday events were and promptly gentrify us out of Fremont Street by bringing in LA artists and pricing out the locals. Didn't matter. We just went down the street and kept doing our thing. Pattern recognition building: authentic community always finds a way around institutional interference. ### Act III: The Reno Laboratory Years (2006-2017) Took over Five Star nightclub in 2006. Turned an LGBT community center into the top dance venue in Northern Nevada by asking a simple question: what does this community actually need instead of what nightclubs are "supposed" to provide? Commercial kitchen shoehorned into a side pocket. Safety normalized in downtown chaos. Diverse populations finding belonging in the same space. Did the impossible every day because that's what communities do when you get out of their way. Sold it turnkey in January 2017. Once you figure out how to make impossible things work, you can do it again. But by then, I'd noticed something troubling. Health scare from overweight and poor eating habits hit me around the same time I was watching customers, staff, and friends falling apart for identical reasons—except they didn't have my advantages of vehicle access and steady income for healthy options. Started paying attention to food access patterns. Formed On Common Ground in 2016 to do something about it. First fundraiser: male revue at the bar. Had no idea how to actually fundraise, so I threw my community a party instead. Worked beautifully. Buddhist center friends taught me sliding-scale abundance thinking. Communities want to support solutions, not sit through PowerPoint presentations about problems. ### Act IV: The Detective Work (2015-2025) Spent a decade observing grocery retail challenges, watching the dysfunction up close. Every store hemorrhaging resources, every community losing access, every solution blocked by "that's not how we DO things around here." Reverse-engineered what was killing community groceries: the supermarket model literally can't work in communities that need actual food access instead of propaganda displays. Fun fact from a Freakonomics podcast in 2019: supermarkets emerged around 1930 as Cold War propaganda. Historian Shane Hamilton explains: "The supermarket was in fact the endpoint of the U.S. government's battle for agricultural abundance against the U.S.S.R. Our farm policies were built to dominate, not necessarily to nourish." Economist Peter Timmer: "We clearly won the abundance war. But the American victory was, to some degree, a Pyrrhic victory, whose aftereffects are still being felt." So I designed an alternative—Old-style country store efficiency paired with cutting edge coordination tech and bulk bin economics. Took customers back to whole, healthy foods without the extractive overhead that makes community groceries impossible. Started teaching food pantries how to run hybrid models alongside their donation programs. That went over like a fart in church for their top-down control network that started seeing a threat in their donors knowing other options exist, and the next thing I knew I was on the outs with the powers that be. Meanwhile, the synchronicities kept flowing. Happened to be talking about biodigesters on LinkedIn when somebody recommended I reach out to this guy in Texas about "weird shit called HumiSoil." Year later, turns out he's best friends with the guy I collaborated with on developing community infrastructure models. Also happened to learn about ThreeSquare's collaboration with MGM Grand rescuing prepared meals using blast chillers. Used my position to get their back information and replication logic. Clarence Birdseye invented blast chiller technology in the 1920s—only took until 2016 for someone to figure out food rescue applications. Then late 2019: half-built grocery store got ripped away by property owner "manipulated by area interests" into violating our lease, changing the locks, and ordering their staff not to let our volunteers on site. That was the final straw. A month later, OCG voted to terminate efforts in Northern Nevada and seek more fertile alignments. ### Act V: The Coordinated "No" Symphony Food banks, composting companies, waste management corporations, municipal agencies—every sector hit the same note when communities started accessing functional alternatives: "We would love to help, but we can't afford to let our stakeholders know that other options exist." Buddhist center friends who taught me abundance thinking asked me to leave their names out of conversations because the reputation destruction got so systematic they couldn't risk association. When people who've known you for years feel unsafe being publicly connected to you, that's not personal failure—that's coordinated suppression. The pattern was undeniable. Told the board I saw no path forward in Northern Nevada. Time to find fertile ground elsewhere. ### Act VI: The Exile and Revelation (2020-2021) Moved to Baja Mexico with my then-partner, intending permanent exit from US food system drama. Spent COVID hiding under a gorgeous rock on an Ensenada beach while hell broke loose north of the border. Best healing decision ever. Then my landlord told me a story that changed everything. The colonias at city outskirts were solving their water dysfunction by identifying the upstream point where water flowed into their community and installing reverse osmosis filtration there. Instead of waiting for municipal fixes that never came, they isolated their solution at the source and bypassed systemic dysfunction entirely. *Suddenly, everything clicked.* Food systems could work the same way. Approach upstream, bypass the institutional theater, solve it at the coordination layer before communities even encounter the dysfunction. ### Act VII: The Field Test (2021-2024) Moved to Colorado armed with an upstream intervention strategy. Started experiencing identical resistance tactics—not just similar, *identical*. Same phrases, same timing, same whisper networks crossing state lines. Three years attempting nonprofit sector collaboration. Discovered unregistered lobbyists hiding in NGO staff and volunteer positions, corrupting community organizations from within. Time for the pivot: farmers don't need permission from urban dysfunction. They can bypass it entirely by developing vertical infrastructure into cities—grocery stores in food deserts, commercial kitchens for processing. Position as vendors providing municipal leaders exactly what urban service providers won't deliver. Edge-runner philosophy as competitive advantage: sidestep industry suppression through coordination infrastructure. ### Act VIII: The International Validation (2024-Present) Few months after pivoting away from corrupted nonprofit approaches, I had multiple international projects coordinating across three continents. Not because I'm particularly brilliant, but because communities that haven't been broken by propaganda still remember how coordination actually works. **Time Comparison for Building Community Infrastructure:** - Kenyan village: 1 Zoom call, 2 months later fully fleshed out strategy pursuing funding - Trinidad and Tobago waste-to-value: Few months, active pilots pending coalition development strategy - Colorado nonprofit sector: 4 years and counting, too corrupted to function **Community Response to Coordination Strategies:** - Global South hungry for change: "When can we start?" - United States dysfunction: "That's not how we DO things around here." **Technology Adoption Reality:** - HumiSoil bacterial photosynthesis: Embraced across Global South, fought by US waste management - Blast chillers for food rescue: Invented 1920s, applied to food rescue in 2016, fought by food banks who pulled of their own pilot out post-COVID forcing corporate adoption - Community grocery hybrids: Work everywhere propagandized supermarket model hasn't calcified ## The Pattern Behind the Madness Here's what my international friends don't understand about American food system dysfunction: it's not accidental. According to research from the Freakonomics podcast guests in 2019, "The U.S. Information Agency were searching for concrete forms of propaganda to display America's wealth" and created supermarkets as "the endpoint of an industrial agriculture supply chain" designed to **perform abundance rather than create food access** *(emphasis mine)***.** We performed abundance so convincingly we forgot communities used to actually feed themselves. Food deserts aren't policy failures—they're where Cold War propaganda stopped being profitable but we never rebuilt the coordination infrastructure communities actually need. Every institution tasked with "solving" food system challenges has developed operational models requiring problems to persist. Food banks need hunger. Waste management needs disposal. Retailers need scarcity to maintain pricing power. The Buddhist center friends who taught me abundance thinking asking me to distance myself? Perfect example. Reputation destruction so systematic that people teaching community empowerment can't risk association with someone actually implementing it. ## The Upstream Solution That Actually Works The colonias taught me something beautiful: you don't need to fix Lake Victoria to get village drinking water. Find the upstream intervention point and solve it there. Applied to food systems: focus clean organic waste streams toward soil amendment processing (HumiSoil bacterial photosynthesis), direct resulting amendments to regenerative farmers, create economic incentives for pesticide-free production, build blast chiller food rescue capacity, develop community-owned grocery infrastructure that makes abundance inevitable rather than ideologically dependent. Rural farmers approach cities as vendors providing municipal leaders exactly what urban service providers won't: waste disposal cost conversion to revenue streams, food security infrastructure, community economic development, climate goal achievement without regulatory complexity. Communities worldwide implement this coordination when they have supportive frameworks and resources. The solutions exist, work everywhere they're tried, and create cascading benefits across environmental restoration, economic development, and community resilience. ## The Choice Point for Global Audiences If you're reading this from somewhere that communities can still implement obvious solutions without institutional permission, you're watching American food system dysfunction the way we used to watch Soviet breadlines—wondering why they're making something so simple so complicated. The difference is Americans are starting to notice. Especially the ones who remember what authentic community looks like, who've experienced coordination that actually works, who understand the difference between institutional performance and community empowerment. We're building coordination infrastructure that bypasses the performance requirements. Not to reform American institutions—they're designed to maintain dysfunction. To create spaces where communities can implement solutions that work everywhere American propaganda hasn't prevented them. The revolution isn't coming. It's been happening everywhere institutions aren't blocking it. Communities in Kenya, Trinidad, Brazil, and thousands of other locations are building the coordination infrastructure that makes regenerative practices financially inevitable. Some of us are done performing food security. Ready to build actual food access? ## For American Communities Ready to Stop Performing The same communities that organize beautifully during crises, create safety in underground spaces, and build belonging across difference can absolutely coordinate functional food systems. The capacity exists. The technology exists. The economic models work. The barriers are artificial. And artificial barriers have expiration dates. After thirty years of happening to be in places where systems break down and watching how communities actually organize when performance requirements disappear, the pattern is clear: we don't need more management. We need coordination infrastructure that amplifies community capacity rather than suppressing it. That's what we're building. Framework for communities to build their own solutions upon. Nexus and Node infrastructure that makes abundance inevitable instead of ideologically dependent. The water flows around obstacles toward fertile ground. Some of us are flowing with it. --- *Shannon Dobbs is founder of Fellowship of Living Systems, building coordination infrastructure for regenerative communities across three continents. After decades of edge-runner navigation through American institutional dysfunction, Shannon now specializes in connecting communities that want solutions with coordination strategies that actually work.* **P.S. to my friends in Reno: I understand completely, and I'm grateful for everything you taught me about abundance thinking. Those coordination strategies are now helping communities worldwide. The irony isn't lost on me, and neither is the love.** **P.P.S. to international friends wondering about American food system complexity: it started as propaganda, calcified into institutional preservation, and now requires bypass strategies to access coordination that communities everywhere else take for granted. We're working on it.** This article is part of a larger map. If you want the connecting lines between food systems, fire, water, and the capital that's supposed to fund all of it, [start here.](https://shannondobbs.com/the-thread)