"Just Two Sir"

Tuesday

This morning I went with Nancy to the food pantry at 4th Presbyterian Church. After people were finished inside the church they many of them came over and picked up a two dollar bag of fresh produce from us. Today we had the bags filled with potatoes, one onion, a big tomato, a bunch of bananas, some romaine heart lettuce, a grapefruit, and celery. Folks could also pick up plantains if they wanted any. There was a kid named Nick, probably about 14 years old, who was there helping out with the food pantry, who has been there helping out for some time. Nancy insisted that he take me in and give me a tour of the system so I would know what they were doing. It was interesting to compare the two systems. Nancy used to just give away food, but at some point a minister stopped her, and led her to believe that that dehumanized the people who were receiving the food. Some folks who could use the food wouldn't be caught dead in a line asking for a handout, but will gladly pay for it (albeit at a greatly discounted price). At the food pantry the folks who were working seemed to be fairly suspicious of those coming in. After passing through the registration table, people were convereted into a number written on a small scrap of paper, representing how many people are in their household. Throughout the rest of the line the workers would watch strictly to make sure that no one took more than their number allowed. One worker even condescendingly commanded one of the people on the other side of the table to put her passport away while going through the line (which she had had out for identification) so that she wouldn't lose the passport.

Now I don't mean to bash the food pantry. These are good folks doing good work. And they do need to make rules about what people can and can't take so that the food is fairly distributed. We do the same thing, in that we often won't sell people what they want, even if we have it, since we want to fairly distribute our food. That is one of the several uses of the word fair that inspired the name Fair Foods. We often get requests for a dollar's worth of of onions, bananas, oranges, or tomatoes, which we have to turn down, even though we might have enough to do it. This is because when we have one of these items high in demand but low in supply we want everyone to get some, so we put a limited quantity in each two dollar bag.

But there did seem to be a different approach and attitude at the food pantry. It seemed very 'us and them', formulaic and institutional. Watching Jason interact with Fair Foods customers is incredible, as it is very relational. He knows many of the customers by name. He is always trying to pick up a few more words or a new phrase in some language. We haggle and try to get people what they want, swapping items out for different fruits or veggies that they prefer if it isn't too busy. We don't check ID. We sell to anybody. We eat the food that we are selling. When I offered a bag to one woman this morning she told me, "Oh, no. I work here at the pantry."

Upon seeing one of our customers haggling with Nancy, Nick questioned why she would do this, expressing to me a "beggars can't be choosers" mentality. From what I learned from my interim class though, this mentality makes the problem harder to solve. My interim class was West Michigan Food Systems, and one day we took a field trip to the Feeding America Food Bank. We heard from the director of the food bank there who has done tremendous work with getting companies to donate the food that they can't use. He has analyzed many different kinds of food distribution systems. The ones that are the least helpful are those that simply assume that everyone needs to get x, y, and z, and put the same thing into every pre-made basket, rather than letting the people who are going to eat the food have a say.

Speaking of food banks (and this isn't a Josh Uitvlugt transition), Fair Foods has had an interesting relationship with the Boston food bank over the years. They used to work together, and Fair Foods simply acted as the produce arm of the Food Bank. However, differences in ideology caused them to split. They wanted to put Nancy on the board of directors, and pay her 80,000 a year. She told them to pay her 30,000 a year, and to put the extra 50,000 in Fair Foods budget. She also suggested that maybe some of the top, well-paid executives of the food bank (6,000ish a week anyone?) who are supposed to be interested in feeding people should do similarly. Well, that was the end of that relationship. So the Food Bank currently has a large multi-million dollar new building purchased by the city, while Fair Foods operates out of loading docks 7 and 8 at the Maxwell Flea Market building, and is trying to get a letter on the mayor's desk asking the city to waive the rent on the recently repossessed building (the city owns the Maxwell Flea Market Building).

Well, I apologize for the bit of a rant, but I am just trying to pass along some of my thoughts, which include some of the frustrations that Fair Foods goes through, that I do hear about.