94 Time March 15/March 22, 2021
COMMUNAL
MEALS
Facing a frayed federal safety
net, A SMALL ARMY
OF WOMEN are getting
food to those who need it
BY MARIAH ESPADA AND ABBY VESOULIS
JusT before 3 p.m. on a warm wednesday in february,
30-year-old Jammella Anderson— donning heart-shaped
glasses, a Black Lives Matter tee and 2-in. platform boots—
strolls up to a small bicycle- repair shop just north of Albany, N.Y.
She’s here to persuade Troy Bike Rescue to let her use an elec-
trical outlet so she can plug in a new refrigerator just outside
the shop’s front door.
“It’s just two prongs,” she explains to one of the employees.
“All I need is an outlet.”
Anderson, who works as a part-time doula and yoga in-
structor, is here on behalf of the one-woman organization
she launched in August, Free Food Fridge Albany—an ad hoc
network of half a dozen publicly accessible refrigerators that
local farmers, market operators, restaurant owners and indi-
vidual shoppers stock with free food multiple times each day
to serve hungry people in the community. If Troy Bike Rescue’s
owner agrees to give Anderson access to his electrical supply,
Free Food Fridge Albany will be up to seven fridges citywide—
a small but crucial service that helps thousands of local low-
income families get enough to eat each month.
Even in flush times millions of Americans, including 11 mil-
lion children, lack access to nutritious, affordable food. But in
the past year the problem has become especially acute. When
COVID-19 crippled the blue collar job market in March, the
number of Americans who were “food insecure”— defined
as those unable to access enough nutrition to live an active,
healthy life—spiked from 11.5% in 2018 to an estimated
15.6% in 2020, according to an October pro jection by Feed-
ing America, the largest domestic hunger-relief organization.
For months, Americans have mobbed soup kitchens, waited
in miles-long lines of cars to get rations from food banks and
posted GoFundMe pages asking friends and strangers to chip
in to cover groceries.
State and federal safety-net programs have not kept up with
this crisis of demand. While Congress passed a relief package
last March, it wasn’t until April that the Department of Agri-
culture boosted Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP) benefits by 40% in all 50 states. And even then, the
language of the law excluded many of the poorest families—
SPECIAL REPORT
WOMEN and the PANDEMIC