This is going to be written in Film Noir style. Just bear with me. This is a very serious topic, but it’s also time-sensitive and this is the only way I can get myself to write.

Lara de la Rosa walked into Suzzallo Library wearing a surgical mask and the kind of shoes that always make me wonder which toes go in which half, because they’re always split pretty clean down the middle, which doesn’t seem like it would work on a species with an odd number of toes. Her aura told me right away that she’d graduated with a degree in biochemistry, but there was something else I couldn’t place– Marxism? Entrepreneurship? Maybe both. I figured she must be the dame I was supposed to meet with: founder of socialist vegan bakery The Lazy Cow and associated arts center/mutual aid group Casa del Xolo. A few words confirmed my suspicions.

“Are you Lara?”

“Yeah.”

She could be bluffing. In my line of work, you learn to triple-check every piece of information you’re given. I kept one eye on her as we sat down, trying to think of a question only the real Lara would know.

“So, I didn’t really have any questions prepared… I was just… I mean, you know what’s important about this more than I do, so… I guess, like, how did The Lazy Cow get started?”

A perfect bad-cop delivery. She could tell I meant business.

“Lazy Cow started in my basement on Instagram. I started a little website, made my first cake, and it kind of took off, especially because people were online all the time in the pandemic, and they had more time on their hands. And also there’s no vegan bakery in Seattle, so anytime anyone had a birthday, graduation, baby shower, whatever, they had nowhere to get cakes, so I kind of became the one-stop person for the entire city. And I pretty immediately was like, ‘This is more than I can handle,’ which is wonderful, right? It’s great that there’s a demand for vegan products, but also, it was just like, ‘I’m one woman. I cannot do all of this. But yeah. I wanted to grow it, and also I saw a responsibility there: that if the bakery was successful, the profit goes back to the workers, as a socialist business, but also that we would have some kind of greater responsibility to the community. So, that’s where Casa del Xolo came in, which was inspired by my experiences going to house shows in U-District, and it being super white and super male-led, and just being like, ‘I don’t feel protected here, I don’t feel represented.’ So, then I thought of Casa del Xolo as a place that we could have arts and music events at night, when the bakery’s closed, and that would allow there to be a lot of creative freedom. It would allow us to give a lot of the money back to the artists, ‘cause it is so hard to make it as a musician in the city, and the bakery would serve as the place that funded the space and paid for the rent.”

It was Lara, alright. Her passion for community engagement was unmistakable, and as a part-time jaw harp tuner, I appreciated her commitment to musical freedom. She began explaining the difference between mutual aid and nonprofits, which was good, because I was too scared to ask.

“Nonprofits are often funded by wealthy donors, and the interests of the donors end up getting reflected in the work that is done, in the kinds of work that is done, rather than it being community-led. So I thought this was a way to circumvent it. We could have a mutual aid group, and it wouldn’t function like a nonprofit because it would be circular. The bakery would make enough money to be able to pay for the space so that the mutual aid group would have a physical space. And then there was the cultural aspect of it, too, being a Chicanx space, and being able to have cultural foods– which is part of what inspires our menu, some of the traditional Mexican food that I had growing up– and having cultural events like cumbia nights or celebrations for Día de los Muertos. Even the way we run the mutual aid group is different. Nonprofits work by being single-issue items, so, being like, ‘We are going to feed poor mothers fleeing domestic violence.’ It’s a very specific segment of the population. And oftentimes, the Chicano community is impacted directly by these very specific campaigns, because they often require citizenship status or enrollment, and for undocumented people, that’s not really gonna work. It needs to be no questions asked, here’s some food, here’s the toilet paper you need, here’s the services you need. ‘Cause otherwise you will scare people away, or people just don’t have the kind of paperwork necessary. So that was part of it, not being single-issue and serving as many people as we can. The other part of it is being community-led. The kinds of projects we take up are whatever the community brings to us. We have open meetings once a month, and people come in to say, ‘I’m really passionate about climate change. I would like to do a specific project based around that,’ and then other people can get on board, and we just facilitate that

however we can.”

She was doing so much good in the world– promoting veganism, creating a safe space for Chicanx artists, encouraging community involvement in politics. It made me feel a little bad about my own plan to start an all-meat bakery and use the proceeds to stockpile atomic weapons. Still, I was glad that this good thing existed, and that the building in which it existed had no plans to be demolished in the near future.

“The thing we need help with,” Lara continued, “is that we are facing demolition. We thought we had until 2026, which is when our lease was up, but their demolition permit is for January 2025; they have to use it before then. So we have about a year, and that may not seem like a long time, but once again, we can get the 6-month notice at any point in that year, and also it took us eight, nine months to get the permits and do the construction on the space. It’s frustrating, it’s scary– also, I went into a bunch of debt in order to do this, so, if this doesn’t work out, I’m gonna be bankrupt, and that would suck. I’m twenty-four, I’m too young to die.

“So we’re gonna be asking the company to compensate us to move. And they’re not gonna want to do this, ‘cause legally they have no obligation to us and no reason why they would do it. But they’re a billion-dollar company, they have the money, and we’re gonna ask them nicely, and what we need is this overwhelming display of community support. From a PR standpoint for them, they might be like, ‘It’s not worth messing with,’ and the amount of money that we’re asking for is a ton of money to us, but almost nothing to them. And if that happened– if we were able to get the money to move and pay off the debt that we went into, since we still have about $100,000 left on the loan– if we get the money to move, there’s another space we’re looking at. It’s in Wallingford, so it’s a little closer to campus. The new space we’re looking at is bigger, we could expand on our food pantry or maybe our community dinners– and all that could be decided on, like I said, with these open meetings where we get community input as far as what kind of things they would like to see in the new space. We could expand on the vegan bakery, ‘cause we’re working out of this closet of a kitchen, basically, but we’re making it work. The new space looks really cool; it even has space for a community garden. And then we could do kind of a farm-to-table thing where it’s more eco-friendly and circular and all that. But they want us to– you know, they’re kind of calling me asking me, like, ‘Okay, so, if you want the space, you have to sign a lease and you have to put a down payment,’ and I literally have zero dollars, so–”

“When do you need it by?” I was wondering if I could contact my rich uncle, who rules a small country in Scandinavia. The situation was distressing me.

“They don’t need a specific date, but it’s basically just been sitting there for a while, and people break into it because it’s empty, so they want it to be filled as quickly as possible.” Lara paused. “One of the important things that I forgot to say earlier was that we don’t want to go to the community for money. We don’t think working people should be the ones to take the brunt of this. This is not the mistake of us, or of these people that are kind enough to give us five or ten dollars, so I’m kind of philosophically opposed to that. And then secondly, the amount of money we would need to raise to renovate a space properly is so large, it would be too much to crowdfund. So getting it from the development company– they’re called Blueprint Capital– that’s like our only shot, I think.”

Blueprint Capital. Even the name stunk of blueprints and capital.

“How can we show support?”

“So, we were counselled by a friend of a friend, and one of the things he said was to create a page that makes you look official. We already have a website, so now it’s just a page on our website, and compile everything we can surrounding this issue on that. So every single group that backs you, every single piece of news media that comes out about you, every show you have there, it needs to be plastered there, and it needs to look like a lot. So that’s one. Sharing is a big thing. Oh, and then just putting us in touch with anybody you know who knows anyone. So, whether you have a friend who’s interning in the office of a congresswoman, or your uncle is part of this organization that does this– anybody you know that has any kind of influence– please connect us with those people, and we will go and give our spiel to them and try and convince them to put their name on our page.”

Remembering that my rich uncle had died, but still wanting to help, I offered to put up flyers around campus. I said I could “wheat paste that shit all over the place” so she would know that I am a cool person who knows what wheat paste is. Then I asked a question like a real journalist. “Is there anything else you’d like people to know?”

Lara considered. “If I were to leave on a kind of emotional note… there’s just been so much blood, sweat, and tears in order to put this space together, and over and over again you just see these companies and governments that bulldoze, literally and metaphorically, these spaces– just without care for the culture they create, for the people that make them. And I’m thinking of, too, the BLMG [Black Lives Memorial Garden]. Our friends that we’ve partnered with before, Black Star Farmers, are fighting to hold onto that piece of land. I see stuff like that, these acts of gentrification all around the city, and every vegan restaurant that’s left is closing down, and I’m just like, ‘Jesus Christ.’ I just want to do something to hold onto what we’ve got left.”

If that doesn’t convince you to Save the Cow, I don’t know what will. Catchy, isn’t it– Save the Cow? Kinda makes you want to… Save the Cow. Save the Cow. Save the Cow? Savethe Cow! Save the Cow. Save the Cow. Save the Cow. Save the Cow.

Seriously, all you have to do is show public support so Blueprint Capital decides its reputation isn’t worth the money. Post on socials, hang up some fliers, contact semi-famous people, give the go-ahead for the Lazy Cow to put your group’s logo on its supporter page– whatever you can do. The only reason leftist spaces persist when profit demands their destruction is that we support each other. Save the Cow.

Published 11-1-23

Photo provided by Lazy Cow Bakery