The COVID-19 pandemic may seem like ancient history to some, but the effects of the pandemic linger. In this contribution, Chase Louden recalls a time of mass hunger—and a time when a third of all US food pantries shut their doors. Yet volunteers in Brooklyn stood up and made a different decision—to stay open and expand operations.
What does it mean to stand up for justice?
Starting in 2018, I volunteered at Los Sures Comida—located in the Williamsburg neighborhood, a heavily Puerto Rican section of Brooklyn. It was a growing operation, distributing food to about 600 community members once a month.
At the start of the pandemic, the authorities were clear: “Stay home, limit face-to-face contact, and maintain at least six feet of distance at all times.” There was a part of me, certainly, that wanted to obey these instructions to protect my loved ones and myself.
But volunteering at a food pantry meant doing the exact opposite. It required going outside of our homes, having regular face-to-face contact, and maintaining far less than six feet of distance with the people to whom we were distributing food. Many pantries were closing. As volunteers, many of us did have a choice, and we could have stayed home. But we decided to put ourselves on the line and stay open.
We made this decision after a long meeting with the entire team. One staff member had just given birth to her son the year before and she was concerned about her safety. Most of us were deeply worried about catching COVID-19. This was a grave risk, but many of our community members would be going hungry without proper support. We knew other pantries wouldn’t be open, and that many of our patrons might be at even greater risk going to supermarkets. The decision to remain open was a difficult one. We debated and discussed ways to keep ourselves safe—masking, social distancing, operating our pantry in an open space.
Many of our clients were senior citizens whose primary language was not English, and who were extremely vulnerable to COVID-19—as well as the dysfunctions in US public and private life that the pandemic exposed.
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We were not physically prepared for the necessary changes. Our regular distribution operation required our clients to come inside a building and go downstairs where pantry staff and volunteers would prepare a bag packed to their preferences.
To address the crisis, we moved the pantry upstairs and outside to the driveway. We made this decision to limit the spread of COVID, but also to account for an influx of new community members and their needs.
No one knew what was going to happen. Emotions ran high among staff, volunteers, and our visitors. We tried our best to limit wait times for food. We had to check our temperatures every time we came in to work or volunteer.
Community needs included much more than food, and we did our best to meet those demands. For example, when vaccines became available, we planned trips to take seniors to get their shots.
And of course, the pace of food distribution accelerated sharply. We ramped up from distributing food to 600 community members a month pre-pandemic to serving roughly 700 community members every week once the pandemic began.
Now, five years later, food pantries have been tested again—and though the cause is different, many of the dynamics are similar. The cuts that the administration of President Donald Trump has made to SNAP, Medicaid, and other services have targeted vulnerable communities’ basic needs and reemphasized the deep dysfunction in our social support systems.
Today’s crisis is different, but, in some ways, it feels like those early days of COVID-19. The good news is that many in the community are standing up again. Even as times grow tougher, our community is prepared to resist and be resilient.
