📜 Manifesto
The Tea Stand serves free tea for all: from strangers in public parks to folks at food distributions. Through our programming and collaborations, we seek to create a community of radical artists, support the work of mutual aid groups, and build trust throughout Brooklyn. In this way, we can collectively move toward a future shaped by solidarity and liberation.
FREE TEA FOR ALL, explained:
Why free?
- Exchanging trust, instead of money, allows for more authentic interactions.
- So that the tea can truly be for all.
Why tea?
- Around the world and throughout history, tea has been used to mediate conflict, remedy illness, and welcome visitors.
- For the qualities it exemplifies: stillness, patience, mindfulness.
Why for all?
- We seek to create accessible spaces for community members to connect across class and identity borders in our lonely and divided society.
- We call for the collective liberation of all people.
Our Values:
- Stillness: a difficult way of being in our fast-paced, distraction-full culture. Stillness begets curiosity, curiosity begets engagement, engagement begets connection – with ourselves and with those around us.
“Spending two hours on one cup of tea is an act of resistance."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
- Trust: the precursor to solidarity and community organizing; the antidote to fear and individualism. Accepting a cup of tea from a stranger is an act of trust. A more trusting world is a safer, more compassionate, and less lonely one.
"Contact engenders more trust, more solidarity and more kindness... it's contagious: when you see a neighbor getting along with others, it makes you rethink your own biases."
- Rutger Bregman
- Sustainability: our capitalist, extractivist ways erase culture and destroy our planet. We must return to ways of living in harmony with the natural world and each other. This is why we bike everywhere, produce almost zero waste, and align our programming with the four seasons.
"We must also recognize that climate change is only one symptom of a larger problem. Human beings have fallen out of alignment with life."
- Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
