PT-FoodForPeace59
HOST: [00:00:00] Can food be a tool for political organizing? Back in the 1980s, a group of activists in Cambridge, Massachusetts thought so. They created a cultural institution now recognized around the world.
CT Butler: They know that Food Not Bombs is against war, against militarism. It's for vegetarianism or eating healthy and the environment, and it's about a social dynamic where everybody matters.
HOST: During the pandemic, a new generation put its own twist on food security. The community fridge emerged on city streets, a way to connect with neighbors in need, even when we couldn't see each other face to face.
Michelle Nelson: It transformed that corner completely, where you have neighbors that look out for the fridge.
Michelle Nelson: They do not want the fridge to be harmed.
HOST: How food can help us create a more peaceful world on both a local and global scale, today onPeace Talks Radio.[00:01:00]
HOST: This is PeaceTalks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and non violent conflict resolution. I'm Jessica Ticktin with correspondent Andrew Stelzer. There have been soup kitchens and bread lines for hundreds, if not thousands ,of years. Feeding those in need is often seen as charity. But food can do more than sustain us.
HOST: Eating together builds community. Reliable access to food creates the conditions for people to engage, organize, and participate. And thinking about where our food comes from can help us imagine a more just system of production and distribution. Today, we'll hear about two food justice projects focused not just on addressing hunger, but on building more peaceful communities.
HOST: In part two, we'll explore community fridges, a grassroots movement that took shape during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. But first, in part one, the story of Food Not Bombs. It may be hard to imagine now, but before the 1980s, [00:02:00] large-scale homelessness in the UnitedStates was far less visible. With the economic policies of Reaganomics came deep cuts to social services and increased military spending during the ColdWar.
HOST: As urbanpoverty grew, a new kind of activism emerged. Food Not Bombs began in thatmoment. One of its original founders, C.T. Butler, and his friend Keith McHenrywere looking for a way to spark awareness and action.
Andrew Stelzer: Thefood angle was really as an organizing tool to get people to do things. And weknew that if they started collecting free food, which there's plenty of in thissociety, and started giving it away to people who need it, they would seewhat's really going on.
HOST: In case you haven't heard of Food Not Bombs, there are now independent autonomous chapters in hundreds of cities around the world. They typically serve free meals in public spaces, parks, plazas, street corners. And for reasons that aren't entirely clear, many of these groups share a kind of punk, DIY, bare-bones aesthetic.
HOST: [00:03:00] Here's C.T. Butler speaking with PeaceTalks Radio correspondent Andrew Stelzer about the history and evolution ofFood Not Bombs.
CT Butler: After Idropped out of college right after the Vietnam War, I was in the theaterbusiness. I was producing and, and managing and doing backstage stuff. I did itfor three years.
CT Butler: And then ,um, an actor friend of mine, he said to me, "I know you're interested inhuman drama, big spectacle, the large scale, like the circus," is whatI've called, or a mob, those kind of things when a large group of people all get motivated in a direction and do crazy stuff. So he said, "You know what? There's this protest that's gonna happen up at the Seabrook Nuclear PowerStation that they're building 20 miles north of Boston, and, you know, a couple thousand protesters or activists are gonna try to occupy the site and stop them from building it, and then a couple thousand cops are gonna show up and try to stop them from occupying it and to continue building it.
CT Butler: It's gonnabe a huge human drama." So that, in fact, happened, [00:04:00] and I went, and that changed my life. The experience was so profound in two major ways for me. One was the night before, there was a meeting of, I don't know, 1,000 people, and they were using this thing they called consensus, which I had never heard of.
CT Butler: I had been involved in student government. I knew Robert's Rules of Order. I knew how todo a motion and second and all that, and I was fascinated by this other model of democracy that I didn't even know existed. So that was my introduction that night to the world of consensus And for those who don't know, I went on to write two books about consensus decision-making that were very popular in the'90s.
CT Butler: And the other thing that I experienced was this concept that people were calling nonviolence, as in Gandhian nonviolence, or more particularly in our country,Martin Luther King and his nonviolent campaigns for civil rights. And what was powerful for me was that I was a teenager when the civil rights movement, in [00:05:00] '63, when Martin Luther King was doing a thing.
CT Butler: And ofcourse, I was very aware when he was assassinated. So I knew about Martin Luther King. I knew of his work in civil rights. And as a white middle-class kid, I don't think I ever heard the word nonviolence or understood that his approach was a nonviolence approach. It just never came through. You know, it was suppressed.
CT Butler: So that both upset me and inspired me to learn more. And so, um, we started meeting to continue doing some kind of organizing. And eventually I went to Keith- KeithMcHenry, CT's friend, who's stayed involved with Food Not Bombs for decades since he helped create it ... And I said, "Keith, let's just do this thing."
CT Butler: This thing was both - He was working at what would be called a Whole Foods now. It was called Bread and Circus. And I was working in a Mexican restaurant. We were both working in the food industry, and we saw how much food was being thrown away every day. And Ronald Reagan had just gotten elected, and we knew thatRonald Reagan's economic policies would create a whole lot more homeless people.
CT Butler: But at the time, homelessness wasn't even a political issue. In [00:06:00]1980, it wasn't a common thing. There were homeless people, of course. It wasn't they didn't exist, but there were not that many, you know. So I said to Keith, "Let's take this food that we're throwing away at work and bring it home." But I wasn't gonna feed poor people.
CT Butler: Initially,the original idea wasn't to feed other people. It was to feed ourselves. And as activists, that way we wouldn't have to spend money on food and we'd have to work less for the man and could spend more time protesting. That was the actual original impetus to collect the food. But within a week, once we started doing it, there was so much food that we started giving it to other anarchists.
CT Butler: We started a slogan, "This is the revolution. We're eating as fast as we can So we sat around the kitchen table and said after about a month of, you know, we had piles of food growing, "What are we gonna do with all this food?" And we talked about that as a collective, and we felt that serving food individually, you know, to making meals and giving individual meal to people would be labor-intensive and not re- w- it wouldn't [00:07:00]get rid of the, all this food we had.
CT Butler: We had more food than that we could be able to distribute. So what we did was we decided to connect with all the food agencies that are helping people in Cambridge, and we would provide them for food on a weekly basis. We'd stop by and drop off as much food as they needed. And on the weekends, when those places aren't open, those agencies, we would cook the food up and go to every protest we could find and serve lunch, and just give the food away and collect donations, just fund the collective, and collect and organize, you know, get people to join.
CT Butler: And that's what we did. And, uh, that is what took off. I mean, that's just, that became Food Not Bombs
Andrew Stelzer: At the time, coming from work that was addressing global needs, stopping nuclear power, trying to stop wars, did something like food and helping people eat seem too small, do you think, in [00:08:00] your vision of, uh, accomplishing world peace and changing the world?
Andrew Stelzer: Did it fit in somewhere to your theory of change at the time? Did it feel like stepping back and you were working on something that didn't matter as much? How did it play into you and, and your co-creators' ideas of making change?
CT Butler: I'm just realizing this is a form of intersectionalism. Because what the answer to your question actually is, is what we considered that was vegetarianism, being what now we call vegan, because in 1980, the word vegan was not in common usage in America.
CT Butler: But recognizing that stopping eating meat, in particular beef, but ending the meat industry would be a m- you know, for one thing, the food industry is the one of the m- maybe is the major source of pollution, air pollution and water pollution in this country. So, you know, we knew that becoming a vegetarian was a [00:09:00] radical thing to do, and there weren't that many of us then.
CT Butler: It was very few. It wasn't popular, it wasn't in the mainstream, there weren't ...There was no vegetarian food in any restaurants or stores. So that was the radical perspective, was being a vegetarian, and we were promoting vegetarianism from the beginning. Food Not Bombs is a vegetarian organization.But in terms of using food as an organizing tool, we're a small group, you know, six people, six, seven people, a small collective.
CT Butler: And we'rein Cambridge, and we knew there were hundreds of political groups of everyflavor, both sectarian, you know, like communist and socialist, but there were also every type of rights and environmental issues. They were all in Cambridge.There were literally hundreds of different kinds of groups. And every single one of them had a manifesto that basically was saying, "You need to think this way in order to be in our group And we were like, "No, we, we're anarchists.
CT Butler: We don't wanna tell people what to think. We want them to think for themselves. That's what we want." So what we wanted, what [00:10:00]we were trying to do was what could we come up with that would be an activity that would teach them the politics we wanted them to learn by doing the activity, not by following our creed, you know, our manifesto?
CT Butler: And we thought, wow, a great way to promote vegetarianism was to cook up vegetarian food and give it away. And we knew we could give it away 'cause we knew we could get the w- food free, and if we gave the food away free, people would be not indebted to us, but they would appreciate us, and then they would want to help us do what we're doing.
CT Butler: You know,be, be attracted to what we're doing. And that was the idea.
Andrew Stelzer: The name Food Not Bombs, my understanding is it preexisted the organization, so to speak. It certainly endured, and I know you have some thoughts as to why that is. What was the role of the name at the time, and do you think it helped the organization succeed?
Andrew Stelzer: Andalso the [00:11:00] politics behind it. Uh, Imean, it, it sounds like a message of peace. Did people receive it as such?
CT Butler: Well, youknow, the very, very first name of our collective was actually the Food forFree Committee. And when we did the food on weekends at rallies and places where there were middle-class people and we were trying to raise money, the food was still for free, but we wanted to raise some money.
CT Butler: And we found that for Americans, when the sign said free, that meant take and run. So they didn't leave any donations. We raised nothing. We- it was, it was a fail.So we realized if we were gonna raise money on the weekends that way, we had to change our name. So that was the impetus that was kind of... And that, that's important to know because the Food for Free Committee actually still exists inCambridge as a nonprofit that's m- a major nonprofit in the Boston area doing major hunger relief work for the region.
CT Butler: Anyway,um, so we changed the name, and Keith is a graphic artist, and he was reallyinto doing street art, otherwise known as graffiti. [00:12:00]And one of the spray painting campaigns was spray painting the words "Dropfood, not bombs" in front of grocery stores, on the sidewalk in front ofgrocery stores. And that was because, at the time, if I remember correctly, andI think I do, that was the slogan that the pro-Palestinian protesters wereusing to stop the bombing of Palestine in 1980.
CT Butler: So actually, the name Food Not Bombs is directly connected to that struggle, and it's still relevant, sadly.
Andrew Stelzer: And so you adopted that name for the weekend events, or when did it become an organization, so to speak?
CT Butler: That was the, that became our collective's name. So yes, and so we landed on Food NotBombs. We chose it specifically because we also were aware at that point, the media had, had, or, or I remember there was a group called the October 22nd Coalition, and the whole article talked about the October 22nd Coalition getting arrested, never saying what they were getting arrested for, anything about why they were there, anything about what that stood for.
CT Butler: It [00:13:00] was about police brutality. There was awhole article about their arrest, and nothing came through about policebrutality. Zero, right? So we said, "You know, we have to choose a namethat says our politics absolutely directly in the name, so that when they say,'Food Not Bombs did this,' we've already said what people wanna hear."
CT Butler: It was pivotal to choose that slogan as a name for a group because it serves both purposes. It both is an identifier for the work that we're doing, and it's also the work we're doing.
Andrew Stelzer: Itreminds me of Black Lives Matter. Anytime you say the name of the organizationor the - the idea comes through as well.
Andrew Stelzer: So we're in the early '80s here. How did it go from a localized little group to an international phenomenon?
CT Butler: So, um, and so finally in '84, I had set up a nonprofit, and what I did was basically cater the movement. So I would show up at every protest that was happening in New England [00:14:00] and serve lunch for free, and I would hang out the Food Not Bombs banner, and I would talk to people how you can collect the free food that's in bo- in your community.
CT Butler: You can just go and get it, 'cause it's being thrown away by every restaurant and every grocery store, and distribute it any way you want. Use it as a way to organize and to feed people. And so for me, as an activist, being able to bring basically an unlimited amount of food to a protest like that and sit there and not just talk about, but say, "Look, I just did this, and I got it from places that were...
CT Butler: I didn't pay any money for this. This was all free. You could do this, too. Anybody can do this." And so we can complain about how bad Reaganomics is, but if you're not trying to do something about it, then you're not an activist. You know, you're just, you're just complaining I was able to say that with force, and I didn't say it necessarily that bluntly, but that was what I was saying.
CT Butler: A-
Andrew Stelzer: and I guess a bunch of people decided [00:15:00] they would do it because soon there was Food Not Bombs not only all over the United States, but eventually globally.
CT Butler: Yes. Well, so let's go to 1988. Okay? Keith had been underground for a couple years. I had lost touch with him, but he surfaced in San Francisco, and I went out there a couple times and said, "Keith, this is a great place to do a Food Not Bombs."
CT Butler: He learned that in, in the Panhandle area of Golden Gate, the churches provided, I guess, lunches and dinners every day but Monday lunch. It was just inexplicable. They didn't serve Monday lunch. So Keith decided to fill the gap by serving a free Monday lunch, vegetarian lunch, in the Golden Gate Park. And he didn't take too long before the police started harassing him and threatening him.
CT Butler: Every Monday in August, Food Not Bombs got arrested in Golden Gate Park in 1988. The first arrest was seven people, including Keith. The next weekend it was 14 people. The next Monday it was maybe 30 something. And then the next week, [00:16:00] next Monday, was Labor Day holiday.Hundreds of people showed up, and they arrested 80 people, and it made international news.
CT Butler: So because that news, because it m- literally made international news that activists were being arrested for feeding the homeless, Food Not Bombs took off in San Francisco. It became a huge thing. And so by '92, we hear rumors that there are other Food Not Bombs chapters in other places. There's two in up- one inVancouver and somewhere else in British Columbia, and then one in Long Beach,California, down s- up near LA, and of course there was the San Francisco chapter.
CT Butler: There was the Boston chapter, and there was one, there's one from North Carolina, I think, or something like that.
Andrew Stelzer: It'sinteresting that, you know, just visually a Food Not Bombs feeding site looksdifferent than a church soup kitchen even though in many ways they're doing thesame thing. But the volunteers are often dressed different.
Andrew Stelzer: The whole demeanor is different. Why do you think that [00:17:00]is, and how has that thread carried through? Even though people in, say, you know, Prague or I don't know where else there's a chapter, those people may have never met people, uh, in San Francisco or Cambridge.
CT Butler: True. And,and yet I've seen pictures and videos of Food Not Bombs in Kuala Lumpur, forexample, and it looks just...
CT Butler: Y- youlook at it and you immediately know it's Food Not Bombs. There's a culture,there's a motif, and there's a set of values. That was all intentional that wesaid, you know, the name and the purpose needs to reflect key values. That'swhat we're promoting. We're not promoting a, a certain political p- posture,not even anarchism per se.
CT Butler: But the values that we chose, and then they're sort of embedded in the name as well as clearly when you ask anybody, in this country especially, but really around the world, what is Food Not Bombs to you? Or what motivates you to do Food NotBombs? They say the same three things to this day, and it was the three [00:18:00] things we articulated, embedded in the, in the idea, which was obviously non-violence, which is in the form of anti-militarism, which is in the form of not bombs, right?
CT Butler: But also vegetarianism, which is also non-violence, not harming animals. And then the third one is, the way it's articulated usually is no leaders, a horizontal structure where every voice matters, which in my world is called consensus,consensus process. It doesn't matter to me they don't call it non-violence, they don't call it consensus, they don't call it vegetarianism, they don't call it anarchism.
CT Butler: Itdoesn't... What they're learning, what people everywhere I've seen it up tonow, they know that the Food Not Bombs is against war and against militarism.It's for vegetarianism or eating healthy and the environment, and it's about asocial dynamic where everybody matters
Andrew Stelzer:You're listening to Peace Talks Radio.
Andrew Stelzer: I'm Andrew Stelzer, and I'm speaking with CT Butler, the primary founder of FoodNot [00:19:00] Bombs. Now, back to our conversation When Food Not Bombs makes the news these days, generally it's because a group of people is being arrested or a site is being shut down by police. It seems like it happens at least a couple times a year.
Andrew Stelzer: Some local city or county says you can't feed people in public or without a permit, or we have such and such code. But there's something bigger going on. Why is it that feeding people continues even, we're talking more than 45 years later, to be a threat? What is threatening about feeding people in public?
CT Butler: It,there's many, it's many faceted. One of them is claiming public space. In otherwords, the right to assembly has been eroded over the decades and centuries.But at this point in time, one of the things that Food Not Bombs does is says,"This public space is ours." [00:20:00]And people who like control don't like that, and they say, "No, that's ourspace, not your space, and we're gonna prove it to you."
CT Butler: There's another facet that providing the means of survival to people who need it because they're oppressed in some way or another, they've got some challenge in their life and they can't make it on their own, is something the government wants to do. They want to control that dynamic. They want to control what they get and how they get it, because the poor people scare them.
CT Butler: And so what Food Not Bombs is doing is going outside the system. They have no control over how we're doing what we're doing. And the things we were just talking about, exposing the truth that there is plenty of food, and the only reason why there are people who are hungry in this country is because of politics.
CT Butler: And so the people who are making that politics happen don't want that to be exposed. So there's that aspect. There's also making visible the true horrors of being without a place to [00:21:00] live. Because pretty much, without blaming the victim or trying to be derogatory, if you don't have a home, if you don't have a place that's a safe space for you to go and retreat to and recover, you become mentally ill.
CT Butler: You can't stay sane and not have a place to go recharge. I mean, just even be able to go sleep safely so you can, y- you're okay. When you're every moment, waking and sleeping, is a threat, it drives you crazy. I've witnessed it. I've seen people go down the... You know, deteriorate as they can't manage to keep their lives together because it's so difficult.
CT Butler: And when we create a soup line out in front of City Hall, and all we have to do is setup a soup, a pot of soup, and suddenly there are 50 people in line, that's a huge statement of what's wrong with our society, and they can't stand it, so they have to shut it down. And the point would be that if the politicians ended hunger in this country, then we wouldn't be doing what we're doing.
CT Butler: So get toit, politicians. You're the problem, not us. So easy to say once you get aroundto it. [00:22:00] So they don't like us at all
Andrew Stelzer: As anactivist, is there a difference between working on issues that are long-termand aspirational, like the end of nuclear weapons, versus something that isimmediate and essential to life, like food?
Andrew Stelzer: If we're working towards a more peaceful world, both of those things arguably need to happen. So how does the urgency of the issue relate to the approach?
CT Butler: Well, it's kind of a symbiotic. There's both a, a practical and a strategic or visionary aspect to both. So when you're doing something direct, d- you know, mutual aid, direct action, where you are directly connecting with...
CT Butler: You have something, whether it's an idea or food, and you're sharing it directly with somebody else yourself. That interaction is precious. It's fl- these days, it's hard to come by. [00:23:00] People aren't interacting anymore. They don't even, they, everybody's in their own little bubble, and they hardly even talk to each other.
CT Butler: It's really frustrating me. I'm trying, I'm pushing... That's a lot of my activist work right now is just pushing against that alone, just trying to get people out of their houses and talking to each other So we're working on that right now. But food is immediate. You offer up free food, people come to you and wanna get it.
CT Butler: So that,that's a, both a tactical thing. It, it's a, a hook, attraction. It's a organizing tool, and there's also a vision of how the world could be a better place if we... our food industry, the way we do food in our society was changed and, and healthier. So there's a, a whole lot of openings, even just around food itself, just about food, when you are using food as an organizing tool to teach the new paradigm, let's call it, the new world we would like to see as activists.
CT Butler: So that'sa direct thing, but also the long range issues, like ending nuclear weapons orchanging our operating system and using [00:24:00]consensus instead of voting, both requires tenacity, requires endurance. Itrequires that you keep doing it. You're not gonna get it quickly because it's,it takes a long time.
CT Butler: So that means that there needs to be support. There needs to be infrastructure, and food would be, in general way, one of those pieces that needs to be taken care of for there to be long-term... Right? The, the more immediate application of that, and I did this many times, was the... when there was a protest, an example would be there...
CT Butler: GE had a,a Gatling gun test site up in Vermont when I was living there, and activists decided to protest them building these monstrosity machines that kill, that shoot, like, I don't know, 600 bullets a minute or something like that. It's just insane, right? It just t- just tears up. Whatever they point it at, it just tears the thing up and just destroys it.
CT Butler: So we were protesting that up in this, the middle of nowhere in Vermont for, like, a week.There was a protest, and Food Not Bombs was there serving the food because otherwise people had to go there and come back, and go there and come [00:25:00] back, and go there and come back and to eat. But we provided food so they could stay.
CT Butler: That's just a, a very micro example of what I'm talking about, but that's also true at the societal level when we're taking care of the problem of food insecurity so people can start focusing on ending nuclear weapons. Because if you're food insecure, you can't work on ending nuclear weapons So you see, they're symbiotic, not separate.
CT Butler: You gotta do both. They interact with each other. So that's been my philosophy all of my life, is that you focus on things at different times, but all the time you're doing both. You, you... It, it, it doesn't matter to me as a global activist whether an individual is doing a small act or a giant act. Doesn't matter,'cause it all needs to happen.
Andrew Stelzer: HasFood Not Bombs helped create a more peaceful world?
CT Butler:Definitely. I am so thrilled. You know, I hear in the media, I hear on the internet, in, in social media that people are like, "There's so much problems in the world. I wish I could do something, and I feel helpless. I feel like there's nothing I can do."[00:26:00]
CT Butler: And I like to say to people, "Look, first of all, just do something. Doesn't matter what it is. Take action. Showing up is 50% of it. Just show up." So that's the first thing. Second thing is, it's actually around food. I've always said,you know, if you really wanna make a difference, become a vegetarian. It's something you can do.
CT Butler: You can doit today. You don't have to become absolute. You don't have to become, you know, zero dairy and meat. But start becoming a vegetarian. Go that direction.That'll matter. That's important, and you can do that, and you should be proud of yourself for doing that as, as, in terms of if you do it, uh, with your motivation with trying to help the world, because the food industry is one of the big problems, and becoming a vegetarian forces them to change.
CT Butler: But int-then the next thing is that you can do yourself, is you can feed your neighbor, and if you don't have enough resources to provide that food yourself, you can go get it for free. There's grocery stores and stores and warehouses and all the, the whole food industry. Every stage in the food industry, from the farm to the [00:27:00] table, there's waste, food waste, and some portion of that food waste is edible when it's wasted, and some portion of the food that's wasted and edible can be recovered.
CT Butler: And the small- And, and it's easier when just one person does it. When you try to organize, it's l- it's harder. There's more logistics. But you just hooking up with a local restaurant and going down there when, at the end of Saturday night or whatever, and making an arrangement to get their waste food that they don't know what to do with but are just gonna throw away, and you make arrangements to do something with it, you've made a difference.
CT Butler: And if you fed your neighbor, the best thing you'd be doing for them would be connecting with them, not feeding them. 'Cause that's really the point. It's great to feed them, but what you really need to do is connect with your neighbor. But feeding them is a great way to set it up. So that's two food things that everybody can do that would change the world
HOST: That was correspondent Andrew Stelzer speaking with C.T.
HOST: Butler, one of the founders of Food Not Bombs. Butler's written several books, including twoon the consensus decision-making process. [00:28:00]You can learn more about his work on their website, consensus.net. We'll link to it at peacetalksradio.com. You'll also find both parts of this program on our website, along with every episode we've produced since 2003.
HOST: There, you canread transcripts, see photos of our guests, and discover much more detail abouteach show. If you'd like to help keep these stories of peace and dialogue onthe air, there's a donate button waiting for you. It's a simple way to become apeace leader by supporting the non-profit work we do here at Peace Talks Radio.
HOST: Coming up after the break, at a time when many of us were staying apart, strangers started showing up for each other, leaving food in refrigerators on sidewalks and street corners. No sign-ups, no questions asked, just a quiet mutual trust.We'll hear how one woman in Philadelphia turned that simple idea into a network of brightly colored community fridges.
HOST: Stay with us.For correspondent Andrew Stelzer, I'm Jessica Ticktin. Thanks for listening toand for supporting Peace Talks Radio.[00:29:00][00:30:00]
HOST: You're listening to Peace Talks Radio, the radio series and podcast on peacemaking and non-violent conflict resolution. I'm Jessica Ticktin today with correspondent Andrew Stelzer. This is part two of a two-part program about how food can be used as a tool to build more peaceful communities. This time, Andrew speaks with Michelle Nelson, founder of Mama-T Fridges in Philadelphia.
HOST: If you thinkback to 2020, you may remember something unusual appearing on street corners and at bus stops. Refrigerators. With so many people out of work and traditional food charities overwhelmed, these fridges became a grassroots way to share food with those who needed it. Each one operates a little differently,but the idea is simple.
HOST: If you havesomething to give, leave it. If you need something, [00:31:00]take it, no questions asked. One woman in Philadelphia took that idea evenfurther, creating a network of fridges with a distinct look and identity.Brightly painted and easy to spot, you can see them from down the block.
Michelle Nelson: The fridge is somewhat of a rock star.
HOST: That's Michelle Nelson, the founder of Mama-T Fridges.
Michelle Nelson: You just don't understand the love that this appliance, which is more than appliance, has received.
HOST: Here's Andrew Stelzer's interview with Michelle Nelson.
Michelle Nelson: I remember being a food insecure student. Um, as a student, you're spending a lot of money on books and other things, trying to survive, and sometimes food is not as available as you'd want it to be.
Michelle Nelson: One week is, uh, you're eating ramen noodles and, uh, hoping that the next week you are not eating ramen noodles. At the time, I was just really trying to get through studying and through exams. I [00:32:00]did notice that there was some fatigue, just in terms of I didn't feel I was getting enough of what I needed from a day-to-day basis.
Michelle Nelson: ButI really didn't... The concept of food insecurity, I thought more about itafterwards, that yeah, that was exactly what it was.
Andrew Stelzer: So 2020 comes. What were you doing, let's even say February or March, before COVID was the only thing we talked or thought about? What was your day-to-day routine? What were you doing with your life?
Michelle Nelson: So I am a child psychologist, and I finished, um, wrapping up my practice at the time, and I moved to Philly with my husband, and we were investing in property in North Philly specifically. And during that time, I knew I wanted to [00:33:00] be involved in community organizing. I always wanted to engage in social impactful activities.
Michelle Nelson: I didn't know what that was at the time or what that would look like, and so I really focused on letting the idea come to me when it came. Um, but at the time, I just immersed myself in learning about Philly, um, making wonderful connections, and those connections turned into friends. And what I noticed during the pandemic, um, especially in March, there were a lot of neighbors who just needed services.
Michelle Nelson: Um,everyone knows that I think all that was open was the CVS is where we could go,so that's something that, um, stuck out for me.
Andrew Stelzer: What was your understanding of some of the problems? Philly, you know, has long been called one of the, the poorest big city in the United States, and, you know, every few [00:34:00] years, upticks in violence, and we'll talk about that with the pandemic in, in a minute.
Andrew Stelzer: What was your under- understanding of some of the longstanding community problems and their causes and possible solutions?
Michelle Nelson: My understanding was that there was a lot of need for all types of social services, whether it's housing or food, shelter. It just seemed like Philly needed a lot of support. Not that there are not great organizations and services that have been around forever, but it just seemed that, uh, more needed to be done.
Michelle Nelson: And if you are in the position to help, it's great if you can, when you can. And I wanted to be a part of that. I didn't know how I was going to be a part of that, but I wanted to be a part of that.
Andrew Stelzer: I'm at the corner of North Third and Fairmount in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia. [00:35:00] It's a brisk spring afternoon.
Andrew Stelzer: And kitty-corner to me, down the block on Fairmount, is a bright yellow... Looks like a giant mailbox, but as I'm getting closer, it appears to be a refrigerator
Andrew Stelzer: It says mamateee.com community fridge. It has a heart on the outside. It says,"Free food
Andrew Stelzer: at Mamateee fridge. Take what you need, leave what you want."
Andrew Stelzer: When was the first time you saw a community fridge? Uh, and was it in person? Was it online? Where did you see this thing?
Michelle Nelson: So community fridges have been around for the last four to five years, and I saw my first community fridge in New York, um, in Brooklyn specifically.
Michelle Nelson: And,uh, I thought, "What a novel idea." And I [00:36:00]went up to it. It was, um, right outside of a coffee shop. And I looked at it and I said, "Wow." So it sits there. It's plugged in. Clearly, there's a host. I'm thinking the host is the coffee shop. And I opened up the door and I saw food in there, and there were, uh, neighbors interacting with the fridge.
Michelle Nelson: A few neighbors opened it, looked inside, took a couple of items, and walked away. And at that moment, I said to myself, "This is incredible that you can come up to this community fridge, no questions asked, inquire by opening it up and taking what you need." This fridge host in Brooklyn was part of a bigger solution because, um, you had a lot of issues with folks not being able to get access to food, especially during the pandemic.
Michelle Nelson: Andit [00:37:00] stayed with me, and I decided tomyself that I wanted to f- do further research on community fridges.
Andrew Stelzer: Sohow did... wh- where did it go from there?
Michelle Nelson:Well, so I brought that with me. I brought exactly what I saw at that coffeeshop with the community fridge outside with me to Philly. And I talked to my husband about it, and I said, "I'm gonna do some more research.
Michelle Nelson: I want to know more about community fridges. I think that Philadelphia could definitely use a resource such as this." Um, I did some research and I saw that there were some other wonderful community fridge organizations trying to get off the ground at the same time. I went back to New York and spoke to some of the organizers there and got some information about the process and sort of dos and don'ts, and I got some really valuable information.
Michelle Nelson: And from there, I [00:38:00] decided that it's time to launch our first location. And so we did at Seventh and Girard. And we thank that fridge host for giving us that opportunity because it is an appliance, and the first thing you will hear from a fridge host is, "You wanna put a fridge outside?" And it sounds crazy only until it's done.
Michelle Nelson: And,uh, we thank that fridge host for taking that leap of faith with us. And, uh,now to date, we have 18 locations across Philadelphia. They're all yellow, and they're friendly. All fridges are yellow. We have roughly 50 to 75 volunteers.We do food distribution every week, three to four times a week. We also have a Saturday packing food boxes, delivering to fridges day, where we invite a lot of our corporate partners and volunteers to come and join us [00:39:00] and support their community.
Michelle Nelson: Um, we have supported over 250,000 people in Philly since 2020. We're really proudof that number. We have a goal to support another 30,000 by end of 2026. Uh,food poundage, we roughly f- help or support, it's usually 44,000 a year,roughly, with food. So we wanna get that number a little bit higher. Um, always trying to strive to do that.
Andrew Stelzer: This is the heart of the Fishtown neighborhood, the corner of Palmer and Thompson inPhiladelphia. As you can hear, the kids are playing. People are out sitting on their stoops, walking around. It's a sunny day. And I see across the street A bright yellow [00:40:00] fridge. I'm gonna go see what's in there
Andrew Stelzer: The freezer is stocked. There's a bunch of packets of French lentil soup with smoked ham. There's a sandwich labeled as ham and cheese. There's a bag of beef liver, local farm-raised from Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania. Now let's check out the fridge. This fridge is pretty full. We have some vermicelli, some seaweed snacks, bunch of apples, baguettes, some canned food, salad.
Andrew Stelzer:There's a container of kale and a plastic bag. This bag has lots of ready-madehot dogs in plastic. So [00:41:00] this fridgeis stocked. If anybody came by,
Andrew Stelzer: theywould certainly have enough for several lunches or dinners.
Andrew Stelzer: Wasthe first one the hardest? Which one was the hardest? Was the second one thehardest?
Michelle Nelson: I would say anything you do the first time is the hardest just by default because you're new, you're green, you don't really know what you're doing sometimes.
Michelle Nelson: And it's okay not to know because that's how you learn. We had a fridge launch. It was more like a fridge, community fridge party, and the community welcomed it.And that's a very important part that I'd like to say. You know, it really matters that you engage the community first and just get to know, um, wherever it is you're trying to support or whoever you're trying to support.
Michelle Nelson: Get to know who you're tr- who you want to support. Find out about their needs and what they would like to see, and invite them to be [00:42:00]involved. So before we even launched at 7th and Girard, we did a lot of, um,what we like to call a neighborhood analysis, which includes engaging different community members and asking them questions.
Michelle Nelson: Um,so that way the community fridge is already welcomed before it even launches.
Andrew Stelzer: And through that community-building process that you've done, I guess, at every location, uh, what have you learned about the power of food or the utility of food in terms of strengthening a community and, and which many people believe,uh, makes the community a safer place?
Andrew Stelzer: What have you learned about what role food plays in that overall health and, uh, uh,safety of the community?
Michelle Nelson:Well, food security itself strengthens communities, and it potentially can reduce violence because food security addresses basic needs. It addresses social [00:43:00] stability and community commitment. When someone is food insecure, for instance, they are going through a lot of stressful moments in life.
Michelle Nelson:Community fridges and their food partners can come together and alleviate some of that stress by providing a neighbor with access to food when they can. And then in turn, that neighbor has the stress relief and is most likely not to engage in harmful activities to the neighborhood.
Andrew Stelzer: A-and there was a lot written about a spike in violence, not just in Philly, butin many American cities during 2020, 2021.
Andrew Stelzer: One of the explanations, um, that has started to come out through data is it had todo with unemployment rising, kids out of school not getting the free lunch they usually get at school, free breakfast. Do you believe that played a role, and,and, you know, [00:44:00] were, were you thinking about that? Were you aware of that?
Michelle Nelson:Yeah. Uh, there is definitely a correlation, again, on that basic needs tip.Um, food is part of that, and when someone is not able to feed themselves ortheir family, there's a lot of financial stress. And we know that financialstress, depression, and desperation are contributors of being food insecure.And so the basic needs piece is really something that needs to be the takeaway.
Michelle Nelson: When your basic needs are not being met, which food is one of them, it does make you, um, more susceptible to stress, which can cause making poor decisions
Andrew Stelzer: This is Peace Talks Radio. I'm Andrew Stelzer, and I'm speaking with Michelle Nelson, the founder of Mama T Fridges. They've got 18 community fridges throughout the city of Philadelphia. [00:45:00]Back to our conversation I think one of the reasons the community fridges had this moment and breakout moment in 2020 was because we were distancing, and it was a way to help someone without even interacting with them, right?
Andrew Stelzer: You could go on your own, fill the fridge, leave, and then someone could go on their own, access the food, and leave. It was, it was safe by COVID standards.That time is over, and there's been a lot of talk about how COVID changed our society, and we don't spend as much time together. I, I'm certainly not blaming that on the community fridges, but has something been lost in terms of face-to-face vol- y- a volunteer opportunity where you never actually see theperson receiving the food?
Andrew Stelzer: Uh,is that a symptom of a disconnection of our society? Is it a... Do you everthink about that? Is that okay?
Michelle Nelson: [00:46:00] I think just the fact that you volunteer is an act of generosity, and its intrinsic value tied to that is something that means a lot and should mean a lot to any person that gives their time or effort whenever they can.
Michelle Nelson:Community fridges are safe spaces. When neighbors gather at a community fridge,they interact. They get to know one another. And we do know that when communities know each other more and they help each other more, the likelihood for there to be, uh, violence or any other experiences in that neighborhood are decreased immensely because neighbors know they're looking out for each other.
Michelle Nelson: Socommunity fridges are a safe haven. Uh, they really are, truly.
Andrew Stelzer: Have you noticed the street corner where the fridge [00:47:00]is sort of changing into a more of a communal space? Are there particular examples you can think of where it maybe transformed, uh, that corner or that block?
Michelle Nelson: Yes.Um, I will give one example of one of our locations that completely transformed because of the community fridge, and that's, uh, our Mama T Fridge at CommunityPartnership School.
Michelle Nelson: So that fridge sits outside of a charter school, and the community is very, uh,involved, uh, meaning there's a lot of parents picking up their kids and lot of activity where the fridge is. And the fridge is somewhat of a rock star. The fourth and fifth graders are tasked with taking food that's about to be wasted from their cafeteria- And they put it in the fridge outside.
Michelle Nelson: Wealso created a [00:48:00] curriculum. We have aK through eight curriculum titled Being a Good Citizen, and we do have thecurriculum at the school. And so the guidance counselor does weave in thatcurriculum to support. We also have a children's book, and that children's bookis in the library of the school. So it's a full circle moment where you havethe children that go to that school.
Michelle Nelson: Some of them also come from food insecure houses themselves, but they're also giving, and they're learning about the power of giving that, well, when I need something, someone in turn is gonna give it back to me, and I can then give to them and vice versa. So it transformed that corner completely, where you have neighbors that look out for the fridge.
Michelle Nelson: They do not want the fridge to be harmed. They don't want the fridge to go away,which it's kinda heartbreaking when you think about it because you, you, you [00:49:00] just don't understand the love that this appliance, which is more than appliance, has received. So moments like that are just, um... I can't get enough of those moments.
Andrew Stelzer: What have you learned about food insecurity through the last, I guess, six years almost?
Michelle Nelson: I love mutual aid. It just, first and foremost, it taught me food insecurity,specifically how many neighbors out there are actually willing to help. We are100% volunteer-led, and we still have volunteers from 2020 that volunteer with us today, and it's a beautiful thing.
Michelle Nelson:There are some great humans walking around
Andrew Stelzer:Somebody is looking in the Mama T fridge here, and also the food pantry that'snext door to the fridge. A lot of these fridges [00:50:00]have pantries for dry goods right next to them. You don't need electricity, the food lasts longer, and you could have a larger space.
Andrew Stelzer: This is the corner of Cedar and Letterly in the Kensington neighborhood ofPhiladelphia. And right outside a hair salon is a bright yellow refrigerator,one of the Mama T fridges. It says, "MamaT.com. Free food. Community fridge. Take what you need, leave what you don't." I'm gonna go see what's in this bright yellow fridge.
Andrew Stelzer: The freezer is empty. The refrigerator is empty. The food pantry has a can of green beans, not much else [00:51:00] right now. So this fridge needs a restock. Whatever was dropped off recently is now gone. I suppose you could say that's both good and bad It means somebody is eating that food, but it also means if someone else walks up looking for some food, like that woman I just saw walk away empty-handed,
Andrew Stelzer:there's not gonna be anything for them
Andrew Stelzer: It seems like this project has held on in Philly more than a lot of other citiesas the pandemic waned. Besides just saying you did it, what, why do you think,uh, Philly still has, you know, a couple dozen fridges?
Michelle Nelson:Well, I can speak for specifically the Mama T Community Fridge project in that,[00:52:00] um, that communication piece that I mentioned earlier is important.
Michelle Nelson: You might not wanna define who you are in the beginning because you really don't know who you are, and that's fine. And I'm speaking about organizations. You might not know who you are. But there is a line in the sand where you do need to start to pivot in a direction that is uniquely you. And I believe that because we did that, and we took ownership of it, and we ran with it, and we never really deviated from the message, I believe that that's the reason why alot of our volunteers know what they get.
Michelle Nelson: They know the fridges are going to be yellow. They know that we, um, operate on a take what you need, leave what you don't mantra. They know that our volunteering, um, style has a lot to do with flexibility. Uh, we work around our volunteers' [00:53:00] schedule for the most part. And these are the things I feel, um, wholeheartedly have made us successful.
Andrew Stelzer: And the big donors, uh, Whole Foods and other companies, was that a strategy early on? Did that happen 'cause you got a couple nice articles? Was that at all controversial? There might be some activists who are like, "Ah, corporate food. We don't want the corporate food."
Michelle Nelson: Iwould say all of the above. Um, it's a little bit of everything you mentioned.
Michelle Nelson:There's, uh, moments where we thought to ourselves, "We're just going to carry it on and, um, do the work." And, and then once you do the work, a lot of the larger corporations came to us. And I believe for, to speak on larger corporations, one of their main attitudes, if it were, they do like to see consistency, and I feel that they felt really comfortable with us from the get-go.
Michelle Nelson: They[00:54:00] saw that we had... Our message was the same. No matter what day of the week, our message was the same, and they believed in what we had to share. And so, uh, l- find the right corporate partners, I would say. Uh, not everyone's a good, the best fit, so I will saythat. But there are some that are, and you just have to find the right o- ones that align with you and your mission.
Andrew Stelzer: I'm sure you've spent hundreds of hours talking to people about hunger and food.Mm-hmm. Uh, is there anything you've learned about people's perceptions of the issue that maybe they were missing a connection, or they had a false assumption, or the role food plays in our communities and the relationship between hunger and other issues?
Andrew Stelzer: What,what have both you learned and, and what are the questions you constantly comeup against or the corrections you have to make?
Michelle Nelson:Well, the m- main misconception, and I might have, uh, mentioned it earlier,but I'll kind of expand on it, is that, you know, [00:55:00]we all need help sometimes, and that's in any aspect of life.
Michelle Nelson: And we shouldn't stigmatize someone for wanting or needing help with food. That is something that we could all work on to dispel. So that's my, my biggest misconception that I would like all of us to work on.
Andrew Stelzer: Whenyou hear policymakers or people... I'm going back to the issue of, of peace andviolence. When you hear people talk about Philly is too violent and we need toreduce violence or crime, do you ever feel like, especially if you're seeing iton TV or hearing it, you start yelling at the TV, "Why aren't you guystalking about food?"
Andrew Stelzer: Like,is food left out of that conversation too often? Should it be more of thatconversation? Could it be more?
Michelle Nelson:Well, I have great news for you, Andrew. The city has made strides in that [00:56:00] area. So the City of Philadelphia now has a Nutrition and Food Security Task Force that launched last year, February. And the Mama T Community Fridge project, along with, I believe, 19 other organizations, were appointed to the council by city council, and we have attended a few meetings at City Hall.
Michelle Nelson: And our group and other groups have gotten together, and we're working on recommendations for the city. The, the mayor, um, has asked us to do that, to put our minds together, come up with some recommendations for the city to address the issues around food insecurity in the city. This has never been done before, focusing on food, and so it's exciting in that they thought it was important enough to even do that.[00:57:00]
HOST: That was correspondent Andrew Stelzer speaking with Michelle Nelson, founder of Mama T Fridges. What Michelle and so many others have built through community fridges is something both simple and profound, a way of meeting immediate needs while also reshaping how neighbors see and care for one another.
HOST: These fridges don't just provide food. They create small everyday opportunities for connection, trust, and shared responsibility. In neighborhoods across the country, they've become quiet gathering points, places where generosity is visible and where people who may never have spoken to each other begin to feel connected through a common purpose.
HOST: In a way, theyoffer a different vision of what community can look like. We'll link to moreinformation about Mama T Fridges on our website, peacetalksradio.com. In partone of this program, we also heard from CT Butler, one of the co-founders ofFood Not Bombs, another example of how food can be used not just to feedpeople, but to bring attention to larger questions about justice, equity, [00:58:00] and peace.
HOST: To learn more about this episode, visit peacetalksradio.com and look for season 24, episode six. While you're there, you can listen to all of our programs dating back to2003, see photos of our guests, and read or share transcripts. You can also sign up for our podcast, and importantly, make a donation to help keep this program going into the future.
HOST: Support for Peace Talks Radio comes from listeners like you, as well as the McCune Foundation and KUNM at the University of New Mexico. Nola Davis-Moses is our executive director. Ally Adelman composed and performed our theme music. For correspondent Andrew Stelzer, co-founders Suzanne Kryder and Paul Ingles, I'm Jessica Ticktin.
HOST: Thanks so muchfor listening to and for supporting Peace Talks [00:59:00]Radio.
