Foreign.

Hello and welcome to Live like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm Miriam, your host for today and with me are a couple of people from the Astoria Food Pantry. They will be talking to us about their work over there, but before they talk to us about that, here is a jingle from another podcast from the Channel Zero network of anarchist Podcasts.

Hello and welcome to the Child and Its Enemies, a podcast about queer and neurodivergent kids living out anarchy and youth liberation.

Here at the Child and Its Enemies, we believe that youth autonomy is not only crucial to queer and trans liberation, but to anarchy itself. Governance is inherently based on projecting linear narratives of time and development and gender onto our necessary, asynchronous and atemporal queer lives, and youth and teens are at the center of this form of oppression. Our goal with the podcast is to create a space by and for you that challenges all forms of control and inspires us to create fear feral, ageless networks of care. I'm your host MK Zariel. I'm 15 years old and I'm a youth correspondent at the Anarchist Review of Books, author of Debate Me Bro and organizer of some all ages queer spaces in my city and online. If you want to learn more or join us on Discord and Signal, our website is the Child and its enemies.noblogs.org.

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Okay, that was that. Guests, please introduce yourselves.

Hi there, my name is Gabe. I use any pronouns and I've been organizing with the Astoria Food Pantry for the last five years.

Hey, my name is Cato. My pronouns are they them. And I've been organizing with the Astoria Food Pantry for a little bit less than five years.

So now that we've all said the phrase Astoria Food Pantry so many times, I almost said anarchist food pantry because hell yeah, I think about anarchism a lot I guess. What's the Astoria Food Pantry? What does it do on a day to day basis?

For sure. So the Astoria Food Pantry is at its core a place where people can get food if they want to get food. Very core to the beliefs is that you don't need to prove anything, you don't need to show anything, you just show up and whatever is available is available. So on Mondays and Saturdays, that looks like bags of fresh produce on Monday nights, that looks like books on Wednesdays, that looks. Looks like clothes on Thursday nights, that looks like RPGs on Sundays, that can look like an open mic. But it's a community space. It's a space for resource sharing, and it's a space for hanging out with your neighbors and thinking about what the world could look like if everything were free.

That sounds amazing. So apart from the fact that you seem to do more things than, I think, like, a traditional food pantry or like, what people might think of as a more traditional distribution network does, like, I've never heard of a food pantry that does RPGs. Maybe they're all out there doing RPGs, but I sort of suspect they're not. How. How do you differ from what. What people might think of as, like, a charity organization? You've already said nobody needs to prove anything, which I like a lot of.

Yeah. I mean, so at our basis, we are a 501C3, but we use that as a tool to help provide. Like, we are not founded in, like, oh, we want to be a good nonprofit. We are founded in, oh, we want to be good to our community through principles of mutual aid and, yes, in many cases, anarchism. And I think that looks different than a traditional food pantry for a bunch of reasons. But the other one I would say is we very explicitly have no staff, and there's no leadership, and.

It is.

An org in the ways that it has to be, but it is mostly like 15 affinity groups and 400 individuals all just kind of, you know, wiggling our way through the world together to get out to the other side.

Yeah, there's a lot of a sense of autonomy in the group, and I think that differs from a charity which kind of has certain expectations around. It has to answer to those expectations. And. And Astoria Food Pantry, you're really encouraged that, like, if you can show up, you can kind of do anything to help out your neighbors. There's not a lot of questions asked. It's just get up and go and make it all free.

I think that leads to, like, the truly chaotic, like, spread of programming that we have is because it's just like, do you have an idea? Do you have the energy to put into it? Cool. Do you need some resources to do that? Great. Throw it in the consensus chat. Let's see if we can get this going.

You operate on a consensus model?

Well.

Give or take, yeah.

I think that in terms of consensus, a lot of what we operate is like a. A basis of trust with one another rather than like going through a lot of measured steps. Like when there is a big decision about the space or how we spend like a large amount of money, we try and bring that up in a consensus in like a digital platform called Discord and then we basically talk it out. And typically if there's just positive thumbs up emojis and everyone feels good about it, that's as much as we need to grant kind of permission autonomy to follow a project through.

Yeah. Since there's no like fixed definition of who is a member of the Astoria Food Pantry. So there's no way to like reach a majority or something like that. It's kind of what Cato said. Exactly. Right. It's like vibes based decision making. But it's. Are they good? Have we kind of. Do they all seem to be pointing in the same direction? If they're not pointing in the same direction, what conversations do we need to have to work through it and figure out the path forward together?

One of the things that's striking me about how you're describing the function of the organization is that it's less. I mean, I think when we think of a formal soup kitchen, charity style organization, it's an organization that exists to partially, I think you kind of alluded to this, but partially those organizations exist to be organizations.

Right.

Like there are people who work for.

Them full time and that is their job. And some of those people make like way more money than you would expect.

Whereas it seems like Astoria Food Pantry exists to coordinate the efforts of people who are trying to accomplish some tasks and that those are tasks that are like a set of shared concrete goals maybe as well as some principles. But that, that rather than sort of trying to ensure the existence of Astoria Food Pantry, you are trying to like ensure the distribution of food and presence of RPGs.

Yeah.

Just say full agree on that. And like the goals are just so light with the Astoria Food Pantry. A lot of it is just responding to the needs of our neighbors. And even though like the goal is to keep the project going, I don't think we take like a very long term view of like changing the entire system of society and Astoria so much as hey, if someone shows up and they say that they need something, we need to figure out how to get it to them.

Yeah. And that looks like a bunch of different things over the years. Right. Like now two of our bigger like non contiguous programs. Right. Things that we just do for a couple of weeks out of the year is like a school supply drive and A toy drive. And it's just like, why do we do that? Because people are like, boy, I need some toys for my kids for the holidays. Or, wow, I want my kid to go to school with a nice backpack full of stuff so that they can learn. And we're like, okay, yeah, let's figure that out.

Yeah, let's go.

Yeah. No. One of the things that I feel like I see again and again with.

What people will call grassroots organizations, but, like, in general, less formal organizations, is being really responsive to what people actually need and want. Right. It's like, because the people doing this, the thing are the people deciding what things are done, and they are talking to the people using the resources, and often are the people using the resources. It's, like, much easier for them to be responsive to actual needs instead of sort of operating from, like, a fixed place of like, well, this is what we do, and if we want to do something else, we will have to, like, put it to the committee or whatever.

Yeah. I think that's where, like, the people taking resources from the pantry and the people organizing the resources are the same. Right. Like, I eat food from the pantry every single week. I frequently take clothes from the pantry. And I think you'll find that most people, like, there is not a fixed line. And we've done a lot of work over the years to unpack that. That is not like, an easy thing to do, especially when you factor in race and class. But, like, it is incredibly important. I think that everyone who walks through those doors feels that same agency to be like, oh, I see a resource that I would benefit from. I would like access to that.

Yeah. It's only 10 minutes in, but I'm going to plug the bread packing shift on Tuesdays at 3pm where we rescue bread from Ore Washer Bakery and pack it out for both our distros at the Astoria food Pantry, and we share it with our local community fridges. But when people show up for that shift and we're kind of explaining what it's all about, we always cap it off by saying, if you do not take home bread, then you have not done the shift correctly.

Exactly.

Well, as long as we're. We're plugging shifts, I think that we should also, I realize, say where this is, because I just realized that, like, saying Astoria might not mean much to every single person listening to this. So to be clear, Astoria is a neighborhood in Queens, which is a borough of New York City. And that does take me to my next question, actually, which is, like, Astoria is an Amazing place.

What do you think is unique about or, you know, different about Astoria? And how is that reflected in the work? You mentioned diversity when we were talking earlier. I think Astoria might be one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the world. I might have made that factoid up, but it's at least close to true.

Yeah, I mean, Queens is the borough, right? Like the, like back of the cereal box factoid is that more languages are spoken in Queens than anywhere else in the world. And Astoria is certainly like a cross section of that. And you see it expressed through these like waves of immigration that have happened over the last like hundred years. Asoria was originally founded as a factory town for the Steinway piano factory, which is, you know, the food pantry sits on Steinway street, which if you follow it to the end, is both the factory and the mansion that that family used to live in.

But.

You can walk down Steinway or any of the surrounding streets in Astoria and you will run into so many different generations and so many different people from so many different places.

And I think that gives.

It gives the neighborhood a really, really worldly like, perspective. And I think it like, opens people up to like, experimenting with like.

Non normal American ways of life type stuff. Like, you know, what if I could just go get a free pair of shoes when I need a free pair of shoes.

Yeah. I was actually having dinner with a few other organizers last night and this very question came up about what makes Astoria kind of the socialist capital of New York City. And something that we talked about was that Astoria geographically is very isolated from its surrounding neighborhoods. A lot of other neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens have a sense of cultural diffusion. It's kind of hard to demark where a neighborhood begins and ends. But you can in Astoria because our northern border is water, our western border is water. Our eastern, southern borders have highways. So the identity and culture of Astoria has been relatively like, unchanged because it's so kind of isolated from the surrounding neighborhoods. That allows a lot of families to be multi generational and really put down like thick and deep roots in the neighborhood.

Yeah.

Now a story of food pantry itself.

I really started to hear about it.

Around the time of the worst of the pandemic. Is that when it started or is that just when I started hearing about it?

Yeah, it started in March, April 2020. It was mutual aid. People of different experiences, people just learning the word for the first time. But I mean, it started destroying bags of groceries out of the back of people's cars with pooled. It's like, oh, we were able to scrape together 600 bucks this week. And we can do that for food out of the back of the car. And then pretty quickly we got access to a space that had been.

Set up as, like, a temporary office for someone, but they didn't need that anymore because of lockdown. And they were like, do you want to use this to do, like, larger scale food distros? And so we started ordering more food. I say we, but this was, again, there's hundreds and hundreds of people involved in this story, and I should get almost no credit for any of it. So the people who are really, like, instrumental in setting up those initial distros and finding that initial space, I remember that's when I started organizing with the pantry was like, probably late April, early May was. We were doing Friday distros at the time. And I had been talking to one of the people who had been at it from the very, very beginning, and they told me, like, oh, hey, you should swing by next Friday. We're going to try distroing from this office.

And I showed up, and then I kind of skipped work every Friday for the next few months, and we would distro food from that office. And it was wild.

Just that it was like, this is not really our space. This is just like space that we're kind of like squatting in with permission.

But people were so responsive at that time. Right. They were throwing money at this. They were like, please, please, please feed people.

And so the project started there and started to spin out in a million different directions from there. And then when we took our own retail storefront, the space that we're still in in January of 2021, that to me was a real page turn of all of us being like, oh, this is like a thing now. This is a thing that, like, you know, we can commit to in a different way than when we're like just one or two roving affinity groups. This is like, starting to become something bigger.

Yeah, we're a brick and mortar, like, mutual aid group, which is such a strange space to be in and a really fortunate and privileged one to have a home base with, like, a massive basement that can store the supplies and random things like clothing racks and fridges that are unplugged and endless backpacks and like, random bags of chips. Like, all that is possible because we have a semi, like a basically permanent, although we are renting the space, obviously, like a permanent base of operations to allow so many groups to kind of.

Flourish and coordinate, and that's shout out to mutual aid groups. That don't have that in the city. And if you're listening to this podcast and you are organizing with one of those mutual aid groups and you need groceries to do that, please DM us on Instagram or find our email and we can. We can get you some groceries or other resources.

The whole brick and mortar thing is kind of mind blowing to me. I mean, I think there are probably places in the world in which, like, having a storefront or a physical space is, like, not that big a deal, but in New York City, for, like, to be a mutual aid organization and.

Have an actual physical space that you're.

Like, allowed to be in, not just one that you kind of are in for the moment until you're not in there anymore, that's pretty huge. Was it terrifying to. To take that step? Because it does sound a little terrifying to me.

It was definitely wonky. I mean, I was. I was working in real estate at the time, and I remember calling the broker and, like, pretending to be a real estate broker and being like, yeah, we absolutely have money for this. We can.

We can.

We can for sure do this. And we were actually, like, again, in a. In a crazy, crazy fortunate position that we were able to pay our first year's rent as a lump sum, which, like, oh, wow. Is. Is something I want to get into. Is, like, in so many ways, the pantry is one of the most magical places on earth, and it's also hugely anomalous. And so what I.

Want to talk about as we continue on, though, is there's a million ways to feed your neighbors without a brick and mortar space. And we also do those, and I think those are way cooler. But also having a place to play TTRPGS with my friends is really neat.

Yeah. I mean, this gets, like, raises sort of one of the big questions that I want to get into, which is, I think a lot of people who are listening to this want to be doing work similar to what you are doing and probably don't have or don't yet have anything like the Astoria food pantry to do it at.

What would you suggest people do? Like, what. What would your work be if you didn't have that space? What would you be doing?

What can it look like on a smaller scale? And how would you suggest people get started? That was, like, eight questions, but.

We can sort of approach them a few at a time, probably.

Cato, I feel like you and I could both go on about this relentlessly, but I was specifically asked to make sure that you talk at length about free fridges. So I don't know if you want to start there.

Yeah, honestly, that's exactly what I was thinking of. Because the way I got involved with the story of food pantry is I was already doing free fridge work and food rescue work just kind of bopping around New York City kind of. I've always worked food retail, so I've always had connections to other anarchist homies in the biz. And so a lot of the passion behind like my work comes from like hating food waste, hating food that ends up in the trash when it could so easily be feeding our neighbors. And I think that's like the easiest thing you could do without a brick and mortar is being connected to places that you know are getting rid of food. Because that is just a fact in food retail and food service, there's so much unnecessary waste. I'm sure we are all angry about it. And the fact like there's just so many hungry people, like everyone needs help in that way. Not just like houseless folks that we see in the street, it's just every neighbor. Especially in this moment of SNAP benefits being reduced. The easiest way to like kind of get involved in this work without a brick and mortar is to just connect with other like minded folks and figure out like, who in your community needs a little help and listen to them about what their needs are. And finding resources is really, really not that hard. Especially when it comes to food, food, everyone has something to give. And like just even walking into like a bakery that's on your block and saying, hey, like, what happens to the bread at the end of the day? Like, can I take that and give that out? Most business owners are honestly fine with it. Like they, they don't want to be too involved in the logistics. And that is completely understandable. But those simple questions of, hey, if you're throwing something out, can I take it? Can you take my phone number? Can you take my Instagram? Can you just let me know when something might be going to waste? And just showing up with a friend, going down the block, seeing someone who looks like they might need something and you say, hey, would you like something that we have? It can be that easy. And just about like community fridge work. Because it's just, I think one of the most beautiful projects that we have because it is so autonomous. It requires so much collaboration within a neighborhood. Like asking a brick and mortar to provide power and space so that you can put like a refrigerator right on the sidewalk and that you can collaborate with your neighbors to keep it stocked, keep it clean. That's always the battle keeping the fridge clean, making sure that, like, if the power goes out, that, like, someone can flag that and, like, look in their community for someone who can repair it for free. It's just honestly, like, it's the coolest thing. I'm, like, getting choked up talking about it because there's nothing cooler to me than, like, when I'm hanging out in front of, like, afp, which is the affectionate name we have for Astoria Food Pantry. And just someone that I don't even know and I don't know lives in the neighborhood just walks by and just throws a bag of groceries in there and just walks off. And then within moments, someone walking down the block checks the fridge and then grabs a bunch of it and leaves some behind because they know that another neighbor is going to need some too. It's like the coolest thing in the world to me.

Thing about cater and I, as we will both start to cry instantly at the notion of community doing stuff.

We have that in common.

And if you can't find power for a fridge, like, set up a Rubbermaid cabinet, like, find one on Facebook marketplace for 20 bucks and make some nice signs in canva about filling it with cans of beans. Like, you know, chickpeas make the world go round, right? Like, and like, dry goods access is in many ways easier than fresh food access. But also, like, people still need dry goods. Like, yeah, you know, and if it's got two shelves, make one shelf for free books and the other one for free beans.

And.

Just, like, put flyers up about it in the, like, six blocks surrounding your house. And people will figure it out. I remember, like, I was helping my dad move kind of on the tail end of lockdown, and he lives in a really small town, and we had to go to city hall to, like, turn on his water or something. And out front of city hall was a little autonomous, like, free pantry. And this is a town where the median age has to be, like, 75. And just knowing that it can exist there, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is for everyone, right? Sharing food is one of the most fundamental human experiences. And.

I think about the history of groups like mutual aid, disaster relief, or STAR or the radical groups that have come far before us. And.

One of the core tenets of almost every one of them is just that everybody eats. And the nice thing about that is it doesn't have to be a pallet of bananas. It is cool getting a pallet of bananas every week, but I get so much more satisfaction of being like, oh, I made eight quarts of soup for my three person household. Let me take five quarts of soup to the free fridge.

Yeah. And that kind of thing doesn't actually need all that much organizing or resources to get started. And I think it is very, very natural for it to just sort of grow. I. Not where I currently live, but a previous neighborhood that I lived in had somebody had set up like one of those little free library setups. And I don't, I don't know at how long after it was set up, but like pretty soon after it was set up, people had just started putting food in it, right? Yeah. Where like, yeah, there were books in there sometimes, but there was like, usually a few jars of peanut butter and like some cans of food and like a bag of beans and like.

That. And there was high turnover. You know, the food was, was being taken and the food was being put in and nobody told anybody to do that. Right. They just put a cabinet on the street and people immediately started feeding each other.

Yeah, totally. Like, we used to show up at a place where we knew there would be lots of people who could benefit from having some stuff. And the first few times we showed up, we just showed up with some jackets and some Doritos and that eventually turned into a whole program of coming every week with snacks and hygiene stuff. And again, being responsive if people were asking for specific things and trying to source it.

But the thing I really loved about that distro that we did for a while was that it worked for two reasons. One, it worked because we were consistent and the people on the other side were consistent too. And it worked because we were in constant communication with each other about making sure that we were showing up to their space respectfully and engaging in a real dialogue about what their needs are and what we can be bringing them on a weekly basis. And I think that's one of my favorite side projects of the pantry I've ever done because it was just so organically like, oh, hey, we heard these guys could use a hand. Oh great. Now they're helping organize the line and we're working together on figuring out what to pick up from the wholesale club. And like just doing that actual like week in, week out work of hanging out with people and helping make sure their needs are met is super cool. Yeah.

And in terms of the actual physical housing of like, what is a free fridge? What is a free library? I want to shout out Durham, North Carolina, when I was there, because there was a file cabinet just in someone's yard in an Adjacent lot that someone spray painted free food on one side. The top drawer says, take what you want. The bottom drawer says, give what you can. That's all it needs to be. And I had popped open the drawers, and there was, lo and behold, a few jars of peanut butter, some dried beans. It's the language we all speak also.

If you don't have a container. I mean, we did a lot of heat respite this summer, and we hung out by the pantry for part of it, but part of the time, it was just like, oh, I'm gonna grab a case of water, and I'm gonna go sit in the park, and I'm gonna have a little sign that says free. And I'm just gonna hand people bottles of water and ask them how their day's going, and people will take it, and you can sit there and you can drink water with them. And I know it sounds really small, but it's really not like it's. It's really important to keep your homies hydrated.

Yeah. No. People literally die if they. If they don't hydrate.

Yeah.

And, you know, the community that. That is happening there is, like, this is. This is real community. Right. This is, like, community at its most basic level, but it's also kind of the most important things communities do is take care of each other in this, like, really basic way.

And in a way that so many people are able to participate in that. It's. It's something that.

That.

Yeah, there's, like, not a high barrier to entry here, but also, people can do an incredible amount of work. And, I mean, it sounds like you all do an incredible amount of work over there. I. I do. I feel like I. I want to make sure that people listening, if they're considering getting involved with this, understand that, like. Like, it's not hard to get started. But I also want to make clear you all do an amazing job, and you do amazing work over there, and I know you're putting in a lot of time and a lot of effort.

Yeah. Thank you. I mean, that goes back to the work itself, I think is really.

Really fun to do. Mutual aid. But the consistency, which I think is the important thing to do it working, and it's sticking around and becoming, like, something that. That has legs and longevity is. That's really hard because life is hard. Like, there are certainly. There have been Saturdays shout out Saturday shift at the pantry. We pack between 200 and 500 bags of food, and we deliver about 50 of them to people who can't leave their house. And we get these really fancy rescue produce from this warehouse in Brooklyn. And I always make people try the expensive cantaloupes when they're in season because they're $17 a cantaloupe. It's not to be missed.

Wow.

But all that's to say is like the. Sometimes you have to get up at 7am on a Saturday to go and lift 50 pound boxes of produce. And that can be a real drag. Except for it's not because by the time that the bags are packed and you open the doors and like, people start to take food, it's like, all right, yeah, we're doing this.

Yeah. We're always saying, many hands make light work. And on the same subject of like, participation, something that I've been putting out a lot on at least my personal social media, which is that there's a lot of like, posts going around in this, like, moment of decreased snap benefits sharing, all of the freed food distros, free meals that happen on the daily, on the weekly. And looking at that list, it's easy for someone who's not involved to be like, oh, how can I donate to this effort? But actually, like, what you can do is you could just show up. That is a schedule of volunteer opportunities and you don't need to do anything other than to physically be there and say, how can I help out? It's really that easy. When I first got got involved in Astoria Food Pantry, it really was that because, like, kind of what we're talking about is there's so many different groups. There's groups that I go in and I'm in the pantry. I would say like four or five days a week and I will still find a project that I didn't even know what was that was going on for sure. All you gotta do is say, hey, do you need help lifting that? Hey, do you need help packing these potatoes into small plastic bags? You could just show up and do that. And it's so important. It makes the work easier and more sustainable.

A thousand percent. A thousand percent. Like, what I really like about one of the things I really, really like is how frequently I'll walk into the pantry for something and I will not know a single person in there. Yeah, I'll be like, cool, yeah, let's go.

Yeah. That's amazing. I mean, the thing that keeps striking me about this is because it did come out of the pandemic and now it's really needed during this. This current, you know.

Bullshit.

Is the way that people tend to come together and create Systems of mutual aid in crisis.

And it's like, really common when those things happen. Like, it definitely happened, you know, in New York City after Hurricane Sandy. There's a lot of talk about it in one of my favorite books, which is Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell.

That people kind of look around and say, well, why can't we do this all the time?

And I feel like you've managed to make it happen.

Right?

You've kind of taken the crisis response.

Model of let's just get it done.

Let's just get the people what they need. Let's just do it.

Let's just do the work together.

That tends to happen when the normal sort of everyday order of things is disrupted. And you've made it something that people do in an ongoing way. And that's very cool to see. It's very cool to know that it can be done.

Yeah, I think there's something really, really beautiful about the, like, ephemerality of mutual aid projects. Right. Like, in many ways, like.

Most work should be temporary and, like, highly specific. But I think.

What has happened at the Astoria food pantry is that there's just so many hands involved that, like, the series of temporary projects has just morphed into, like, a continuous line of.

Work. That means the people who were doing Monday distros four years ago are not necessarily the same people doing Monday distros now. And I think that's the thing that gives Astoria food pantry it's sustainability, is that people can float in and out of it as they need to and not worry about, oh, if I need to go home and take care of my mom for three weeks, is Monday distro gonna fall through? And the answer is no. We've got enough people flowing in and out of the space that it'll be covered. And I think that's like.

Being in this org, where we have built the capacity to allow people to rest and recharge, even if a lot of us still hit big, massive burnout walls fairly frequently. Is is really, really vital to, like, the Astoria food pantry lasting for the next thousand years, as it certainly will.

Oh, definitely.

Yeah. I've never burned out.

But, like, on that note, I think it's really important to highlight that the projects are ever evolving. We were talking about consensus earlier and how we do decision making and make changes. And I think our basic policy is if you have skin in the game, like, if you were the one showing up for this project, then, like, you are kind of the decision maker, and that could be the handful of people that are doing, like, a small distro on a Thursday, or it could be a massive team like the Free Store. Shout out free store. Wednesdays, 11:30 to 2, 34, 30 to 6, 30, give out free clothes. That was not always the programming for Free Store. The people who really started that project kind of cycled out into other projects or moved away, and whoever shows up has the ability to change the project, change the hours, change the way we organize clothing, change the way that we do the line management. And everyone's kind of empowered to just, like, make an independent decision for themselves and for the community. Because a lot of what we strive to do the most when we make big changes at the pantry is to consult our neighbors, the people who are showing up looking for resources, because that's the best way that we do our work is to meet them at their needs and their timeline and where they're at in their life and their general schedule. We want to show up for them.

Yeah, no, I cannot say enough good things about systems where the people doing the tasks are the people deciding how the tasks should be done. You know, anybody who has ever, like, had a job has probably had the experience of somebody in management who is not doing the task that you do as part of your job, announcing that you should be doing it in.

Some arcane, weird, dumb way that nobody who's ever actually tried to do the task would. Would say it should be done right. And it becomes a battle of, like, trying to do it that way, trying to get around the rule, trying to figure out a way to convince management that you should actually be doing it in a smart way.

And, like, God, it's just so much.

Better if the people making the decisions.

About how it gets done are the.

People doing the thing.

Yeah. Big plug for personal autonomy there. I like that a lot. And I think, like, you know, I also want to be honest that that's something that the pantry has struggled with throughout the years. Right? Like, it is not, like, day one, we showed up and it was. Everybody just, like, understood this perfect model of.

Like, interacting with each other and figuring out our needs and, like, killing the cops in our head and.

Like, not existing in, like, a super hierarchical, like, volunteer recipient framework. Like, I think that work of, like, beating that down is ongoing and everlasting.

But I think, like, it's something that I'm really glad. I feel a lot of fulfillment from how, like, rigorously people engage in that work and, like, are down for unpacking that and working through those moments where we do run into tension.

What, what tensions do you see relating to, you know, operating non hierarchically? I mean, I, it is certainly my preferred way to operate, but it's also not the, the most common way for, for organizations like this to operate. So like, what. But do you feel like there are pitfalls to it and what advantages? I mean, we've talked a little bit about the advantages already, I think, but. Yeah. Can you sort of talk about that a little bit more?

Yeah, I would say Astoria Food pantry is. Got a really good crew that trusts each other and where we struggle most is just like you're saying, like the non hierarchical concept always kind of like, doesn't really address like, how conflict like, emerges and how you like, resolve that conflict and how you resolve like, the decisions that need to be made out of that conflict.

And also that sometimes people just get their feelings hurt. Like, and that's, and that's also like we all have. And that's like not letting that be a barrier to, to pushing forward. Like, being mindful of people's feelings and showing that level of care in your community is really important.

Well, and you mentioned before that it is not a situation where if a particular person doesn't show up on a particular day, then the whole thing falls apart. It's a thing where people cycle in and out and there are many hands doing the work and there are people able to do it. I think that's, that's got to be huge because a big, a big problem in, in groups where, you know, people's feelings get hurt, which is all groups is, is having to organize around not hurting anybody's feelings. Because if anybody gets their feelings hurt, this whole thing falls apart. And if you've created a group that is resilient to hurt feelings. Right. That can continue to exist even if people are upset and can continue to do the thing that everyone's there to do, even if everybody is not super happy with each other at this exact moment. Like, that's an actual community.

Yeah. And reflecting on like what you're saying, like, I think another strength of our community that really does seem anomalous is that we're a very practical group. We're really good at just showing up and making it free. And I think a lot of the conflicts that come about are when we, we dive into philosophy and we start, you know, debating the, the merits of like, Dean Spade and you get to explore like, how everyone has different interpretations of like, why we do the thing that we do. And sometimes there's disagreements about like, why we're at. We're doing what we're doing, and it's never anything that's, like, hypercritical. It just, like, a lot of us have, like, a deep emotional tie to the work that we're involved in. And so we're obviously emotionally invested in why we do this work. But it never actually affects the work itself. All it does is affect, like, a really tense, like, all hands meeting where we're all kind of looking at each other in an avoidant manner and saying, like, well, this feels really bad, but we're all gonna show up tomorrow anyway. See you in the next 24 to 48. And it all just keeps going. And it's really a point of pride, I think, of our community that, like, regardless of, like, any personal feelings that, like, feel injured in the moment, like, I don't think I can name anyone who's ever stopped showing up because of this. It. We're really good at just, like, kind of not really doing. We don't do means testing for the people that we hand out free food to, and we don't really do means testing for people who show up who want to help out. I mean, granted, I mean, if there was someone who was horribly racist or transphobic, I am certain we would have certain boundaries.

That's just, you know, Nazis get really.

Yeah, that's a pretty basic. I mean, are you capable of participating in this community? And if it. If somebody is a bigot, they sound not capable of that, and they sound like maybe they're somebody who should be responded to differently.

But I'd like to, like, mention, like, a specific instance of. Of tension. Right. So the. The story food pantry is still a massive space, right? Like, we require people to wear a high quality respirator if they're in the space with other people.

And, like, as you can see by the way that has played out on a national level is a derisive choice. But, like, from a disability justice standpoint and also from, like, a core tenant of we keep us safe, it's something that's very near and dear to the pantry's identity.

And I think, you know, kind of to what Cato mentioned, I think there was kind of like one all hands where I remember this, like, kind of like someone coming at it from a more.

Like.

Rugged, individualist, anarchist position of, like, don't tell me what to do under any circumstances. And someone else coming at it from a, like, Dean Spade mutual aid anarchist position of, like, we have to take care of each other. And it's like, not to say that either person was explicitly right or wrong. It's just like that was a very, very tense moment and we really, really had to work through it.

And like, you know, that tension is still felt. But to Cato's point, we work through the tension because the work takes precedent over that tension.

Yeah, I mean, I have some thoughts on who might have been right in that situation.

But yeah, I mean, of course, yeah, conflict arises, you know, it's.

To be human is to cause harm. There's not really a way around that.

Yeah, one of the, you know, the best thing about community is you get to work with other people. And the worst thing about community is you have to work with other people.

And there's ways to make it suck less and.

It sounds like you're doing it is the main thing.

Yeah, I think our heaviest handed punishment that we ever give anyone. Not that this ever really gets handed out, although it has a few times, as we tell people, take a break, take a couple weeks off and like just we'll regroup afterwards. We'll make sure that you feel heard.

And that's tough and it feels bad. Yeah, but like, you know, and that's like, it's an intense conversation to have to have like both with the person and as a group is like, you know, is this the best decision? And like sometimes it feels more clear cut than others, but like, like, yeah, that's. I think that's an essential part of committing to the work of community building is like sometimes people need space.

And when we say take a break, there's almost always actually, I think always the caveat that you're still allowed to show up for resources. If you are showing up because you need food, if you're showing up because you need clothing, you are always kind of welcomed. The space for all of the programming that we have, the taking a break is really about kind of participation in a lot of the volunteer activities. Like if we feel that maybe like there's like a not meshing going on and like people just need a little bit of space. But part of like no means testing means that like you can show up and you can get a bag of groceries on Monday.

I think that's so. I mean that there's something so beautiful about like the extent to which consequences exist for community members is not you will be cut off from resources, but you will be asked to stop contributing temporarily. Right. Like that's, it's so the opposite of, of how capitalism and how like carceral states like operate is to say like, no, no, you're going to be taken care of. You're going to be given what you need. We might. We might ask you to stop helping for a minute. I think that's amazing. That's really wonderful. So, something I was thinking about also when we talked about masks and the conflict around that, obviously, from a disability justice standpoint, masks are important. I think right now. We've talked about the heightened food insecurity that people are dealing with right now, but there's also heightened risk from federal law enforcement right now, and masks feel important around that too. You know, if people don't want to be going out, showing their whole face in public. Which sort of brings me to the next question, which is which kind of the last question I have on my list, which is, what role do you see Astoria Food Pantry having in combating that kind of state repression that we're seeing right now and have been seeing for longer, obviously, but. But are seeing particularly right now?

There's a couple of core things which. One, it's very hard to resist fascism on an empty stomach.

So no matter what the fuck the government gets up to, we gotta make sure you at least get a granola bar. Two.

If you are engaging in mutual aid work of any kind, like, you should never ask or even glance at what someone's legal status might be. It is better for everyone involved if you simply do not know. Point three, we keep us safe. And that's gonna mean something different for everybody. But, like, whatever you are up for, I think is important in this moment. I think because the pantry is so many different things and so many different people, we will all be showing up differently in this particular moment. But I think the strength that the pantry gives us as a community is that we will all be showing up.

Yeah.

Not to dance around and answer too much, but yeah, yeah.

No, I think that's all very good. Like, I would point to, we have a sign on our front door that says, no law enforcement welcome here. No ice welcome here. Like, that is a hard boundary for our space.

That if law enforcement ever showed up, they are not allowed inside. And, like, going to Gabe's point about, like, no means testing. Like, that's just like a very important tenant. And even though obviously it is extremely terrifying out, and I think it does. You don't need to do a lot of research to just like, see what's happening in the streets from these unmarked vans. And I think a story food pantry is kind of like a little oasis where, like, you can show up for resources, but we're all obviously like any. We're all engaged in different work is what I will say. And AFP does not necessarily engage in.

Everything as an entity, but there's so many other members of the community who are willing to show up. And like, something that I'll say is, like, tangentially related is like, you know, like the drag story hours. People who show up there to, like, combat the chuds, who protest those story hours. Like, those are networks that are also just, like, out and about in Western Queens. And they are incredibly supportive of.

The work that we do. And I hope that's okay to say, Gabe.

I think so. And also, if you want to do a drag story hour and you need some rainbow umbrellas or some pride flags or anything, like, we can probably connect you with the right people to get those for free. But yeah, I mean, I don't think it's overstating or overstretching to say that, like, the pantry is extremely aligned on. On fuck ice. Free Palestine. Feed the people. Right. Like, at the end of the day, yeah. You know, all those colonists gotta go. Including myself, Like, I'm a white dudish person, Right. Like, I understand my role in this, and, like, there's a lot I can get back to my community now between when I eventually get banished back to Britain. I guess we'll see.

Yeah.

And I mean, I know we mentioned Dean Spade earlier, and, like, a lot of what he calls out in his book about mutual aid of the same name is that, you know, mutual aid is just one facet of what is needed to respond to imperialism, genocide, capitalism, oppression, the violence, showing up for your life. But AFP is really, really good at showing up for people in the resource center way. But there's a lot of other work going on out there in the New York City streets. It is not hard to plug in. It's all over social media.

And if you are doing any of that work and you are hungry, you know, we got you.

Yeah, but I. I mean, I think it. It high. It highlights the extent to which, you know, like you said, the, the drag story hour thing, the food pantry, like, it all. It all is connected where people who.

Who want to be doing this work as they form these. I feel like I've said the word community like 700 times in this episode, but.

It'S a trap. It's. It's a trap. Mutual aid, affinity groups, community.

You know, the. The same people who. Who want to make sure their neighbors get fed also want to make sure their neighbors don't get taken by ice. You Know, you'd have to be a weird fucking person to be like, oh, I want to make sure my neighbors eat, but them being deported is fine, you know? So if you want to find the people who want to stand by your side as you resist ice, you're probably going to find them helping to feed people, you know.

And also, like, the inverse of that. If you are, as we come up on this godforsaken holiday of Thanksgiving, having trouble convincing people in your life that, like, they need to care about ICE kidnapping people, but you can relate to them on talking about feeding people. There is a pathway there to. Don't expose yourself to more bullshit than you have to, but there is a real way to have convincing conversations with people. I've had many conversations with people who exist in quite a different place on the political spectrum than I do, who, if I can hook them in on. It is important to keep your community fed. I can pull them to. It is also important to make sure that your community doesn't get kidnapped. It is also important to make sure that people around the world live free, uncolonized lives. Like there is. It is so deeply interconnected, and food just happens to be one of those, like, really imminently, universally relatable things.

Mutual aid is the gateway drug to direct action.

Hell, yeah.

Yeah. No. It starts with make your neighbor a sandwich, and it ends with land back and fire to the prisons. It's great.

Thank you so much for coming on to talk to us. I usually would ask if you wanted to plug anything here, but Gabe already made it quite clear that Astoria Food Pantry is not currently asking our podcast audience to make donations or anything like that. Y' all would just like people to do the thing. You would like people to feed each other. Is that right?

Yes. Yeah, please. Make your neighbor a sandwich. Make yourself a sandwich. Hang out and talk to people that you haven't talked to before and see what. What you both might want to see in a world if you guys got to design the world yourselves.

And if you want to come hang out at the Astoria Food Pantry, please, absolutely do, but keep your money.

Yeah. Just go out there, Make a community fridge. Make a filing cabinet, community pantry. Stock your local little library. Give out free clothing. Don't give it to a free store. Just give it out to a neighbor.

Show it for your neighbors. Ask what they need. Can't say that enough. Like, you might have good ideas, but find the people already doing the work. Find out what your neighbors actually need. Don't think that you know what they need.

If you're in a car environment.

Keep granola bars and water in your trunk. If you can.

Also keep a good first aid kit on hand.

Yeah, I would like to formally plug community preparedness. That's our thing.

We are all about that. Thank you so much. This has been wonderful. And although I am a Brooklynite by geography and everything, I do hope to make it over to Astoria Food Pantry one of these days because y' all are great.

Well, I would love to host a game of Penumbra City during.

One of our game nights.

That was something I was gonna ask but then I was like, oh no. What if they say they don't play Penumbra City or they don't like it?

You know, I have GM'd it a few times and I would gladly do so again.

Hell yeah, anytime. Well, well, thank you both. Thank you to your friend and my friend Mary who who helped make this connection. Also, shout out Mar yeah. And I will now thank our Patreon patrons. Our Patreon people.

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