Thread by @annehelen

The federal govt has refused to act & 26 million don't have enough to eat. I spent the week talking to ad hoc orgs & mutual aid groups filling in the ever-widening gaps in the social safety net. They are *remarkable* & I hope you'll share their stories:

msnbc.com/opinion/millio…

In South Philly, Syona Arora helped launch 2 community fridges:

“Every day, the fridge empties out. Every day, it fills back up again. We hold ourselves to a high standard with what goes in the fridge, & we have a high level of respect for each other"

instagram.com/phlcommunityfr…

In W Montana, Flathead Rez Community Action is serving 100+ families a week from all over:

“We don’t ask tribal affiliation. I’d say more than half of the families we serve aren’t tribal. We also don’t ask for income verification."

ucc-jic.com/wp-content/upl…

Flathead Rez Community Action's slogans are #solidaritynotcharity and #unconditionalmutualaid. But the lack of means testing also means it's harder to get funding — and they need more of it to keep up their work:

ucc-jic.com/wp-content/upl…

In rural Iowa, Southeast Linn Community Center is figuring out how to create routine and get hot meals for seniors, many on fixed incomes who can't do the sort of careful shopping that kept them inside their budgets. There's no Instacart in a town of ~8k.

selinn.org

They've waived the previous requirements, so now people can just call-up and say they'd like to order a meal. Staff stay on the phone w/seniors to give them more time to chat; they have a phone buddy program. But "it's really difficult to categorize suffering right now."

Equitable Giving Circle in PDX is doing *amazing* work — they're sourcing food from BIPOC-owned farms/butchers & feeding 300+ BIPOC families every week:

equitablegivingcircle.org

To find BIPOC-owned businesses: "We just have to look a little harder. It shines a light on how hard it is for any Black, Indigenous or marginalized communities to get the word out — and it’s really exciting to put such large economic deposits in the Black and brown community.”

Exec Director AJ McCreary on Portland (the f-word got edited out in the piece but here you go)

"Portland is so white, and it’s such a passive progressive place...[but] there are a lot of really good people who have been tricked into the fuckery that’s here."

Foodbanks have been doing this very good work for years — but they are overrun. These groups are picking up the slack & reaching people who sometimes don't know how to reach out with needs. Just Google "mutual aid" or "community fridge" & you'll likely find one near you

All these places are really trying to destigmatize asking for help — and any sort of distinction between those giving aid & those receiving it. The beauty of the community fridge: from afar you can never tell if someone's stocking it, cleaning it, or grabbing someone from it

And this!

“We don’t means test, and we wouldn’t even have the resources to means test even if we wanted to. If you say you need help, then you need help. People aren’t clients. They are simply people who need help at a specific time"

msnbc.com/opinion/millio…

That's from Meera Fickling, who'd never even heard of Mutual Aid or its philosophy pre-COVID, and now helps run Rocky Mountain Mutual Aid Network:

rmman.org