“Food Garage” Feeds Families During Covid

What began in mid-March with a few boxes of extra vegetables from Trader Joe’s has turned into a grassroots operation that collects donated food for around 180 mostly immigrant families a week out of a garage in Westville.

The Semilla Collective​‘s new ​“Food Garage” delivers groceries to immigrant and undocumented families afraid to go to more established food banks while they deal with job and income loss during Covid-19.

“Some pantries require an ID or proof of poverty. Even those that don’t, undocumented families have fears about engaging with them,” said Food Garage organizer Ariana Shapiro.

Many families worry about the Trump administration’s new ​“public charge” rule, Shapiro’s partner Luis Luna said. The rule means the federal government can deny noncitizens green cards or entry into the U.S. based on whether they have relied on social services like food stamps. (To read more about other groups stepping in to help immigrants during Covid, click here.)

“The irony is that the most vulnerable are those who also have the most valuable work. You have undocumented folks working in grocery stores, cleaning and taking care of children or elders,” Luna said.

The [Speak-Truth-To-] Power Couple

Luna and Shapiro originally met through immigration and labor organizing. She mentors Spanish-speaking childcare providers through All Our Kin. He is a senior organizer with the Working Families Party in Hartford.

With the closures of many workplaces to prevent the spread of Covid-19, both are working from Shapiro’s home in Westville. They have a roomy garage and a few tables. So when Lori Martin of Haven’s Harvest called Luna to ask whether he could find homes for Trader Joe’s excess produce, they said yes.

Shapiro called the childcare businesses she works with. They called their usual clients. Both groups needed the food, as daycares and other small businesses have closed down during the pandemic.

“We heard this immediate and extreme response,” she said. ​“That food was gone immediately.”

The couple began keeping a list of people who needed the donated food. The list quickly spiraled out of control as families contacted them from as far away as the Bronx.

“Our list grows exponentially every day. It’s a bit frightening,” Shapiro said.

The couple now refers most of the new names to mutual aid organizations in the places where they live, like Hartford, Bridgeport and Norwalk. That leaves around 180 families in the New Haven area who have requested weekly deliveries of groceries.

The deliveries are not charity but solidarity, Luna emphasized. Luna grew up in a mixed-status family, where some members were undocumented.

“The reality is that a lot of my family members, the ones who work in restaurants, have lost their jobs too. My family has always been resilient, but this has touched everybody,” Luna said.

How The Garage Works

Luna and Shapiro assemble food from three main sources. They get donations of excess food from Trader Joe’s and Yale through Haven’s Harvest, as well as from the food pantry Loaves and Fishes.

These are mostly perishable items. To get a mix of healthful food in each bag, the Food Garage team also buys staples like rice, beans and pasta in bulk from Costco and Restaurant Depot. The New Haven Area Mutual Aid Fund provides the money for these purchases.

Finally, New Haven neighborhoods are organizing to donate canned goods and other nonperishables. The couple said that they often look out at their garage to find a shopping bag of eight cans. These small donations add up, they said.

Luna and Shapiro have organized a list of volunteers to help them divide up and deliver the food. They even have a volunteer who checks the cleanliness of their operation (they always wear masks and gloves, Shapiro said). Common Ground High School has donated space to make dividing up the bags easier.

Shapiro manages a Google document of all of the families who have requested food. The sheet has their language preferences, addresses, number of family members and any special requests, like whether they need diapers.

She contacts each family on the day of the delivery to check when they will be home. The volunteer delivering the food then drops the food off at their door and gets back in the car before calling or texting the family that the food has arrived.

Loaves and Fishes and DESK have taken over a chunk of the Food Garage list as part of their own deliveries to elderly people and people at higher risk of falling seriously ill with Covid-19. Most of those on Shapiro’s list are young immigrant families, she said.

Lately, the group has been tucking envelopes with $100 in cash into the bags of food. On Thursday and Friday, they managed to distribute $5,000 from the mutual aid fund in this way.

Adding the cash helps families provide for needs that Shapiro and Luna cannot predict. At the same time, the Food Garage team is able to buy healthy food more cheaply than individual families by buying in bulk. The deliveries also save families who are sick or struggling with transportation or childcare a trip to the grocery store.

Asking for Help

Luna and Shapiro both work over 40 hours a week. They have been taking personal days off to run the Food Garage.

“As a small group of folks, it’s really hard. We’re looking at a Prius delivering food,” Luna said.

Luna compared their tiny operation to the possibilities if large institutions like the city or Yale got involved. For example, their trucks have more space to hold bags of food than volunteers’ cars, he explained. Because they are overwhelmed with their efforts to run the Food Garage, they are relying on others to advocate for these partnerships.

A more permanent structure would need to still rely on grassroots relationships, Shapiro said. A formal list of names would be dangerous for families worrying about getting deported.

“Right now, we have this crisis that lays bare injustices and wealth gaps. We can really come to a solution,” Luna said.

Luna and Shapiro asked those interested in helping to give to the New Haven Area Mutual Aid Fund.

See below for other articles about organizing during the pandemic. Series logo by Amanda Valaitis.

• Pro-Immigrant Crew Tackles Covid Crisis
• Mutual Aid Teams Tackle Covid-19 Challenge

This article was updated on April 14 at 6 p.m. with the new number of families on the Food Garage list.