On this Los Angeles sidewalk, sits a red refrigerator crossed out with a message in white letters: “free food”. Milk, fruit, vegetables, chicken and cheese, everything is available to those who need it.
This is one of the “community fridges” that have appeared in the streets of the city since early July, to respond to the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic when the poverty rate was already very high. .
No one is there to monitor the devices. There is no queue or form to fill out, anyone can help themselves, 24 hours a day.
“If you need to empty the fridge, no one is going to judge you. If you need a tomato, or if you only put one tomato in it, you can,” volunteer Marina Vergara told AFP. and organizer of LA Community Fridges, which has already installed seven devices in the city and wants to put more.
“The concept of having these community bridges in neighborhoods across the city makes this kind of help more accessible,” she explains.
The idea is inspired by a similar initiative launched in New York.
The fridges are painted in bright colors to stand out against the cityscape, and carry messages in English and Spanish. Next to it are crates full of preserves and cereals. Some drop by to leave clothes and shoes.
“This fridge is yours with everything in it,” reads the message on the red fridge in Mid City, where, as in many places in Los Angeles, modern, plush houses coexist with more modest dwellings.
– Without shame –
Restaurants, supermarkets, NGOs and neighbors help keep devices full.
“The response from the community has been amazing, pure love,” says Danny Dierich, manager of Little Amsterdam café, which supplies electricity to one of the devices outside his establishment.
“People come every day and put things in it, it’s wonderful,” he adds.
“We are living in a very unusual time,” he said. “Businesses have closed, people have lost their jobs, and they need to feed their families.”
California recently had to shut down part of its economy in the face of the worrying rise in coronavirus cases, which are concentrated in Los Angeles County.
Bars, restaurants, hairdressers and other businesses had to lower the curtain again, putting many people back out of work.
Local authorities, along with NGOs, churches and schools, have set up food banks and soup kitchens to help the most vulnerable.
But Ms. Vergara, who received help from the NGO Reach for the Top for this project, explains that undocumented people do not dare to go there for fear of being arrested.
Other residents are simply ashamed to be seen there.
“There is a negative connotation to standing in line for help,” she says.
Hence the idea of these “heart fridges” which can be used “anytime, at five in the morning or in the afternoon,” she concludes. Safe from view and judgment.
Source: AFP
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