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#Thread: Perhaps you’ve encountered a “community fridge” at some point this year, a type of mutual aid in which food donations are placed in a shared refrigerator on the street. People take what they need, and individuals or groups with excess food can give back to the community.
But these fridges have emerged at a fraught cultural moment, and what seems like a win-win initiative has faced NIMBY pushback, vandalism, even fridge theft. https://thecounter.org/community-fridges-theft-mutual-aid-covid-19/
At core, the fridges are intended to mitigate an urgent, clear, rapidly growing problem: The coronavirus pandemic is making millions of Americans food-insecure. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/10/02/food-bank-shortage-feeding-america/
For instance, in August, about one in 10 Americans reported that they sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat that week. That’s about 22.3 million hungry people, 4.3 million more than there were in March.
Mutual aid is part community organizing, part political participation—it encourages people to take responsibility for each other during perilous economic times. Projects like the fridges promote a voluntary exchange of essential goods and services at the community level.
They are also vulnerable to attack. A community fridge set up in Union City, New Jersey, was knocked over and broken. In the Rockaways neighborhood in Queens, New York, a free fridge was stolen and stranded on a beach jetty. These incidents are not uncommon.
“I think it’s definitely classism, and when you think about poor people in the Rockaways, a majority are Black and brown folks,” community organizer Marva Kerwin said about the local fridge theft. [Miami fridge photo c/o Sherina Jones]
![“I think it’s definitely classism, and when you think about poor people in the Rockaways, a majority are Black and brown folks,” community organizer Marva Kerwin said about the local fridge theft. [Miami fridge photo c/o Sherina Jones]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ElBlqtYXEAAlVqz.png "“I think it’s definitely classism, and when you think about poor people in the Rockaways, a majority are Black and brown folks,” community organizer Marva Kerwin said about the local fridge theft. [Miami fridge photo c/o Sherina Jones]")
And yet, in spite of these challenges, the gospel of community fridges appears to spread even faster than ill will: There are now more than 60 free fridges in the New York metropolitan area alone, with more fridges popping up everywhere from Tallahassee to Houston to Vancouver.
“It’s definitely filling a void,” said one Florida organizer. “We hear different stories: in between jobs, lost jobs, children are home eating more than ever.” It’s an idea that may prove resilient enough to withstand opposition. https://thecounter.org/community-fridges-theft-mutual-aid-covid-19/
