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The Editors’ Desk
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A flow of food mutual aid, inspired by the stories in this newsletter.
(Illustration by Nhatt Nichols)
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The term “food mutual aid” may be relatively new, but it describes an ancient and fundamental power of humanity, a willingness to cooperate in order to thrive. By its nature, mutual aid is small scale and organized from within its own community, by people who understand what’s needed. Unlike charity, food mutual aid creates a more level playing field; it is about solidarity, relationships, resilience, hope, and shared gratitude, and plays a central role in food sovereignty.
At a time when grassroots solutions are more important than ever to civic life, we’ve devoted this issue of The Deep Dish to food systems across the country that revolve around people supporting one another. Mutual aid has a deep and significant history in Indigenous, Black, Asian, and LGBTQ+ communities as a form of strength and survival. Often, it can light a path forward for society as a whole. The Black Panthers’ national breakfast program for school children, for instance, sparked the federal government to follow suit; today that program feeds more than 15 million children before school, most of them for free.
This legacy of community care resonates through the stories we've gathered here.
We look at how, for centuries, Indigenous cultures have focused on the collective rather than the individual, and how we can learn from their practices. In North Carolina, filmmaker and photographer Katina Parker, founder of Feed Durham, shows us the ways she and her city uplift one another through large-scale cookouts and food giveaways that nourish thousands, for free.
In Chicago, we visit the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, founded by local parents 30 years ago; today, its food programs have transformed the surrounding neighborhood. We check back in on Priscilla Lee, the big-hearted founder of a free food pantry in San Francisco, whom we wrote about during the pandemic. Lee is still going strong, and so are her volunteers, themselves recipients of the pantry’s gifts.
In New York City, photographer Jake Price brings us images of a remarkable senior center that nourishes everyone who goes there and the joyful woman who makes it all happen. And, for ways any of us can participate in food mutual aid, we include a list of suggestions from environmental activist and author Robin Greenfield.
We appreciate you, our members, as part of our own community. You make our work possible. If you love what you’re reading, please encourage your friends and colleagues to become members and help us continue to tell these stories of collective courage and determination. If you would like to increase your support, please make a tax-deductible donation below. Thank you.
~The Civil Eats Editors
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Member Updates
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Civil Eats Salon: How to Create and Sustain Food Mutual Aid
March 13, 1 pm Pacific / 4 pm Eastern, on Zoom
Join Civil Eats Editorial Director Margo True in conversation with two mutual aid organizers whose work we are highlighting in this newsletter: Katina Parker, founder of Feed Durham, a multi-faceted food-based project in North Carolina, and Yasmin Ruiz, food justice co-organizer at Chicago’s Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, which recently won the national Food Sovereignty Prize. We’ll talk about how their groups came into being, what works and what doesn’t, and their strategies for facing the challenges ahead.
Register here if you’d like to join our Zoom conversation. We’ll be sure to leave time for your questions—and if you have any in advance, please email us or send them to #salon in our Civil Eats Member Community Slack channel.
Help Strengthen Civil Eats’ Membership Program
Our goal with membership, as we state on our membership invitation page, is “to connect diverse voices, viewpoints, and perspectives on just, equitable, and sustainable food systems, empowering you to make a meaningful difference in your work.” We can only meet this goal, though, if we have a clear idea of what you need and want from us. Throughout the year, we’ll be launching surveys to learn more about you and hear your thoughts about the membership program so we can enrich it further.
Let’s continue to build Civil Eats’ membership together—tell us about how the benefits are working for you by taking this survey.
Civil Eats Members Share Notes on Food Mutual Aid Groups
Since this month’s issue is about food mutual aid groups, we put out a call in our Slack Community to tell us about groups you’re involved in or aware of and think others should know about. Here are a couple of your suggestions:
“I am now teaching nutrition education and how to avoid food waste both on my own and with a number of partners, like Griffin Hospital's teaching kitchen in Oxford, Connecticut. I am also leading a collective of community gardens growing food communally for food insecure neighborhoods across the Lower Naugatuck Valley of CT.” — Caty Poole, former executive director of Massaro Community Farm, Woodbridge, CT
“Second Harvest in Minnesota works closely with The Good Acre, which is the biggest food hub in MN, to source produce from small farms. It’s a pretty cool partnership!” — Sarah Zuhlsdorf, senior UX designer
If you have a favorite food mutual aid group, we encourage you to share it in our Slack community. To join, please review these Community Rules and Agreements and accept this invitation link. (Here are the instructions if you’re using Slack for the first
time.)
Which Deep Dish Topic Should We Feature Next?
We’re already working on the next issue and would like your input. Which of the following topics would you like to read about next?
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Your Civil Eats membership includes:
The Weekly Newsletter: a rundown of all of our recent reporting;
The Deep Dish: our members-only newsletter, which features an in-depth look at a different topic in each issue;
Civil Eats Salons: an interactive platform for educational sessions, Q&A discussions, and community-building; and
Slack Community: a vibrant community of food system changemakers, policymakers, and practitioners. To join Slack, please review these Community Rules and Agreements and accept this invitation link.
(Here are the instructions if you’re using it for the first time.)
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Traditional forager Twila Cassadore of the San Carlos Apache Nation gathers wild amaranth seeds with her niece, as seen in the documentary Gather. (Photo credit: Renan Ozturk)
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First Look: Indigenous Food Reciprocity as a Model for Mutual Aid
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BY KATE NELSON
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In the Arctic and Far North, where a successful hunt can mean the difference between feeding the village or scrounging to make ends meet, one might assume a scarcity mindset would take hold. Instead, reciprocity prevails.
Examples of this sharing-focused approach abound. A recent documentary, One With the Whale, follows the hunting practices of an island community in the Bering Sea. In one scene, after a long period without finding game, a hunting crew harpoons a seal, which will allow them to feed some of the community. “It’s always a blessing to receive any animal that you catch,” Siberian Yupik hunter Daniel Apassingok tells the filmmakers. “As small as the game is, the game is dispersed with four or five other boats. We don’t ever say no to anybody.” Later, when the hunters take a
whale, his wife, Susan, characterizes this too as a “blessing,” describing it in a way that recognizes it as beyond a commodity.
The notion of “mutual aid” is relatively new in name, but it mirrors a concept that’s been prioritized by Indigenous cultures since time immemorial: a focus on the collective. A foundational value among Native American communities, it stands in stark contrast to America’s modern hyper-fixation on the individual.
This idea of reciprocity extends far beyond humans, beginning in the natural world around us. It is a worldview informed by abundance and mutual existence—not scarcity and competition—where gratitude trumps greed. At a time of pervasive extraction and exploitation, we might take a moment to understand the importance of this worldview, still practiced the world over.
“In a traditional Anishinaabe economy, the land is the source of all goods and services, which are distributed in a kind of gift exchange: One life is given in support of another,” Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her newest book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. “The focus is on supporting the good of the people, not only an individual. Receiving a
gift from the land is coupled to attached responsibilities of sharing, respect, reciprocity, and gratitude.”
Throughout my work covering Indigenous foodways for Civil Eats and beyond, I have witnessed this culture of abundance and generosity time and again. The idea is expansive, beyond human, and happening all around us all the time—even right under our feet in the soil, where carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycle in an interdependent exchange.
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“In a traditional Anishinaabe economy, the land is the source of all goods and services, which are distributed in a kind of gift exchange: one life is
given in support of another.”
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Symbiotic relationships in the natural world are well-documented by Indigenous knowledge-keepers. Centuries ago, tribal communities across Turtle Island, as North America is commonly referred to in Native circles, began growing the three sisters—corn, beans, and squash—maximizing their complementary properties and creating a mini-ecosystem that results in higher yields and improved soil health. Each plant contributes to the well-being of the other, for the
well-being of all.
Much in the same way, Indigenous groups had long stewarded the land in a collective, non-extractive manner, until European standards of private land ownership were forced upon them. To reject this extractive, “scarcity” thinking, Kimmerer reminds us, is to make way for another kind of economy: “In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away,” she writes.
In a society driven by scarcity thinking, generosity can seem like a radical concept, but within Indigenous cultures, it’s intuitive. For instance, many tribal nations in the Pacific Northwest regularly host potlatches—the word comes from the Chinook term meaning “to give”—which are festive feasts centered on gift exchanging.
“When one’s heart is glad, he gives away gifts,” the late, visionary ‘Na̱mg̱is filmmaker Barb Cranmer explains in a short documentary series about the potlatch ceremony. “It was given to us by our creator, our way of doing things, of who we are. The potlatch was given to us as a way of expressing joy. Everyone on earth is given something. This was given to us.”
Much like this ceremony dedicated entirely to the dissemination of food and gifts, there are words in many Native languages simply meaning “to share food.” This focus on the greater good isn’t just something that happens in community, in isolation, or in the past. It’s happening today, and Indigenous thought leaders are incorporating this value of reciprocity into their business models as well.
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Oglala Lakota chef Sean Sherman, for example, imparts this ancestral wisdom with his nonprofit North American Traditional
Indigenous Food Systems (NĀTIFS), which promotes Indigenous foodways access and education. Back in 2020, Sherman delayed the opening of his acclaimed restaurant Owamni in order to distribute free meals after the police killing of George Floyd and the subsequent uprising that transformed entire Minneapolis neighborhoods into food deserts.
Now, Sherman is turning his attention to supplying decolonized food—meaning devoid of Eurocentric ingredients such as beef, pork, chicken, dairy, wheat flour, cane sugar, and the like—to institutions such as schools and hospitals. He is getting one step closer to realizing his vision of bringing the myriad benefits of Native foodways to people everywhere.
Then there’s Denver-based restaurant Tocabe, which donates Indigenous ingredients and ready-made meals to tribal communities across the country with every purchase made from its online marketplace. For Osage cook and co-owner Ben Jacobs, this food
reciprocity is at the heart of all his work, reminiscent of the feasts his tribal nation has long held to honor elders and other community members.
These cycles of reciprocity aren’t just to show love and respect to one another; they’re also imperative for our collective future.
“In [a] climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver,” writes Kimmerer. “Climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss are the consequences of unrestrained taking by humans. Might cultivation of gratitude be part of the solution?”
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Samuel Gensaw III of the Yurok Nation roasting wild salmon from the Klamath River, as seen in the documentary Gather. (Photo credit: Renan Ozturk)
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These themes ripple through the 2020 documentary Gather, about the Native movement to reclaim cultural identity through food sovereignty. In one scene, a group of young Yurok men fish for salmon along the Klamath River, but with no luck. Seeing this, a family friend shares his catch, giving them a huge salmon, which they’ll cook over a fire alongside the rocky riverbank later that night. “He’s helping us out because it’s important,” one of the youths says as he carries the massive fish back to camp. “And
that’s how we do it.”
How to Support Indigenous Food Mutual Aid
Donate
NĀTIFS
Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance
Shop
NĀTIFS
Tocabe
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Katina Parker taste-testing Feed Durham's very first batch of chicken, smoked overnight, at their first cookout in April 2020. Since then, the Black, Native, and LGBTQ+-led collective has been washing, chopping, seasoning, smoking, griddling, and stewing to nurture and strengthen tens of thousands of neighbors—and themselves too. (Photo credit: Erin Bell)
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Photo Essay: Standing in the Gaps With Feed Durham
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BY KATINA PARKER
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I’ve fed 180,000 people from my front yard in North Carolina over the last five years. With more hands, more equipment, and more money, we can feed millions in even shorter time.
Back in 2020, I formed a mutual aid collective called Feed Durham to address rising hunger due to the impacts of COVID. We started “small,” cooking for 750 people on two whole-hog smokers and a couple of industrial griddles. We rented four fridges and posted them on my porches. In the months following the murder of George Floyd, we ballooned into cooking for 1,500 to 2,000 people per cookout over the course of three to four days, adding burners, steam pots, and more cooking surfaces.
Our kitchen has always been gluten free and soy free. Most of our dishes are now dairy free. The only meat we cook is poultry. We feed our unhoused and low-income neighbors the way we like to eat, and we set a high bar for the quality of food our volunteers offer, so that they will raise the standards in other community settings where they serve.
Through dozens of community partnerships and donations, we feed elders, people living in cars and on the streets, widows, unsupported LGBTQ+ folks, undocumented families, the homebound and chronically ill, and elementary school students and their families, all at no charge. We are a multi-faith, multi-racial, and intergenerational mutual aid collective. We believe we are only as safe as our least hungry neighbor.
Once folks got vaccinated, and volunteers were no longer available for multi-day cookouts, we shifted to primarily hosting produce giveaways, which quickly expanded to include other items. These days, Feed Durham moves about 20,000 pounds of mostly donated food, seeds, plant starts, and household goods per month from local businesses and distributors, including Happy Dirt, Cocoa Cinnamon/Little Waves Coffee
Roasters, Red Tail Grains, Maple Spring Gardens, Bulldega Urban Market, Flying Pierogi Delicatessen, Big Spoon Roasters,
Ninth Street Bakery, The ReCollective, and Gaia Herbs.
We’re proud to offer every herb, fruit, and vegetable ever known, from the common sweet potato to the not-so-common kiwi berry. We prioritize fresh, organic whole foods and supplements.
Over the years, we’ve hosted two dozen cookouts and 60 giveaways, two repair clinics, a free photo shoot for unhoused neighbors who were able to leave with a framed photo, and a multimedia installation called “Lovingly Prepared By” at the Durham Arts Council.
Mutual aid is a network of expansive relationships that you nurture and are nurtured by in the direction of your deepest hopes and dreams. It’s not just getting by—it’s flourishing, even if you don’t have a lot of material resources, because you feel loved, seen, and supported. Historically, mutual aid has worked best amongst rural people living in geographic isolation with a shared spiritual practice for at least one generation, and people with shared identities who have been cast out from the mainstream.
The triumphs of the Civil Rights Movement were undergirded by the vast multi-generational mutual aid networks that Black folks used to sustain one another during slavery and Jim Crow. Those networks are still sustaining people like me, whose elder family members and ancestors practiced many forms of life-giving community care.
With that, I must share what mutual aid is not. Lately, I see a younger generation that regrettably didn’t receive much mentorship from adults, calling what they do “mutual aid” because they move resources from restaurants and grocery stores into the community. Most have never experienced mutual aid.
I have found that many are more excited about realizing their power alongside other organizers their age than they are about building intergenerational relationships and power with the people they purport to help. They ignore basic input from the communities they “serve” about food quality and safety, and they rarely acknowledge or address other needs.
Recipients are tasked with piecing together a variety of offerings in settings that are often unfriendly. This is altruistic capitalism. Charity. Colonialism. Clique-driven organizing that shuts out valuable input. Not mutual aid.
For 2025, Feed Durham is focused on supporting neighbors who want to grow food for one another. We are developing lo-fi tech solutions to bridge gaps between available household and food supplies and the people who need them. We are also liberating resources that lie dormant in warehouses and closets, soliciting these materials on behalf of under-resourced Black and Brown organizations and individuals who want to provide for their neighbors. We are serving as a networking hub for Durham’s vibrant organizing community and, of course, continuing to cook tasty, nutrient-dense meals for our neighbors.
To survive what’s coming, we are launching and sustaining a national mutual aid network to facilitate rapid response. Toward that end, we are sharing Feed Durham’s blueprints with a broad spectrum of mutual aid organizations throughout the U.S. Please borrow liberally. Share freely. And remember to practice care—and joy—during the hard times.
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At the end of each cookout, we make family-sized plates for volunteers, representing the bounty of every recipe we lovingly prepare. We call them “Beauty Plates.” This plate features smoked chicken, braised carrot steaks, grilled butternut squash, smoked garlic Brussels sprouts, charred broccoli, smashed yams, caramelized carrots, and roasted beets tropicale. (We’ve developed a way to cook beets that removes the “clean dirt” taste.) (Photo credit: Katina Parker)
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Once vaccines became widely available, Feed Durham experienced a significant decline in volunteers. People were forced to return to work before it felt safe to do so, and other folks were eager to visit far-away places to see family and to vacation. The food pictured was given away at the Scrap Exchange’s 2024 Earth Day celebration, where Feed Durham hosted a food giveaway and repair clinic to fix broken household goods. For the event, we partnered with Farm Church, whose pastor/master gardener fielded endless gardening questions with grace and patience while giving away seeds, plant starts, and oak saplings donated by a community member. (Photo credit: Katina Parker; subject arrangement: Dare Coulter)
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My yard operates at full tilt during Feed Durham’s Annual Thanksgiving Grocery Giveaway. Dozens of volunteers break down every single box of donated vegetables, eggs, breads, and spices, distributing the cherished ingredients across hundreds of bags. Bags contain cabbage, kale, collards, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, onions, squash, spices, bread from Ninth Street Bakery, and free-range eggs, among other things. The Saturday before Thanksgiving, our community partners pull into the driveway at scheduled intervals to receive the packed bags and deliver them to hundreds of households. (Photo credit: Katina Parker)
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We send Love Notes with each cooked meal or grocery bag. We started this practice at a time when we all felt isolated and shut off from the world. On printed card stock donated by Spee Dee Que, a local independent print house, teachers, students, and other community members craft notes for their neighbors. Gifted artists create astoundingly beautiful missives. Some messages are general; others are themed for certain holidays, including Pride. In addition to the great-tasting food, our neighbors have come to look forward to receiving custom blessings and artwork. (Photo credit: Katina Parker)
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An expanded version of this photo essay will appear on the Civil Eats website soon.
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The Semillas de Justicia community garden at LVEJO. (Photo credit: LVEJO)
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Profile: In Chicago, an Environmental Organization Feeds Community
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BY ANGELA BURKE
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A towering, two-story arch, trimmed in barrel tiles with an all-caps marquee, makes it very clear where you are: “BIENVENIDOS A LITTLE VILLAGE.” The structure rises high above bustling 26th Street in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, where independent restaurants, retails, and street vendors make it one of the highest-grossing commercial corridors in Chicago. This is the threshold of the Little Village neighborhood, home to many immigrants from Central America as well as the largest community of Mexican Americans in the Midwest.
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The entry to Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. (Photo credit: The City of Chicago, 2021)
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At the base of the Little Village Arch, a group of protesters gathered earlier this month. Braced against the biting winter chill, they loudly decried the raids of immigrant communities ordered by the incoming Trump administration, which aimed to arrest and deport an estimated 2,000 immigrants across this sanctuary city, and more nationwide. In this climate, members of this tight-knit community must rely on each other now more than ever.
One of the strongest advocates for the neighborhood is the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO). For decades, the nonprofit has fought to protect Little Village’s land, air, and the life in between. Its multifaceted, community-led food justice program includes hot meal dropoffs, backyard garden startups, and a new farm, just a few blocks from the arch, where fresh produce can be picked up for free. LVEJO is now also a landmark for Little Village.
Last December, LVEJO received the national Food Sovereignty Prize, awarded for “grassroots, agroecological solutions from the people most harmed by the injustices of the global food system,” according to a press release from the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance. “I felt so glad that the Food Sovereignty Prize committee really got what the team was trying to do here,” says LVEJO’s deputy director, Juliana Pino.
“It’s not just about simply growing food. It's really about committing to the land, defending and protecting each other in the land, and showing up for a community in ways that are really rooted.”
LVEJO’s role in the local food system was years in the making, and it began with environmental activism. Pino recalls how, in 1994, a group of parents forced their local elementary school to restrategize renovation plans after some children suddenly became ill, likely from toxins released during the renovation process. That foundational group of parents would soon expand to include other community leaders and go on to tackle environmental injustices neighborhood-wide as Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.
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“It’s not just about simply growing food. It's really about committing to the land, defending and protecting each other in the land, and showing up
for a community in ways that are really rooted.”
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Over its 30 years, LVEJO has shuttered two local coal power plants as well as an asphalt roofing manufacturer, Celotex, which was deemed a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and took the better part of a decade to remediate; now it is a 21-acre neighborhood park.
Viviana “Vivi” Moreno grew up in the neighborhood, hearing these stories. “I knew people whose family members were affected by the coal power plants,” she says. In college, while elbow-deep in a detailed case study about LVEJO in her environmental health class, she fully connected the dots, and began to see “the legacy that polluting industries have in communities of color and immigrant communities of color.”
Moreno joined LVEJO a few years ago as a volunteer, and has evolved alongside the organization. Now LVEJO’s senior food justice organizer, she helps facilitate a multigenerational network of neighbors who offer essential insight on traditional farming practices and foodways. Pino sees the work as a multitiered form of sustenance: “A number of those folks . . . had a really hard time sustaining employment due to racism and disrespect for their skills and undervaluing the knowledge that they have. And on top of that, they were looking for ways to sustain the ancestral practices that they had back from their origin countries, as well as feed their families.” Such cultural knowledge risks being lost if it isn’t transferred to the next generation.
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Viviana Moreno. (Photo courtesy of LVEJO)
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LVEJO’s multi-pronged food justice program is offered free of cost and is communicated primarily through word of mouth. Eight food justice staff members and 50 to 80 volunteers run the program, which includes the pandemic-born Farm Food Familias project, created in collaboration with Getting Grown Collective. The project has served more than 50,000 meals so far, using produce donated by and purchased from local urban farms.
“What we noticed with this mutual aid program is that it wasn’t just COVID, it was an economic issue,” says Moreno. “A lot of folks lost their jobs because of either contracting long COVID or losing family members, and were having a hard time getting back to an economic space where they could provide for their families. So, that’s where some of the meals came in and they were really beautiful and healing.” Funding for Farm Food Familias and LVEJO's other food initiatives, as well as for the organization as a whole, comes largely from private foundations that have supported LVEJO for years, as well as individual donors.
Moreno also organizes Backyard Gardens Little Village, a program that supplies residents with education and materials—including plants and garden beds—to activate their own gardens. About 20 homes participate so far. And Moreno is helping to develop a blossoming greenspace, La Villita Park, which opened in 2014 on the converted Celotex site.
Semillas de Justicia (Seeds of Justice), a 1.5-acre community garden and farm, sits at the southern end of the park. A series of painted vignettes adorn the garden’s fence: people gardening together, whimsical hearts, the landmark arch, and messages affirming the neighborhood’s existence: “Defiende La Villita!” and “Let us breathe!”
During the growing season, Semillas’ garden beds are fully occupied by 70 households. The adjoining vegetable farm hosts a weekly free farmers’ market, offering produce freshly harvested from the site. LVEJO collaborates with community members in deciding what to grow, to ensure that the land offers agency to the people of the neighborhood while fortifying their connection to culture and heritage.
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Nateo Correño. (Photo courtesy of LVEJO)
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This includes several varieties of tomatoes, corn, beans, pumpkin, medicinal herbs, and edible flowers such as marigolds, a key element of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations in the fall. Last year, between the community garden and the farm, LVEJO collectively harvested and distributed nearly 16,000 pounds of produce and about 1,000 fresh eggs during a time when the price of eggs and other groceries had spiked.
LVEJO’s farm manager, Nateo Carreño, says it isn’t uncommon for elders to stroll by during the growing season and offer a hand. Every interaction is a chance to pass down ancestral knowledge, and sometimes, a pat on the back. Carreño recalls, “A señora just [told] us, ‘I walked to the park to tell you guys that your potatoes taste like they have butter in them.’”
Both of Carreño’s grandfathers were farmers, and Carreño sees the soil as a wonderland of living, breathing organisms that can heal itself over time if given the proper support. Years after being reclaimed and cared for by LVEJO, the soil here not only produces bountiful harvests, but also teems with beneficial bacteria like Mycobacterium vaccae, which get absorbed through the skin and trigger serotonin, the
“happy hormone,” in the brain. “I love soil, that’s my jam,” says Carreño. “There's just something in you that wakes up when you start working with plants and start working with soil.”
For now, in the stillness of the winter, the land sleeps. Meanwhile, its caretakers keep planning. When the new season begins, LVEJO will continue to sow its mighty vision for Little Village.
How to Support LVEJO
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Cilla Lee and her dog in San Francisco. (Photo credit: Tilde Herrera)
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This San Francisco Food Pantry Is a Labor of Love
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BY TILDE HERRERA
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Priscilla "Cilla" Lee gave away nearly 50,000 pounds of food last year to her neighbors in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond district.
She has hosted a weekly food pantry from her garage since 2021, stocking it with donations from local food banks, grocery stores, restaurants, bakeries, and anywhere else she can get free food for her community. Every Friday and two Saturdays a month, she hands out food boxes filled with fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy products, and dried goods like beans or rice. She still serves between 40 and 50 families per week, and 25 families come on Wednesdays, when she gives away baked goods donated by a local bakery.
In a recent week, she shared four boxes of bread and pastries and 20 pizzas. She also gave away 120 boxes of mangoes donated by a food bank and trays of papaya salad and spring rolls provided by a caterer.
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Boxes of goods prepared by Buy Nothing volunteers. (Photo credit: Tilde Herrera)
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Civil Eats first covered Lee’s food pantry in 2022, during the pandemic, when she was on leave from her airline job. She had started it the year before, alarmed by the food insecurity in her neighborhood and inspired to help others by her late mother, who had always tried to give her family, friends, and acquaintances a hand, even during her cancer treatment.
Lee invited free pantry pickups through her local branch of Buy Nothing, a network of neighborhood groups that share everything from extra food to used appliances as part of a gift economy model. Now she limits the spots to ensure enough food for the core set of regulars who have relied on the pantry for all these years.
These regulars include Yulia Koudriashova, a single mom and teacher who saves nearly $300 a month by getting most of her family’s food through Lee’s pantry. She lives with her two daughters and her parents, who moved in three years ago after fleeing Ukraine when Russia invaded. "My parents’ income is zero in the United States," Koudriashova says. "For them, it’s very important support because mentally, it’s very important that they know they can get food."
Koudriashova’s mother spends her days cooking everything they receive from the pantry, and her father volunteers at the pantry a few days a week, unloading boxes or sorting food, despite not speaking any English. He worked as an engineer in Ukraine but is unable to work in the U.S., so he is happy to have a “job” and help others as he often did for his neighbors back home, Koudriashova says. Everyone calls him "Papa."
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“My parents’ income is zero in the United States. For them, it’s very important support because mentally, it’s very important that they know they can get food.”
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"When he began to do it, he became alive, because it’s a very important role, mission," Koudriashova says. "He tells us, ‘I’m working today,’ so we know he needs to go and help. He loves it a lot.”
Serving the Community
Since 2022, Lee has doubled her volunteer team to 40 or 45 people and added more structure. She has two volunteer administrators who create pantry schedules and sign-up sheets, as well as a third administrator who sends weekly reminders to other volunteers to sign up for picking up donations or setting up the pantry. At each pantry, one or two hosts oversee the food pickups and support the pantry assistants, who receive the food donations and get food ready to be given out. About 75 percent of her volunteers are pantry recipients themselves.
Lee asks for a three-month commitment when recruiting volunteers, who donate their time and gas. "I’m donating my sanity and my family’s time—my partner also helps," Lee says. "No one’s getting paid from this pantry."
Growth of the Buy Nothing Model
The Buy Nothing Project continues to resonate with people a dozen years after its launch, says founder Liesl Clark, a documentary filmmaker who was fascinated by the cashless gift economies she saw in communities throughout the Himalayas. There are now more than 8,000 Buy Nothing groups on Facebook, representing 12.5 million people, and another 1.4 million people using The Buy Nothing app.
The app has added a global feed for users who are interested in a broader circular economy, Clark says. Rather than buying on Amazon, users can now search for a product in Buy Nothing’s global feed or post an item they haven’t had success gifting locally. If they find the product, or a taker, they can use Buy Nothing shipping to receive or send the item through UPS.
"We still aim to provide every community, that wants one, a gift economy so community members can get to know each other and connect through our stuff and services offered," Clark said in an email. "We know this builds connected neighborhoods, which is a building block toward resiliency, mutual aid, and healthy human-centered cities and towns."
A Labor of Love
It’s a lot of work to run the pantry, but hearing about how the project has impacted people’s lives drives Lee to keep going.
For example, Koudriashova uses the money she saves on groceries to pay for gymnastics lessons for one of her daughters. She says she wouldn’t be able to afford those lessons without the pantry. "When I go to the shop, I buy only some food for the kids to make sandwiches for the school lunch,” Koudriashova says. “Otherwise, we use all the products that we have from this pantry. I don’t know how we would survive without Cilla.”
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Lee says she had no idea she would still be running this pantry, years after it began.
“I will try my best to keep the pantry going until either I am no longer receiving food donations or community [volunteers], as long as I am healthy, my family is healthy, and I am not neglecting my own family,” she says.
Although Lee didn’t start the pantry to inspire others or seek recognition, she says she has often been told by her community, volunteers, and peers that she motivates them to help others. Which, in fact, they do.
“It is a very powerful feeling, and I feel overwhelmed by the positive feedback,” Lee says. “It reminds me of how my mother would be so proud of the person she raised.”
How to Support Buy Nothing
Volunteer
Email: CillaBNORpantry-at-outlook-dot-com
Call: (415) 570-8553
Follow Buy Nothing Outer Richmond Food Pantry
Instagram
Facebook
Donate
GoFundMe
Join
Download the app
Build your own community
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An elder at the center takes a plate for lunch at Manhattan’s Open Door Senior Center.
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Photo Essay: The Heart of Chinatown
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TEXT AND PHOTOS BY JAKE PRICE
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When thinking of Manhattan’s Chinatown, many vibrant places and events come to mind—New Year celebrations, bustling restaurants, and lively shops lining the streets. One place that probably doesn’t, but should: the Open Door Senior Center, where there’s hardly a dull moment. The cafeteria, hung with red lanterns, swells with the conversations of regulars and the aroma of Chinese favorites like beef with black bean sauce, pork spare ribs, and stir-fried bok choi.
When they’re not eating or talking, the seniors take painting classes—or play mahjong and pingpong. They organize bingo nights. They sing Peking opera and dance Broadway musical numbers. Holidays are celebrated with joyful group fanfare.
The director of the center, Po-Ling Ng, founded the organization in 1972, with funding from the city’s Chinese American Planning Council and, later, the state of New York, too. Now in her mid-70s, she is not without humor—or youthful vigor: She says she still feels like the 23-year-old she was when she arrived in Manhattan from Hong Kong.
Food, she says, plays a key role in drawing people to the center. “A lot of [them] say, ‘I like to go to Open Door because I love the taste of Chinese food.’ ”
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Po-ling Ng speaks with head chef Garseun Moy in the Open Door food preparation room as meals are being readied for lunch. Ng wears many hats, with her roles changing from day to day. In addition to her permanent position as director, she also serves as deputy director, director of recreation and education and fundraiser.
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Ng personally helps deliver Chinese meals, which she coordinates through Citymeals on Wheels, to isolated seniors in the community. “Because they live alone, they feel like they have a very boring life,” she says. “Staying home creates mental problems—they’re constantly thinking about bad things. On top of that, they struggle with medical costs, living expenses, and housing issues.” Using food as a pretext, she checks in on people to see how they are doing, which allows her to assess their psychological state, help connect them with home healthcare aides, and,
if they’re not too infirm, invite them to Open Door.
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Po-Ling Ng uses food to connect with homebound seniors and get them talking. Many describe certain foods they miss, so Ng works with City Meals on Wheels to provide them. (Chicken with oyster sauce, baked pork, and Chinese-style bok choy are favorites.) Others have lost spouses and say they want to remarry or find new partners, and ask her for help in meeting people. Ng encourages them to come to the center so that they might make new friends.
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When seniors arrive at the center, Ng ensures that their meals are both culturally and age appropriate. For instance, while the menu has a brown rice option that’s popular in the West, she insists that white rice also be available. She says, “They like the white—I mean, it just smells really good!” In her conversations, she has learned that what suits one generation isn’t necessarily right for another: People aged 60 to 75 generally prefer harder rice, while older patrons favor it softer. As they sit around the tables, those who came for the food begin to form new relationships and reintegrate into the community of elders.
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Siu Kuen Tam, 86, leads the daily bingo game.
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A couple years ago, the surgeon general identified loneliness as a major public health concern, an epidemic, in fact, making Open Door’s welcoming role more critical. Yet the center struggles with funding—none at all last year, so even small things like repairing the front door become hard to afford.
But for Po Ling, it’s never been about the money. “If you don't love your job, it doesn't matter how high you’re paid—you’ll suffer. But I don’t care. I lead a simple life. After 56
years of working in the community, God has given me good health, and I don't want to retire.”
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Po-Ling celebrates Lunar New Year at Open Door with police officers from the local precinct, as well as the center’s supporters and regular visitors.
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An expanded version of this photo essay will appear on the Civil Eats website soon.
How to Support Open Door Senior Center
Volunteer
Telephone: (212) 431-9026
Fax: (212) 431-9142
Email: png@cpc-nyc.org
Donate
One-time or monthly
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Illustration credit: Nhatt Nichols
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List: 10 Ways to Offer Food Mutual Aid
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BY ROBIN GREENFIELD
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Environmental activist and author Robin Greenfield is known for his fully committed experiments in ecological living. His most recent book, Food Freedom: A Year of Growing and Foraging 100% of My Food, covers his efforts to live entirely independently from the industrial food system. Greenfield succeeded only by relying on others who guided him in his gardening, fishing, and foraging, and came to understand the profound power of community and how naturally that flows through food.
Here are
Greenfield’s suggestions for strengthening your own food community:
1. Live communally! Thousands of intentional communities and ecovillages are waiting for you to join them. Check out the Foundation for Intentional Community, the Global Ecovillage Network, and the Cohousing Association of the United States to
find a community near you. Or use their resources to start a co-living space or community of your own.
2. Plant public trees in your community in collaboration with others. Community Fruit Trees can support you on this path.
3. Source your seeds and plants from small-scale community seed growers, seed libraries, and seed banks that are breeding diversity and resilience. Seed Savers Exchange, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Ujamaa Seeds, and Truelove Seeds are a few high-integrity organizations that distribute nationwide.
4. Start a seed library or a community seed network yourself. Community Seed Network and Seed Library Network are excellent resources to help you get started.
5. Join a community compost initiative or start one if there’s a need. Cycle the compost back into small-scale ecological gardening and farming. Find an initiative or learn how to start your own through the Community Compost Program.
6. Harvest food that’s already growing, but not getting utilized, and get this nourishing, local produce to the people who need it the most. Concrete Jungle and ProduceGood are beautiful examples to follow.
7. Join or start a community garden or school garden in your community. Community Gardens of America and Edible Schoolyard Project can help with this.
8. Seek out or start a Food is Free chapter and share your garden bounties freely with your community members.
9. Join a community-led ecological food initiative. A few that have inspired me include Soul Fire Farm, The BIPOC Community Garden, Bartlett Park Community Garden, and the Fonticello Food Forest. Support the initiatives that are already taking place. They are doing the work and they need our support to continue.
10. Take part in land reparations for Indigenous and Black communities, so that they can achieve food sovereignty. Find communities to support via the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust. Learn about and take part in the LANDBACK movement to return land to Indigenous people so they can build food sovereignty while stewarding our global resources.
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Member Profile: Poppy Davis from California FarmLink
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BY JIM COLGAN
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By the time she left high school, Poppy Davis knew she wanted to work in agriculture.
Davis grew up in the 1970s in Danville, California, a Bay Area suburb situated next to ranches and farmland. After school, when the days were long enough, she’d ride a pony into abandoned orchards, trodding through the wild mustard and stopping to hug aging walnut trees. But each year, she started noticing more housing developments where open fields used to be. She didn’t like what the grown-ups were doing with the land, and she vowed to change it when she got older.
“I got the impression at a really young age that there was this relationship between the land and the livelihoods, and that people made decisions about the land driven by their pursuit of their livelihoods,” she says.
Davis signed up for a major in agriculture and natural resources at U.C. Davis, but when she graduated, she says everyone she spoke to, including her advisors, told her a career in farming would be impossible, given the economic crisis in farming at the time, unless she was already part of a ranching or farming family.
That’s when Davis got realistic; she became an accountant. “I understood that a bunch of people were going to go farm and they didn't know the first thing about money, and that the best thing for me to do was to be their CPA.”
Davis credits her parents for making it easy for her to talk about money. Her father was a physician, and her mother ran his small practice. They would openly discuss their finances over dinner.
She began by recruiting clients among her college friends, and she started attending EcoFarm, the sustainable food and farming conference that takes place annually near Pacific Grove, California.
“ I literally had an easel and a flip board saying, ‘Sign up for a one-on-one session with me, and I'll help you figure out if you have bookkeeping or tax problems,’” Davis remembers. She was surprised by the farmers who appeared to be successful on the outside, “confessing” to her that they had never gotten a handle on their money.
Soon Davis was helping farmers, but she felt she wasn’t pursuing her childhood dream of changing the world. Then, in 2003, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) needed an expert in farm taxes to help with a crop subsidy program. Davis took the job and started doing outreach to Hmong, Latino, and Native American farmers.
“ I was working with people who did not have access to even the most basic information about taxes, let alone strategic planning,” she says. She was able to help those people use the tax code to their advantage.
Davis left the USDA in 2012. Since then, she’s been teaching business and legal practices to farmers, ranchers, and fishers, primarily as a consultant with the nonprofit California FarmLink, but also through other organizations across the country. It might not be exactly what her child self had in mind, but she believes she’s at least making some difference in the world.
“ When I hear someone say, ‘I was letting my husband be in charge of the money, and I'm not going to do that anymore,’ …” Davis says. “I didn't save the world, but I made that one situation that much better.”
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What We're Reading
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‘Fixing a Problem We Didn’t Cause’: the Black Appalachian Activists Cultivating Community Power
BY MELISSA HELLMAN, The Guardian
A robust group of organizers–including midwives, environmental justice advocates, and urban gardeners–rewrite what it means to be from the US mountain region.
How Mutual Aid Helped People Survive Everything from COVID-19 to Hurricane Helene
BY JANE HOUSEAL, Teen Vogue
In Asheville, North Carolina, where communities are still reeling from the impact of Hurricane Helene, mutual aid efforts have been essential for survival, residents say.
Lessons From the People’s Kitchen
BY YEEUN YOO, 34st.com
Filling stomachs, hearts, and minds in a Philadelphia community kitchen.
Mutual Aid Organisations and Their Role in Reducing Food Insecurity in Chicago’s Urban Communities During COVID-19
BY SARIA LOFTON, MARJORIE KERSTEN, SHANNON D SIMONOVICH, AND AKILAH MARTIN, Cambridge University Press
'Local mutual aid organisations can function as hubs to feed urban communities while reducing food waste and building community.'
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That's all for this issue of The Deep Dish. Thank you for reading, and thank you for being a member of the Civil Eats community. If this is your first time reading The Deep Dish (welcome!), be sure to check out our previous issues:
If someone forwarded this email to you, please support our work and become a member today. Questions? Compliments? Suggestions? We love to hear from our members: Please send us a note at members@civileats.com. |
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