Paola Velez: How 'Baking Radically' Can Create Pathways For The Future

ILLUSTRATION: YENWEI LIU/HUFFPOST; PHOTO: HECTOR VELEZ During the summer of 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Washington, D.C.-based pastry chef Paola Velez co-founded the grassroots activism group Bakers Against Racism with Willa Pelini and D.C.-based vegetarian chef Rob Rubba. I think a lot of people took baking as a softer pastime that is just for entertaining or for self-care, and when you think about baking radically and baking for another life, you’re not just saying, “I want to donate to this organization.” You’re saying, “I’m going to take time, money and my talent to fundraise for an organization that I’ve looked into and that I care about.” It makes it really personal to fundraise in this way. “Even if we just impact two lives, it’s a trickle effect.. It’s less about the immediate and more about creating pathways to the future.” It was pretty cool to watch it unfold. You just got colonized by the wrong person.” While it is confusing for other people to understand how someone could occupy two spaces at the same time — Black and Latinx — for me it’s an honor and a joy to be able to have my Dominican heritage and be American and look the way that I look.