SWMA #4: Saturday Food Pantries
This October marked the 6-month anniversary of our Saturday food pantries. Started by Leah and Cayetana cooking large batches of vegetable soup and curried chickpeas in their kitchen, we have grown to a team of 6–8 people who get together each and every week to plan out recipes to cook in a church kitchen on Saturday mornings before going to our mobile pantry sites and sharing around 100–150 all-vegan and mostly gluten-free meals.
Amidst so much wretchedness, here we are sorting vegetables, heaving 50-lb bags of rice & beans, crying over gassy onions, finding togetherness in times dark & isolating.
Unsure of exact numbers — how many pounds of food have crossed our tables, how much money has been given or spent, how many people have pitched in — uncertain of so much in these times, but one this is undeniable: these food pantries have embodied the true spirit of mutual aid. Seeking equity and solidarity, not charity, we are collectively imagining a new way forward!
If you are interested in joining our Saturday Food Pantries, sign up for a shift this Saturday, November 7th. See all available shifts here.
“What we’re doing is one small effort among many other groups who’ve been doing mutual aid long before it became a buzzword. We build upon a legacy of historic groups like the Free African Society in the 1790s, Chinese immigrants in the early 1900s who built their own hospitals in the midst of an epidemic, sociedades mutualistas of the Southwest, the Puerto Rican Young Lords of Chicago in the 1960s, and the list goes on and on.”
Read more about our food relief efforts and some of the origins of mutual aid in this NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development interview with Leah Kirts.
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