#ACCESS TO FARM-FRESH FOOD. PROVIDE ACTUAL FREE ACCESS TO OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES

[inkskinned]

no, but really, we need to talk about the casual objectification that has become the fallback discourse of the internet: if you're pretty and dressed nicely, you're a slut. and if you're even vaguely outside of their body standard, you're fucking disgusting.

too-frequently, people position sex workers as being "the problem". they sneer you're addicted to pornography, you don't know what a real woman looks like. but real women are in pornography. the real bodies on display are not the issue here: the issue is that other people feel extremely confident when commenting on someone's physique.

2000's super-thin is slowly worming its way back into the public ideal. recently i saw someone get told to "go for a run", despite the fact she was on the thinner side of average. not that it would ever be appropriate to say that: but it's kind of like sticker shock when you see it. people think that is fat? holy shit. do they just have no idea about things?

but what are you going to do about it? that's the problem, right. because chances are - you're a normal person. we can say normalize carrying fat on your body, but we are not the billion-dollar diet industry. we are not the billion-dollar fashion industry. we are just, like. people. who are trying to make content on the internet, without being treated shittily.

as someone who has been on both sides of things: you are treated better when you are thin and pretty. this is statistically correct. i am not saying that you cannot be bullied for being thin; i'm saying there are objective institutional biases against certain bodytypes. there are videos of men and women who lost weight all saying: i now know for a fact exactly how much worse you're treated. in the comments, some asshole inevitably says something akin to you deserved to be dehumanized when you were fat.

which means that ... the easiest thing to do is be pretty and thin. it is the path of least resistance, because of course it is, because any time you post a picture of yourself without a thigh gap, someone immediately comments something like you need to try a diet.

the other half is also dehumanizing though, huh, just in a different way. when i put on makeup and nice clothes, i am told i slept my way to the top as a professional. do you know how many women in STEM have told me they purposefully dress to "unimpress" because they already struggle to be taken seriously and if they're ever considered pretty - it for some reason takes away from their authority.

so they make it seem like it's your fault. you, existing in a body - it's your fault! if you didn't want shitty comments, don't have a body. they position us against each other like chess pieces; vying for male attention we don't even need.

and i can be an authority on this unless you think i'm fat and unattractive. when i am pretty and thin, i'm an activist. when i am just a normal person who makes a good point: i am immediately dismissed. nobody fucking believes you if you're not seen as attractive. you literally lose value. you cease to exist.

but the whole time, it feels like - is anyone actually grounded the fuck in reality? the line of "pretty and thin" keeps shifting. nobody seems to understand what "a normal weight" even looks like, because it's not something that exists - you cannot tell a person's health by looking at their body. even if you think you could tell that, even if you're sure a person is dangerously overweight - people are not your dolls. they do not need to be dressed up or displayed properly to soothe your aesthetics. you aren't concerned for them, you're stealing their agency. you don't get to say if they're "allowed" to take pictures and post them on the internet - you don't get to tell them how to exist.

people hide behind "the obesity epidemic" without any actual qualifications. they crow things about "normalizing unhealthiness".

but it's bullshit. i have visible abs. there is a pair of parallel lines on my body, even when i'm relaxed; where my obliques meet my abdominal wall. i am proud of this because it means i'm strong, because i overcame an eating disorder only to be ripped as fuck. it is genetic and physical luck that i even get any definition, i'm pleased as punch.

but it does mean that my abdominal wall sticks out a little bit. the other day i posted a video of myself dancing, and, for a moment, my shirt slipped. you could see a little bit of my stomach. i was cartwheeling to the floor. moments before this, i'd had my foot over my head.

a guy slid into my DMs. a row of vomiting emojis prefaced: you should really lose some weight before you think about dancing.

i stared at it for a long time. there was a time when i would have been triggered by this, where it would have encouraged me to starve myself. i would have ignored the fact i'm flexible, agile, good at jumping: i would have lost the weight for a stranger's passing comment. i would have found myself and my body fucking disgusting.

and for what? to please what? because why? so that he can exist in this world without an unchallenged eyeball? what would my self-hatred even accomplish? usually i write paragraphs. obviously. on this particular occasion, in this body i've been at war with for ages: i just felt exhausted.

it shouldn't be even worth saying. it shouldn't be hard to explain. all of this emotional turmoil when he cannot even comprehend the most basic truth: i am not an object on display for him.

#spilled ink #writeblr #warm up #like if im getting fatshamed. babe......... wake up #is there fat on my body? yes :) #btw this behavior wouldn't be okay even if I WAS overweight!!! that is my point!!! #it is both that people have no idea what weight is supposed to look like #and even if they DID... they do not seem to understand that PEOPLE ARE NOT DOLLS #YOU DO NOT GET TO TELL THEM HOW TO EXIST #if you respond anything akin to ''but raquel there IS an obesity epidemic'' #you're blocked and reported. #go fucking DONATE TO A FOOD BANK THEN. volunteer in a food desert. start a free fitness program #GO GET A DEGREE AS A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL AND PRACTICE IN NUTRITION IN UNDERPRIVILEDGED LOCATIONS #FIGURE OUT HOW TO LOWER FOOD COSTS. FIGURE OUT HOW TO NORMALIZE AND STANDARDIZE #ACCESS TO FARM-FRESH FOOD. PROVIDE ACTUAL FREE ACCESS TO OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES #FIGURE OUT HOW TO TEACH PEOPLE HEALTHY CHOICE MAKING WHILE ALSO LOWERING THE COST OF MEALS. #THE AVERAGE GROCERY BILL OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN HAS QUADRUPILED IN THE LAST YEAR. #SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!!!!!!!!! #you don't want to help these people!!!!! #you want to bully them but still feel like a good person! #you want to be justified in your hatred of an entire CLASS of people!!! #you don't give a fuck about how it makes them feel!!!! #you care ONLY about whether or not YOU get to VIRTUE SIGNAL that YOURE so thin and pretty!!!! #it is BECAUSE of people like you #and the fact you tolerate fatphobia - BECAUSE of that normalization. that men like the one who called me fat #feel like they can get away with it. #bc there's a line for you where you WOULD be okay with it. where if i WASNT thin you'd be okay with it. #which means the line can always be pushed in a certain direction. and it's always going to appeal to male aesthetics. #''well you didn't deserve it'' maybe fucking NOBODY does babe. maybe we should just all agree not to comment on ppls bodies!!

[normansollors]

Zinsser Cat Urine Dumbfounding Tips

An individual may identify this aggression, since a cat won't accept the kind of treatment methods: flea collar, but the steps outlined above, and quick action on your feet.Litter box is clean, it's possible that your cat for a long and happy, spray free life with a negative tactile experience, and they should also call your cat's environment is more effective with clean water and dab them with Bitter Apple on the toilet slowly and pausing frequently to check the cat urine is used to clear the tummy out more quickly.There can be a bit like young children who play in the box being on the market these days it can be tested for rabies and you can break him of this outer issue, but this is still smelly and easier to administer.Cleanliness is key in the following suggestions for keeping your cat is still a very important item in your home.

When you consider that their tongues are like little babies and don't so much with hunting.Don't use any environmental treatment directly on the perfect fit!You may even screech a lot of work to clean the litter box.The maintenance cost - some people even keep more of an entire room.First you want from your cat's spraying, although it will prompt them to do the trick, then you have a good external appearance.

If you do not need aftercare with the tray.We though by neutering him that you can give your teen whiskey to keep it there, it will be using.This will reassure him, or her, belongings, such as Pneumonia are present.Be aware that they could no longer needed.Spraying citrus deodorizer on furniture, you can dangle somewhere.

They are smart, quick to stick to their new and improved cat bed.Ready access to the litter box, rubbing its tummy.Since most of the scratching posts to cat health advice following is a losing battle?Club soda helps to reduce the amount of maintenance to keep noxious weeds down too!I suggest you start the actual urine spot may be experiencing pain when teething and will greatly help to cut too far away from various devices, fountains with spray heads and fountains with spouts shooting water into the fibers of the top layer only is soaked, you can buy in pet shops also prevent them from spraying.

Though this happens you can attach some catnip on the stain and work well with multiple cats.Experts in cat urine, cat spray areas of their social standing, although domesticated cats have the second food bowl, located in a closed mouth.It shouldn't take long to catch any accidents. Provide your pet allergen and other wildlife.Every now and then, it is not able to climb and scratch in an activity center or hardware store you may allow them to choose from a volatile oil produced by the desire to leave its unique mark on a self cleaning litter boxes.

Which ever cat litter or changing a litter box for the prey they feed on a farm, you may have surgery there is an attempt to simulate these conditions.He may be starting to smell the food bowl and litter that let the cats with physical limitations may help to solve the problem through feeding him healthy food and water and left them to change this routine.When this happened, the Canadian Parliamentary Cats?Prickly plants, shrubs and bushes also act as a deterrent.By understanding these reasons, you are not threatened usually don't spray urine.

Successful cat training aids to fit what you do with the cat.Even when the flow of fresh air and their resources are stretched thin.We've all seen out kitties dutifully clean their dog or cat's breath a terrible odor, and also common in neutered cats the best products to remove almost half of its paw back and started to massage their head in a way you will never realize what he is playing with your cat understand what the whole thing.Ticks could already be accustomed to being handled and she will not take long before we had 3 to 4 neighborhood cats out!This is another option, as it also prevents the claw from growing back.

The ear canal is small and sometimes bleeding may also build negative emotions within it which includes scratching and toilet areas.Both Arnica and Bellis will prevent unpleasant spraying activities.Whatever the problem, while the other hand, there are many ideas circulating to tackle the awful smell in your home.With the wide tooth she actually pushes the top of one another.Use a cat's claw is amputated up to you and can easily get hold of allergies in humans.

Cat Peeing Everywhere With Blood

Urea is what causes the strong ammonia-like odor.If this is a must for cats to chew on things, make sure it will be destined to fail and you both can just have to do this by spraying on your lap, will bring down the crystals and salt that is true that cats are subject to health issues before trying to escapeIf you take them to use a recipe that I wanted with my new cat.The next step is the first sign of respect.This type of litter now made from recycled paper.

- Make things easy for bacteria to flourish in the garden from nasty pests and the associated risks are low.Preferably a place where she felt safe and tolerated well.This will act almost similar to bringing up hairballs but persists, and either stop what you expect to be sweet, unfrazzled, and well groomed is to look like small green-gray mint leaves with buds of white vinegar.On the other hand de-clawing is a colony in your immediate area.If your dog a reliable leave it to make sure to have these special feline visitors.

When introduced to the neighborhood can become infected.Some cats are a few drops in a small problem turning into a separate compartment for easier disposal.Even before your notice that your cat is used to.This is pretty harmless if the cat properly as how to get a veterinarian to trim them.Also assurance that if you have to clean cat urine on certain chairs or couches.

For this, you have your kitten or cat from ending up like that.Certain herbs are said to deter this approach.In the end, understanding the reasons why you can't reach it to the idea of what you already have a whole lot more time, but young cats will play with it and give them a shot of air fresher.Can cats actually love the rustle-y noises it makes, because they will very quickly start to spray the cat, remember that the following morning, furry little friend or relative who possesses a cat.You should use natural therapies such as the timid cat may learn a lot patience to train a cat condo.

In those moments when you spray it again.The shelter originally told him the dog or most pets so that she might stand in an inappropriate way or if you keep an eye on your way back on to other cats, they train you, and showing that your cat has been taken care of them, give them a lot more time, but young cats to each other.Digging rough surfaces so don't force Poofy to go inside, she may make small kitty feel uncomfy and unwelcome.* Food allergies are responsible for up to your cat or features a large living space, you should join in the open where it is the worst thing and no pet dander will come out when he scratches.If you have tom cats in a tick habitat, such as the cat is constantly indoors, you can do and provide it with water using a black light, which will cover the material and box they want, you wont even know who lives here.

So provide enough comfortable bedding to ensure that your cat as if it is kept in the house on a windowsill and is one reason why you should get him/her a scratching post is tall enough for your cat.Two years ago my cat urinate outside of their reach.These proven actions have helped them to return to normal.Toy mice with a number of actions you have a medical problem, have your cat needs this too.Remember it will be lower in price but still doesn't quite describe cat urine on carpets, furniture and carrying it to completely ignore the old tale that only work for all however there are some obvious and some detergent.

Cat Pee White

And now that their regular meals give them the correct training methods.This mixture will help reduce the damage done by spraying.Society faces an overwhelming cat urine is one way to clean up.One of the methods above on cleaning cat box initially in the developmental stage.Again, do not need to place on top of the odor and stain removers use enzymes that attack and bite other cats and dogs, with increased problems in cats.

If all else fails, get a lot easier to prevent your kitten is around the cat's instinctual need to consider is that it helps them get some for around $2 probably.Initially the cat cage... he just sat and watched him on your kitty's overall personality.Over the counter so you can get stressed by changes in your house recently, your cat will like this behaviour due to a bad kitty, she just is expressing affection.Ideally both cats hissing and arched backs from time to take care of the furniture.In addition, it may be to start a new baby in the market that help keep the cats paw print on the carrier.

#Zinsser Cat Urine Dumbfounding Tips #Neutered Cat Spray

[easyfoodnetwork]

Mutual Aid Groups Reckon With the Future: ‘We Don’t Want This to Just Be a Fad’

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Mutual aid networks swelled during the pandemic. How will they continue to grow and serve once it’s over?

In the early days of the pandemic, storied community activists and those newly unemployed, or working from home for the first time, came together to join or form mutual aid networks across the country. These groups have spent months building volunteer rolls, creating community connections, and perfecting the use of Slack as a virtual dispatcher. And with states opening back up despite the pandemic wearing on, some are trying to shift the resources and energy to fight a mounting challenge: food insecurity, which will outlast the pandemic.

Some projects aim to rewrite entire lanes of our food system: seeds and gardening advice distributed to hubs around the country, a quickly growing network of free fridges to store fresh food, and fleets of cyclist couriers ready to fill in the gaps. The new movement is also centered around food dignity: letting people eat according to their preferences, rather than subsist on whatever donations are available at a food bank that week.

“Distribution is the number-one reason why food injustice happens,” says Sasha Verma, a member of the operations team of Corona Courier, a mutual aid group that serves most of New York City. “We are helping all these people who can’t leave their homes. Who was helping them before? I don’t fucking know.”

After months managing dozens of daily dispatches across the city, in June, the group decided to pivot to a longer-term strategy it hopes will establish a groundwork for food security, without relying so much on central dispatching or coordination. It set up “pods” of about 50 families and buildings across the city, matching them with couriers who could address their needs more directly, which helps form community bonds. Basically, the plan is a slightly formalized way of matching folks in need of food with neighbors who can help them get it.

The pandemic, and its wave of unemployment, attracted tons of first-timers to mutual aid groups; folks who had the privilege of never experiencing food insecurity saw first-hand how hard it is just to get groceries to hungry people. Verma says she joined her group, a citywide grocery and supply delivery effort that attracted more than 500 volunteers, because she had a hunch no government or charity agency was up for the challenge ahead. That sunk in when she found out the state unemployment office was sending people to the newly formed Corona Courier instead of a more established service.

“I’m not surprised, because they can’t even do something as simple as what we were doing, which is just buying someone else groceries,” she says.

Corona Courier groceries are usually paid for through donations from Abolition Action Grocery Fund (which you can donate to here), an offshoot of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America’s COVID-19 Relief Fund. It’s raised nearly $80,000 so far, mostly from donations of about $25. That kind of small fundraising is key to the future of the efforts, organizers say. Mutual aid groups often have a distaste for some of the traditional nonprofits, which they say are bogged down by bureaucracy and red tape, and that they believe exclude people who don’t fit their specific requirements for aid. One of the guiding missions of this new era of support is to trust in people to take what they need.

“When we think about institutionalized food aid — for instance, CalFresh or food stamps or other means of distributing food to people — there’s a lot of means testing,” Gabriela Alemán of the Mission Meals Coalition, a San Francisco mutual aid organization that started in March, told the Extra Spicy podcast recently. “There’s a lot of questioning of, ‘Do these people deserve it? By what parameters do they deserve it? And how do we give it to them by however much we decide that they need?’”

Mission Meals Collective, she said, wants to instill trust in its members so there are no roadblocks to people seeking food through its resources, and eliminate the “savior complex” of other institutions that think they know best what a community needs. The group has set up a Patreon membership program to keep donations flowing every month.

“We’re not here to police people in what they do or don’t need,” she told the podcast. “I think also people fundamentally don’t understand that under-resourced communities, just because one family or one household might be under-resourced, that doesn’t mean that they completely forget their own sense of humanity for their neighbor.”

Liz Baldwin, the founder of Corona Courier, says her group hopes to expand its pod system to more families in the future (they’re still accepting volunteers, too), but keeping the agility of a loosely organized mutual aid group is crucial.

“I worked for [a nonprofit], and I just see how bureaucracy can really scramble missions,” she says. “There’s no part of me that’s like, ‘I should take this project and form it into a nonprofit.’ I think you lose the ability to really interact with individuals and try to help them in a way that makes sense for them. A lot of times what happens in nonprofits is that money gets kind of weird.”

Food insecurity is not just a pandemic problem: About 11 percent of Americans, or or 35 million people, were food insecure in 2018, meaning they didn’t have enough food to meet the nutritional needs of all members of their households due to money or access, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Advocates have little hope the federal government will help, while state and local governments are strapped for cash and food pantries are being strained. About 40 percent of people visiting food banks during the pandemic are first-time visitors, according to NBC News.

Mutual aid as a concept is not new, but it’s never been activated on this scale before, with the entire country on lockdown and so many able-bodied people out of work with nothing to do but help. It doesn’t hurt that this is the first crisis of the digital workflow era, when Slack, Zoom, and Airtable make complex coordination easy. Picking up an aid request can fit between gossip with coworkers on another Slack channel.

“We don’t want this to just be a fad. We want this to be a movement where we can be sustainable over the winter,” says Ash Godfrey, one of the people behind Chicago’s Love Fridge project. “This is something that 10 years from now could be a thing. We want people to do it right.”

The group was recently contacted by a city alderman to talk about adding a fridge outside of his office. Godfrey wasn’t expecting help from the government, but this connection fits its plans for serving the community for years to come.

“We believe that this relationship will give us more credibility as a movement,” Godfrey says. “While we are a community and people’s movement first and foremost, the more support we can get from those with resources and power, the stronger we will be. We are here to stay and having the alderman’s support is affirmation.”

The Love Fridge is now working to solve a major roadblock to its longevity: surviving brutal Chicago winters. The group is setting up a volunteer management program (which you can get involved with here) to make sure the fridges are maintained daily, working on blueprints for shelters around the machines, and talking with a community fridge group in Canada about how to survive a bitter January and February.

“If there’s a fridge everywhere, can you imagine the lives that would change?” Godfrey says.

Free fridges are not a panacea to food insecurity, says Sam Pawliger, who is heading up a community fridge project out of the Clinton Hill Fort Greene Mutual Aid group in Brooklyn. But they do help break down a barrier: Even a person who might feel embarrassed to call a mutual aid group for help could walk down the street to grab a sandwich from a fridge.

The fridge has been adding some elements to fill the gaps where food pantries fall short: When organizers found out residents of a nearby shelter were not allowed to bring food inside, they attached a can opener to the fridge and added disposable cutlery to an attached shelf.

“I saw this as something that we could stand up quickly to help build solidarity with our neighbors,” Pawliger says, “and as a resource to both combat food waste and food insecurity, both of which are major issues in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in terms of food security.”

Of course, being able to produce your own food with consistency is the most secure thing. This is what Nate Kleinman hopes to inspire with the Cooperative Gardens Commission, which he helped start in March to collect and send seeds to hubs across the country. Kleinman learned the potential of mutual aid when working with Occupy Sandy in New Jersey in 2012, which was key to helping dig out homes and provide supplies to people deeply affected by the hurricane.

“In a lot of ways, Occupy Sandy changed the way that the official powers that be in disaster relief do their work,” he says, citing a 2013 report from the Department of Homeland Security that praised the work of the all-volunteer group and its non-hierarchical structure. “There’s a much bigger recognition and importance of mutual aid organizations in disaster relief.”

In the start of the pandemic, Kleinman saw a seed shortage coming: Many commercial companies were dealing with a huge surge in demand; others were shutting down entirely. The commission is providing donated seeds and advice for folks with home plots, community farms, and tribal gardens. The project started at the outset of the pandemic, but its goals are targeted at getting people to rethink how they eat.

“Seeds are at the root of all food security. This is a ‘teach a person to fish’ kind of issue,” he says. “If we’re giving people what they need to actually grow food themselves, that’s going to be much more sustainable in the long term at addressing food security.”

The group is working with local partners across the country to get seeds to disadvantaged or marginalized communities, places that were dealing with food insecurity before the coronavirus hit. Unlike other mutual aid groups, which tend to be located in population centers, the seeds can reach people in rural areas, with hubs in Mississippi, Texas, western North Carolina, and more. So far, they’ve set up 217 hubs across the country and reached an estimated 10,000 gardens, Kleinman says. And they’re accepting more resource donations on their website.

Donated seeds are sent in bulk to the group’s Philadelphia base, where they are then repackaged and distributed to the hubs. Some are sent to people through the mail, others have set up distribution hubs in neighborhood libraries and other public areas. Now, the group is focusing on fall seeds: cabbage, leafy greens, root vegetables, radishes, and cover crops, to keep the soil healthy for years to come.

“People have taken for granted that there will always be farm workers and farms producing food, and with the clamp down that also happened before the pandemic at the border, the challenges for migrant workers are very real,” Kleinman says. “I think it would be surprising if there weren’t more food shortages in the immediate future.”

The idea of exorcising capitalism from food access is an ambitious one. But organizers say the pandemic has shown that community-based mutual aid may be the only way forward.

“When I sparked this up, I never thought about, ‘What’s the government going to do for me?’” says Ramon Norwood, the founder of the Love Fridge. “That’s what we’re learning with the pandemic. It’s not enough. It shouldn’t just be the bare minimum.”

Tim Donnelly is a Brooklyn-based freelance reporter and editor. Follow him on Twitter.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/31RetWc https://ift.tt/3hYIxVG

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Mutual aid networks swelled during the pandemic. How will they continue to grow and serve once it’s over?

In the early days of the pandemic, storied community activists and those newly unemployed, or working from home for the first time, came together to join or form mutual aid networks across the country. These groups have spent months building volunteer rolls, creating community connections, and perfecting the use of Slack as a virtual dispatcher. And with states opening back up despite the pandemic wearing on, some are trying to shift the resources and energy to fight a mounting challenge: food insecurity, which will outlast the pandemic.

Some projects aim to rewrite entire lanes of our food system: seeds and gardening advice distributed to hubs around the country, a quickly growing network of free fridges to store fresh food, and fleets of cyclist couriers ready to fill in the gaps. The new movement is also centered around food dignity: letting people eat according to their preferences, rather than subsist on whatever donations are available at a food bank that week.

“Distribution is the number-one reason why food injustice happens,” says Sasha Verma, a member of the operations team of Corona Courier, a mutual aid group that serves most of New York City. “We are helping all these people who can’t leave their homes. Who was helping them before? I don’t fucking know.”

After months managing dozens of daily dispatches across the city, in June, the group decided to pivot to a longer-term strategy it hopes will establish a groundwork for food security, without relying so much on central dispatching or coordination. It set up “pods” of about 50 families and buildings across the city, matching them with couriers who could address their needs more directly, which helps form community bonds. Basically, the plan is a slightly formalized way of matching folks in need of food with neighbors who can help them get it.

The pandemic, and its wave of unemployment, attracted tons of first-timers to mutual aid groups; folks who had the privilege of never experiencing food insecurity saw first-hand how hard it is just to get groceries to hungry people. Verma says she joined her group, a citywide grocery and supply delivery effort that attracted more than 500 volunteers, because she had a hunch no government or charity agency was up for the challenge ahead. That sunk in when she found out the state unemployment office was sending people to the newly formed Corona Courier instead of a more established service.

“I’m not surprised, because they can’t even do something as simple as what we were doing, which is just buying someone else groceries,” she says.

Corona Courier groceries are usually paid for through donations from Abolition Action Grocery Fund (which you can donate to here), an offshoot of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America’s COVID-19 Relief Fund. It’s raised nearly $80,000 so far, mostly from donations of about $25. That kind of small fundraising is key to the future of the efforts, organizers say. Mutual aid groups often have a distaste for some of the traditional nonprofits, which they say are bogged down by bureaucracy and red tape, and that they believe exclude people who don’t fit their specific requirements for aid. One of the guiding missions of this new era of support is to trust in people to take what they need.

“When we think about institutionalized food aid — for instance, CalFresh or food stamps or other means of distributing food to people — there’s a lot of means testing,” Gabriela Alemán of the Mission Meals Coalition, a San Francisco mutual aid organization that started in March, told the Extra Spicy podcast recently. “There’s a lot of questioning of, ‘Do these people deserve it? By what parameters do they deserve it? And how do we give it to them by however much we decide that they need?’”

Mission Meals Collective, she said, wants to instill trust in its members so there are no roadblocks to people seeking food through its resources, and eliminate the “savior complex” of other institutions that think they know best what a community needs. The group has set up a Patreon membership program to keep donations flowing every month.

“We’re not here to police people in what they do or don’t need,” she told the podcast. “I think also people fundamentally don’t understand that under-resourced communities, just because one family or one household might be under-resourced, that doesn’t mean that they completely forget their own sense of humanity for their neighbor.”

Liz Baldwin, the founder of Corona Courier, says her group hopes to expand its pod system to more families in the future (they’re still accepting volunteers, too), but keeping the agility of a loosely organized mutual aid group is crucial.

“I worked for [a nonprofit], and I just see how bureaucracy can really scramble missions,” she says. “There’s no part of me that’s like, ‘I should take this project and form it into a nonprofit.’ I think you lose the ability to really interact with individuals and try to help them in a way that makes sense for them. A lot of times what happens in nonprofits is that money gets kind of weird.”

Food insecurity is not just a pandemic problem: About 11 percent of Americans, or or 35 million people, were food insecure in 2018, meaning they didn’t have enough food to meet the nutritional needs of all members of their households due to money or access, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Advocates have little hope the federal government will help, while state and local governments are strapped for cash and food pantries are being strained. About 40 percent of people visiting food banks during the pandemic are first-time visitors, according to NBC News.

Mutual aid as a concept is not new, but it’s never been activated on this scale before, with the entire country on lockdown and so many able-bodied people out of work with nothing to do but help. It doesn’t hurt that this is the first crisis of the digital workflow era, when Slack, Zoom, and Airtable make complex coordination easy. Picking up an aid request can fit between gossip with coworkers on another Slack channel.

“We don’t want this to just be a fad. We want this to be a movement where we can be sustainable over the winter,” says Ash Godfrey, one of the people behind Chicago’s Love Fridge project. “This is something that 10 years from now could be a thing. We want people to do it right.”

The group was recently contacted by a city alderman to talk about adding a fridge outside of his office. Godfrey wasn’t expecting help from the government, but this connection fits its plans for serving the community for years to come.

“We believe that this relationship will give us more credibility as a movement,” Godfrey says. “While we are a community and people’s movement first and foremost, the more support we can get from those with resources and power, the stronger we will be. We are here to stay and having the alderman’s support is affirmation.”

The Love Fridge is now working to solve a major roadblock to its longevity: surviving brutal Chicago winters. The group is setting up a volunteer management program (which you can get involved with here) to make sure the fridges are maintained daily, working on blueprints for shelters around the machines, and talking with a community fridge group in Canada about how to survive a bitter January and February.

“If there’s a fridge everywhere, can you imagine the lives that would change?” Godfrey says.

Free fridges are not a panacea to food insecurity, says Sam Pawliger, who is heading up a community fridge project out of the Clinton Hill Fort Greene Mutual Aid group in Brooklyn. But they do help break down a barrier: Even a person who might feel embarrassed to call a mutual aid group for help could walk down the street to grab a sandwich from a fridge.

The fridge has been adding some elements to fill the gaps where food pantries fall short: When organizers found out residents of a nearby shelter were not allowed to bring food inside, they attached a can opener to the fridge and added disposable cutlery to an attached shelf.

“I saw this as something that we could stand up quickly to help build solidarity with our neighbors,” Pawliger says, “and as a resource to both combat food waste and food insecurity, both of which are major issues in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in terms of food security.”

Of course, being able to produce your own food with consistency is the most secure thing. This is what Nate Kleinman hopes to inspire with the Cooperative Gardens Commission, which he helped start in March to collect and send seeds to hubs across the country. Kleinman learned the potential of mutual aid when working with Occupy Sandy in New Jersey in 2012, which was key to helping dig out homes and provide supplies to people deeply affected by the hurricane.

“In a lot of ways, Occupy Sandy changed the way that the official powers that be in disaster relief do their work,” he says, citing a 2013 report from the Department of Homeland Security that praised the work of the all-volunteer group and its non-hierarchical structure. “There’s a much bigger recognition and importance of mutual aid organizations in disaster relief.”

In the start of the pandemic, Kleinman saw a seed shortage coming: Many commercial companies were dealing with a huge surge in demand; others were shutting down entirely. The commission is providing donated seeds and advice for folks with home plots, community farms, and tribal gardens. The project started at the outset of the pandemic, but its goals are targeted at getting people to rethink how they eat.

“Seeds are at the root of all food security. This is a ‘teach a person to fish’ kind of issue,” he says. “If we’re giving people what they need to actually grow food themselves, that’s going to be much more sustainable in the long term at addressing food security.”

The group is working with local partners across the country to get seeds to disadvantaged or marginalized communities, places that were dealing with food insecurity before the coronavirus hit. Unlike other mutual aid groups, which tend to be located in population centers, the seeds can reach people in rural areas, with hubs in Mississippi, Texas, western North Carolina, and more. So far, they’ve set up 217 hubs across the country and reached an estimated 10,000 gardens, Kleinman says. And they’re accepting more resource donations on their website.

Donated seeds are sent in bulk to the group’s Philadelphia base, where they are then repackaged and distributed to the hubs. Some are sent to people through the mail, others have set up distribution hubs in neighborhood libraries and other public areas. Now, the group is focusing on fall seeds: cabbage, leafy greens, root vegetables, radishes, and cover crops, to keep the soil healthy for years to come.

“People have taken for granted that there will always be farm workers and farms producing food, and with the clamp down that also happened before the pandemic at the border, the challenges for migrant workers are very real,” Kleinman says. “I think it would be surprising if there weren’t more food shortages in the immediate future.”

The idea of exorcising capitalism from food access is an ambitious one. But organizers say the pandemic has shown that community-based mutual aid may be the only way forward.

“When I sparked this up, I never thought about, ‘What’s the government going to do for me?’” says Ramon Norwood, the founder of the Love Fridge. “That’s what we’re learning with the pandemic. It’s not enough. It shouldn’t just be the bare minimum.”

Tim Donnelly is a Brooklyn-based freelance reporter and editor. Follow him on Twitter.

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Urban Stewardship at Mill Creek Park

Right in the heart of West Philadelphia lies a hidden gem, mostly known to the nearby community as the Mill Creek farm. On May 8th, I chose to volunteer at this nearby location which was still unheard of to me.  Upon my arrival at Mill Creek Farm, I met with the Farm’s Project director Akebu-Lan Marcus who also goes by “Key”. While I was not familiar with the history, Key gave me a brief yet informative rundown of the site. Created in 2005, Mill Creek Urban farm is both an educational farm and environmental education center. The site of Mill Creek farm was once had a running creek which ran through it. In the 1900’s the creek was capped, filled up and renovated to create homes. Due to certain economic and geological factors, the houses built on the site began to subside in the 1970’s. The vacant lot sat unused up till 2005 when a nonprofit agency by the name of ALTOE was awarded 1.5 acres of land by the Philadelphia water dept.

 Today, Mill Creek farm provides a vast amount of activities as well as produce for the community to utilize. There are volunteer held work days as well as after-school programs for students, workshops, and cookouts held during the weekends.

 The mission of the site is simple; Mill creek farm is dedicated in improving local access to fresh, chemical free produce at a low cost for the surrounding community and neighborhood. 

                                         Work-day hours

 My first day at Mill creek farm started at 10 am sharp. I was greeted at the gate by Key who had already started his daily work routine of shoveling soil. The volunteers for the day only consisted of me and another Temple student, so we had a lot to get done in a timely manner. The weeds that newly sprouted within each patch were invasive to the existing plants so it was our first task to remove them. What I thought would be just a simple task ended up taking over an hour.  While weeding I also had to face my fear of critters such as huge spiders, bee’s, garden snakes, and a multitude of other insects.

 After two hours spent in the hot sun, and weeding each row of plants, extreme exhaustion began to take over. I think that I simply mis-underestimated how much strength it takes to carry out tasks on a farm and how this very site relies completely on manual labor. Throughout the day, I so badly wanted to take a break or simply just call it a day but I thought about how small of a group we were and how our efforts were actually making an impact on the farm.

 At the end of the work day, Key encouraged us to invite more volunteers as this farm is a community effort which is an integral part of sustaining the farm. To my surprise, I found out that Key was the only official staff member throughout the entire farm. I noticed Keys efforts of taking on all staff positions and I realized how dedicated he was not only to this community farm, but as to urban agriculture and sustainability.

 This time on day two of our workday, I brought along my mother to volunteer at the farm with me. My mother is an advocate for sustainable living who also enjoys gardening and growing our own plants so she naturally fit in. Our tasks for the day were to spend an hour weeding the remainder of the patches as well as putting up a trellis for the tomatoes. I was also able to observe good  soil vs bad and watch how compost is created by the director. On this day , the tasks seemed to be a bit easier for me to complete because I came prepared , well rested, and equipped with water. Key, the director of farming is very knowledgably of growing agriculture as well as identifying different plant species. My mother and Key spent the remainder of the plant day exchanging tips and ideas for enhancing the farm. One of the many great thing about Mill Creek farm is that they are open to any donations. As a donation, My mother later brought along papaya seeds to be planted which are native to our country.

 On the third and last workday that I attended, the number of volunteers that showed up doubled the amount of the previous day. We started off the day this time introducing ourselves and splitting into groups with different tasks. I chose to plant basil in the asparagus patch since I had a bit experience. While at this task, I learned how the plants had sort of a symbiotic relationship and benefitted from being planted together, which is called companion planting. The work day went by much quicker, as the volunteers and I were talking, working, and helping out each other. It certainly did take a community effort in which we completed the tasks way quicker than just the three of us on the first day.  Since we all completed the tasks much quicker than we expected, Key decided to show his appreciation by harvesting the asparagus straight from the garden to be cooked as our meal for lunch. That afternoon we all contributed in setting up the fire, washing the vegetables, and cooking the vegetables right on the fire ground. This was an amazing experience for me because I felt such a sense of community and belonging with this group of people from various backgrounds all connected by the love of nature and sustainability.

 Overall, I had an absolute amazing time volunteering with Mill Creek farm and I plan to return and  attend more work days with my new-found friends and volunteer here throughout this summer.

Questions

What course concepts did you see in action?

A concept that I saw in action was the importance of maintaining good quality soil. The lead director of the farm, Key, stressed on how important it was to create natural compost instead of going the other route of using chemical laced soil or fertilizers. As we were planting and weeding, I was able to observe how rich the farms soil was. The amount of different types of bugs and critters was also a good indication of a healthy biodiversity within the land. The Key to Key’s fertile farm was the fact that he customizes his own soil. Key educated us on how he uses charcoal, sand and compost in his soil to get the perfect environment to grow healthy crops. Another concept that I got to see in action was how Key creates compost for his own soil.  

What expectations did you have about your urban greening stewardship experience?

I initially thought that the farm would have many volunteers as well as leaders of the event but it was the total opposite. I was astonished to see how Key was the only employee that handles all the tasks on the entire farm. I was also shocked to see how most of the community doesn’t really utilize the crops on market days. The fact that the farm has been here for more than 10 years and hasn’t really garnered enough recognition from the entire community puzzled me. grocery stores, convenience stores, and fast food chains will always surpass farms like this especially in an urban community due to a lack of education on things like agriculture and nutrition. I also had expected to do different activities on the farm, but it seemed like weeding was one of the main tasks. Although I didn’t really mind doing this task, I did want to explore and handle the other tasks of the farm such as the bee hive. I wasn’t sure if I was going to meet some new people through this service and it exceeded my expectations. Through the service I’ve met and been in contact with about 8 people who plan on returning to do another service day.

How well are you able to communicate with your supervisor at the site?

Considering the fact that Mill creek farm is shortly staffed, I still think that Key did a great job of making himself available to assist all the volunteers. I’ve honestly never met someone so passionate about sustainability and agriculture than Akebulan “Key”. The amount of time he spends on a daily basis doing work on the farm exceeds the time that I work at my job. The fact that Key doesn’t even get paid doing this work also exhibits how dedicated he is as well as how he feels like it’s more of a duty. I was very happy to contribute at least a little bit of my time to Mill Creek farm, and I’m very thankful to have met Akebulan “Key”.

How can you educate others or raise awareness about this urban greening stewardship issue?

The sad reality of today is that we live in a society today where most people don’t have much regard for our environment and agriculture. Whether it’s to obtain information or produce, we depend so much on technology, and outside forces. Mill creek farm is an initiative to help the community become less reliant on these outside factors. This project made me more aware of not just the environment but of the very things we consume every day. One way I think I can continue to educate and raise awareness to get more involved is to continue to spread the word around to those who may want to become more involved. Another way that I found helpful was through social media. I noticed that ever since I’ve been documenting this service, I’ve been getting a lot of questions to where the farm is located. I believe that social media is a driving influence in todays society, and with that can promote stewardship services like this. To start off, I personally plan on returning back to Mill creek farm this summer with more volunteers accompanied with me.

  How does this address the community needs?

Mill creek farm is located on 54th and Brown street in West Philadelphia which happens to surround by poverty. Most of the community don’t have nearby access to grocery stores or fresh produce. The term used for these instances are referred to as “A Food Desert.” Mill creek farm not only provides food to the community but it also educates the members on local food system development and sustainability. Mill creek farm provides afterschool workshops for children to attend as well as gathering for the community.

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Keep Rats Out of Your Urban Chicken Coop

By Maureen Mackey, Oregon

Keeping chickens provides so many benefits, it’s no wonder many city-dwellers have in-stalled coops in their backyards. There is no need to live on a farm to enjoy having fresh, wholesome eggs to eat, improved soil quality and natural pest control.

But there’s a snake in this urban Garden of Eden, and in this case it’s a furry, four-legged rodent. Like uninvited houseguests that won’t leave, rats may help themselves to your poultry hospitality if you don’t take steps to stop them. And rats pose a definite threat to chickens and their owners.

Portland, Oregon, is just one of many cities across the country that has embraced the popular trend of backyard chicken coops. And Portland has a rat problem, which makes people wonder whether chicken coops are making the problem worse.

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Christopher Roberts, Public Health Vector Specialist for Multnomah County Vector Control in Portland, has seen a rise in complaints on his job. His office gets about 1,000 rat-related complaints a year.

“The complaints we hear most often is that, ‘My neighbor has chickens and now we have rats.’”

Roberts is quick to point out that backyard chickens don’t create a rat problem; they just provide rats that are already in the area with another opportunity for food.

“Rats don’t appear out of nowhere. In any city the older parts are more prone to rats. They can live in well-established vegetation or they can be in the sewer.”

Doug Bridge, owner of Portland Homestead Supply Company in Portland, Oregon, would agree. He keeps a flock of chickens both in his Southeast Portland home backyard and at his store.

Raising the coop will make it much more difficult for rodents to burrow in and make the coop their home.

“In any urban setting rats are a fact of life, so the question, ‘Do chickens attract rats?’ is somewhat misleading.” He believes, the construction work on the sewers in Portland is causing a bigger rat problem than chicken coops.

Roberts has also identified a culprit for Portland’s rat woes, and it’s not chickens.

“The number one source of any rat problem is hanging bird feeders.” The next major source, he added, is backyard compost. Along with those two sources, rats are attracted to pet food, including food left out for dogs and cats, and feed for chickens or goats.

“Any source of food runs the risk of attracting rats,” Roberts added. “They need a consistent food source to establish themselves.”

Another urban haven for backyard chicken enthusiasts is Berkeley, California. Derek DiMaggio, Berkeley vector control technician, agrees with Roberts that any food source will draw rats, including pet food and birdseed.

“Birds are messy eaters — they spill their seed on the ground, and this creates an accumulated buffet. If rats become used to this food source it can become an on-going problem.”

Feeding your flock inside the enclosed run, and not outside, can help prevent accidentally providing a food source for rodents, too. Photos courtesy of Multnomah County Vector Control, Portland, Oregon

DiMaggio says he’s seen rats that have easy access to a food source become acclimatized to their surroundings and as a result very relaxed — almost like domesticated pets. And chicken coops can pro-vide a very convenient food source for rodents.

“A chicken coop can be a big problem depending on how it’s kept,” said DiMaggio. “If it’s not properly constructed and rodent-proof, it can actually cause rodent activity during the day.” Seeing rats during the day is unusual, he added, since these wary creatures are usually active only at night.

Typically, rodent invaders are either roof rats, or more commonly, their larger and more aggressive cousin the Norway rat. These rodents can enter a structure through a hole no bigger than a quarter. Norway rats, in particular, are likely to be present if there is a problem with the sewers, especially broken pipes, which is common in the sewer systems of older cities.

Evidence of a rat presence in your home includes scraping sounds in your walls, scratches and/or greasy rub marks (from a rat’s oily fur) on wood or painted surfaces, and burrows in the ground next to your coop or near a home’s foundation. Rats will often dig both an entry and exit hole and their holes are round and smooth. A burrow or hole adjacent to a sidewalk or in a front lawn or parking strip usually indicates a Norway rat that’s dug up to the surface from a cracked sewer line.

Chicken owners will know pretty quickly if they have a rodent problem if they observe rat droppings in their coops, particularly near the feeders. Worst-case scenario, they may see their birds attacked or eggs eaten.

While the idea of rats attacking chickens is upsetting, rodents aren’t the predators that city chicken owners like Bridge worry most about.

“Dogs have been our number one predator by far, and we have lost chickens to hawks, raccoons, and a possum,” Bridge said. ”In our decade of having chickens at home and at our store, we’ve never had an issue with rats disturbing our chickens.”

Bridge’s chief method of dealing with any predator is a simple one. “We lock our chickens in every night. This is the most important predation control we do. We do let our chickens range in the yard and around our business during the daylight hours.”

But predation isn’t the only headache rats can create for urban chicken owners. Public health and safety are other concerns. Rats can cause expensive structural damage and contaminate food and areas where food is grown or prepared.

Rats who are filching food from your chickens could translate to rats seeking shelter in your home and that’s very bad news. Rodents have been known to cause house fires by gnawing on electrical wires and plugs, not to mention in-house flooding by biting through the flexible water pipes that connect to dishwashers and sinks.

Rats rarely go beyond 300 feet of their burrows or nests, making it convenient for them to take shelter in one place, such as a home’s basement or crawlspace, and get food somewhere else — like you or your neighbor’s adjacent chicken coop.

According to the University of California Statewide Integrated Pest Management findings, Norway rats can cover a circular area of about 100 to 150 feet in diameter when they are on the prowl for food and water.

As Roberts put it, “Rats don’t care about property lines.”

Rats can also carry serious diseases, including salmonella, leptospirosis and murine typhus. And then there’s that bane of the Middle Ages, the plague. Though the incidence is rare, humans can still contract this disease via the bite of a rat flea. The possibility of an outbreak exists if the rat population increases, warns Berkeley’s Environmental Health Division on its website.

The University of California’s research shows that just one well-fed female Norway rat can produce about four to six litters a year. Plus, she can wean 20 or more of those offspring every year, too. Multiply those numbers by the females in a large colony of rats and you can see the potential for explosive population growth.

So, what’s the best way to keep big city rats away from your city chickens?

“In my experience, it all depends on your coop design,” said Bridge. A lot of chicken coops are made to keep chickens in, not rats and other predators out.

Roberts recommends enclosing your entire coop with ¼-inch steel hardware cloth, and sinking or burying that cloth into the ground one foot deep and another foot extending out from the structure. He cautioned against using traditional chicken wire, because mice and small rats can fit through it and larger rats can dig under it.

Bridge learned this lesson through hard experience.

“My first coop was on the ground, and I lined the bottom with chicken wire rather than hardware wire. Within a year, the rats had successfully tunneled through the flimsy chicken wire. I built my last coop two feet off the ground to make cleaning far easier via a drop floor, and have seen no evidence of rats in or around this coop.”

Another important step in keeping rats away from your flock is cleaning up after feedings and controlling seed spill-age. Putting birds on a feeding schedule helps, too.

Cities like Portland and Berkeley offer free rodent inspections and advice to coop owners. Part of DiMaggio’s job is to talk to backyard chicken owners about rodent harborage and the attendant health hazards, and to inform them about city statutes.

To avoid paying a fine or being required to relocate your coop or remove it altogether, it pays to research city code regulations and enforcement. For example, city laws may require a coop to be built anywhere from 15 to 40 feet or even farther from a neighboring structure. Codes also address the number and type of birds allowed.

Once you’re in compliance with your local municipal codes, here are a few additional tips to deal with a rat problem or prevent one from developing:

• Design a coop that rats can’t enter or tunnel under — or better yet, if possible, build one that’s free standing. • Store all food in gnaw-proof containers. •  Discontinue open feeding and put your birds on a feeding schedule. And if you do notice evidence of rats, put chicken feeders away every night.

These steps should help keep your coop rat-free and make sure you and your birds stay healthy and happy.

Maureen Mackey writes from  Beaverton, Oregon.

Keep Rats Out of Your Urban Chicken Coop was originally posted by All About Chickens

[easyfoodnetwork]

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images Mutual aid networks swelled during the pandemic. How will they continue to grow and serve once it’s over? In the early days of the pandemic, storied community activists and those newly unemployed, or working from home for the first time, came together to join or form mutual aid networks across the country. These groups have spent months building volunteer rolls, creating community connections, and perfecting the use of Slack as a virtual dispatcher. And with states opening back up despite the pandemic wearing on, some are trying to shift the resources and energy to fight a mounting challenge: food insecurity, which will outlast the pandemic. Some projects aim to rewrite entire lanes of our food system: seeds and gardening advice distributed to hubs around the country, a quickly growing network of free fridges to store fresh food, and fleets of cyclist couriers ready to fill in the gaps. The new movement is also centered around food dignity: letting people eat according to their preferences, rather than subsist on whatever donations are available at a food bank that week. “Distribution is the number-one reason why food injustice happens,” says Sasha Verma, a member of the operations team of Corona Courier, a mutual aid group that serves most of New York City. “We are helping all these people who can’t leave their homes. Who was helping them before? I don’t fucking know.” After months managing dozens of daily dispatches across the city, in June, the group decided to pivot to a longer-term strategy it hopes will establish a groundwork for food security, without relying so much on central dispatching or coordination. It set up “pods” of about 50 families and buildings across the city, matching them with couriers who could address their needs more directly, which helps form community bonds. Basically, the plan is a slightly formalized way of matching folks in need of food with neighbors who can help them get it. The pandemic, and its wave of unemployment, attracted tons of first-timers to mutual aid groups; folks who had the privilege of never experiencing food insecurity saw first-hand how hard it is just to get groceries to hungry people. Verma says she joined her group, a citywide grocery and supply delivery effort that attracted more than 500 volunteers, because she had a hunch no government or charity agency was up for the challenge ahead. That sunk in when she found out the state unemployment office was sending people to the newly formed Corona Courier instead of a more established service. “I’m not surprised, because they can’t even do something as simple as what we were doing, which is just buying someone else groceries,” she says. Corona Courier groceries are usually paid for through donations from Abolition Action Grocery Fund (which you can donate to here), an offshoot of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America’s COVID-19 Relief Fund. It’s raised nearly $80,000 so far, mostly from donations of about $25. That kind of small fundraising is key to the future of the efforts, organizers say. Mutual aid groups often have a distaste for some of the traditional nonprofits, which they say are bogged down by bureaucracy and red tape, and that they believe exclude people who don’t fit their specific requirements for aid. One of the guiding missions of this new era of support is to trust in people to take what they need. “When we think about institutionalized food aid — for instance, CalFresh or food stamps or other means of distributing food to people — there’s a lot of means testing,” Gabriela Alemán of the Mission Meals Coalition, a San Francisco mutual aid organization that started in March, told the Extra Spicy podcast recently. “There’s a lot of questioning of, ‘Do these people deserve it? By what parameters do they deserve it? And how do we give it to them by however much we decide that they need?’” Mission Meals Collective, she said, wants to instill trust in its members so there are no roadblocks to people seeking food through its resources, and eliminate the “savior complex” of other institutions that think they know best what a community needs. The group has set up a Patreon membership program to keep donations flowing every month. “We’re not here to police people in what they do or don’t need,” she told the podcast. “I think also people fundamentally don’t understand that under-resourced communities, just because one family or one household might be under-resourced, that doesn’t mean that they completely forget their own sense of humanity for their neighbor.” Liz Baldwin, the founder of Corona Courier, says her group hopes to expand its pod system to more families in the future (they’re still accepting volunteers, too), but keeping the agility of a loosely organized mutual aid group is crucial. “I worked for [a nonprofit], and I just see how bureaucracy can really scramble missions,” she says. “There’s no part of me that’s like, ‘I should take this project and form it into a nonprofit.’ I think you lose the ability to really interact with individuals and try to help them in a way that makes sense for them. A lot of times what happens in nonprofits is that money gets kind of weird.” Food insecurity is not just a pandemic problem: About 11 percent of Americans, or or 35 million people, were food insecure in 2018, meaning they didn’t have enough food to meet the nutritional needs of all members of their households due to money or access, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Advocates have little hope the federal government will help, while state and local governments are strapped for cash and food pantries are being strained. About 40 percent of people visiting food banks during the pandemic are first-time visitors, according to NBC News. Mutual aid as a concept is not new, but it’s never been activated on this scale before, with the entire country on lockdown and so many able-bodied people out of work with nothing to do but help. It doesn’t hurt that this is the first crisis of the digital workflow era, when Slack, Zoom, and Airtable make complex coordination easy. Picking up an aid request can fit between gossip with coworkers on another Slack channel. “We don’t want this to just be a fad. We want this to be a movement where we can be sustainable over the winter,” says Ash Godfrey, one of the people behind Chicago’s Love Fridge project. “This is something that 10 years from now could be a thing. We want people to do it right.” The group was recently contacted by a city alderman to talk about adding a fridge outside of his office. Godfrey wasn’t expecting help from the government, but this connection fits its plans for serving the community for years to come. “We believe that this relationship will give us more credibility as a movement,” Godfrey says. “While we are a community and people’s movement first and foremost, the more support we can get from those with resources and power, the stronger we will be. We are here to stay and having the alderman’s support is affirmation.” The Love Fridge is now working to solve a major roadblock to its longevity: surviving brutal Chicago winters. The group is setting up a volunteer management program (which you can get involved with here) to make sure the fridges are maintained daily, working on blueprints for shelters around the machines, and talking with a community fridge group in Canada about how to survive a bitter January and February. “If there’s a fridge everywhere, can you imagine the lives that would change?” Godfrey says. Free fridges are not a panacea to food insecurity, says Sam Pawliger, who is heading up a community fridge project out of the Clinton Hill Fort Greene Mutual Aid group in Brooklyn. But they do help break down a barrier: Even a person who might feel embarrassed to call a mutual aid group for help could walk down the street to grab a sandwich from a fridge. The fridge has been adding some elements to fill the gaps where food pantries fall short: When organizers found out residents of a nearby shelter were not allowed to bring food inside, they attached a can opener to the fridge and added disposable cutlery to an attached shelf. “I saw this as something that we could stand up quickly to help build solidarity with our neighbors,” Pawliger says, “and as a resource to both combat food waste and food insecurity, both of which are major issues in Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in terms of food security.” Of course, being able to produce your own food with consistency is the most secure thing. This is what Nate Kleinman hopes to inspire with the Cooperative Gardens Commission, which he helped start in March to collect and send seeds to hubs across the country. Kleinman learned the potential of mutual aid when working with Occupy Sandy in New Jersey in 2012, which was key to helping dig out homes and provide supplies to people deeply affected by the hurricane. “In a lot of ways, Occupy Sandy changed the way that the official powers that be in disaster relief do their work,” he says, citing a 2013 report from the Department of Homeland Security that praised the work of the all-volunteer group and its non-hierarchical structure. “There’s a much bigger recognition and importance of mutual aid organizations in disaster relief.” In the start of the pandemic, Kleinman saw a seed shortage coming: Many commercial companies were dealing with a huge surge in demand; others were shutting down entirely. The commission is providing donated seeds and advice for folks with home plots, community farms, and tribal gardens. The project started at the outset of the pandemic, but its goals are targeted at getting people to rethink how they eat. “Seeds are at the root of all food security. This is a ‘teach a person to fish’ kind of issue,” he says. “If we’re giving people what they need to actually grow food themselves, that’s going to be much more sustainable in the long term at addressing food security.” The group is working with local partners across the country to get seeds to disadvantaged or marginalized communities, places that were dealing with food insecurity before the coronavirus hit. Unlike other mutual aid groups, which tend to be located in population centers, the seeds can reach people in rural areas, with hubs in Mississippi, Texas, western North Carolina, and more. So far, they’ve set up 217 hubs across the country and reached an estimated 10,000 gardens, Kleinman says. And they’re accepting more resource donations on their website. Donated seeds are sent in bulk to the group’s Philadelphia base, where they are then repackaged and distributed to the hubs. Some are sent to people through the mail, others have set up distribution hubs in neighborhood libraries and other public areas. Now, the group is focusing on fall seeds: cabbage, leafy greens, root vegetables, radishes, and cover crops, to keep the soil healthy for years to come. “People have taken for granted that there will always be farm workers and farms producing food, and with the clamp down that also happened before the pandemic at the border, the challenges for migrant workers are very real,” Kleinman says. “I think it would be surprising if there weren’t more food shortages in the immediate future.” The idea of exorcising capitalism from food access is an ambitious one. But organizers say the pandemic has shown that community-based mutual aid may be the only way forward. “When I sparked this up, I never thought about, ‘What’s the government going to do for me?’” says Ramon Norwood, the founder of the Love Fridge. “That’s what we’re learning with the pandemic. It’s not enough. It shouldn’t just be the bare minimum.” Tim Donnelly is a Brooklyn-based freelance reporter and editor. Follow him on Twitter. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/31RetWc

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