In spring, when the pandemic tightened, many New York State farmers were forced to dump their produce after the stores and restaurants they supplied before lockdown closed. At the same time, the workers of these premises were left without income and began to resort to food banks to survive. To remedy waste and hunger – often the two faces of the same poverty – New York Democratic Sen. Jessica Ramos devised a supply circuit, without intermediaries, to feed thousands of residents of Queens, her district –one of the hardest hit by covid-19-, through the free distribution of some 16,000 kilos of food a week: farmers covered costs and made a small profit while neighbors filled the pantry. At the entrance of his office, he says, there is still a refrigerator chest “where people from the neighborhood collect food or leave it, those who can; every time we fill it, the provisions last two hours ”.
Some 1.5 million New Yorkers, in a city of almost nine, today depend on food delivery to survive. It is the new poverty derived from the covid-19, which fattens some ranks of hunger not unprecedented, but yes blushing in some areas. “I kick around my neighborhood a lot, and every day I find dozens of new homeless people, the situation is alarming,” explains Ramos, new lifeblood of the Democratic Party, especially combative in an emergency “headed for a very harsh winter” and on the eve of an election in which, in the economic programs of the candidates, among the pre-pandemic pride of Trump and biden’s toast to the middle class, there seems to be no room for new outcasts.
In seven months, since the health crisis began, the city’s food banks have received 12 million visits, 36% more than in the same period last year, according to the NGO City Harvest. The demand for free food is such that an application has been created online to search for community pantries by areas. According to a Columbia University study, eight million Americans have joined the ranks of poverty since May, when the aid plan endedsuch as a check for $ 1,200 and a weekly bonus of $ 600 to the unemployed.
“We are not talking about homeless people, but about people who had two, three precarious jobs, and today in the best of cases they are street vendors and with that they cannot feed their family; also of many people who, due to lack of documents, cannot apply for aid ”, Ramos explains by phone. “But although the pandemic is a novelty, it is not the structural deficit, ignored for too many years, and that the covid has only helped to highlight. The help of the Administrations is very limited; in fact, federal funds have been cut for food banks, which has further strengthened community support networks. For example, the refrigerator that we have installed at the entrance of the office, available 24 hours a day all week, and that empties immediately ”.
In favor of giving “a political solution to a fundamental problem”, Ramos has presented a bill to tax the fortune of billionaires. “In seven months the richest inhabitants of New York have seen their income increase by 77,000 million dollars; well, the tax that I propose [para combatir la crisis] it would only be a third, ”he explains. In June 2019, he succeeded in getting the New York Senate to pass a fair trade law for the state’s 80,000 to 100,000 farm workers, who for the first time enjoy rights such as unemployment benefits; Thanks to this initiative, he has them on his side to fight hunger.
Apart from specific campaigns such as Ramos’s, the bulk of aid distribution falls to humanitarian or charitable organizations, many of them linked to religious denominations. That is why the colorful posters of the Love wins community pantry in Jackson Heights (Queens) suggest at first the presence of an evangelical congregation, although the rainbow flag quickly leads to the error. Every Friday, around thirty volunteers – some of them, in turn, recipients of aid – turn an LGTBI bar forced to close due to the pandemic into a pandemic for the neighbors, who form two lines (there is only one for the elderly ) hours before the delivery begins. Thanks to supplies from chef José Andrés’ NGO, World Central Kitchen and, since last week, from the City Hall food bank, they have fed thousands of people since April.
Carmita Sancho, an Ecuadorian, awaits with her two young daughters. “My husband has been unemployed for more than six months, and the little we had saved went to our house rent of $ 1,750. I have two more children in Ecuador and I can no longer send them money, my mother takes care, but she also depends on what I send, so we are not only struggling here. I took care of the children of some Europeans, but with the virus they left immediately. My husband worked in construction and now they call him at most five days a month, with that we don’t eat, ”she says in a meander in the queue of the cast, which goes around the block, surrounded by dozens of more elusive Asian neighbors .
Sancho’s story leads to a few profound consequences of the pandemic: the closing of the remittances, which kept many economies alive in countries of origin; the inability to face the payment of a rent – in a city of rents by the clouds -, or the bills of the light or the heating; the imminent horizon of energy poverty before millions of Americans as the pandemic worsens. “What good is it that evictions have been paralyzed due to the emergency situation if the landlord can cut off the electricity or water for non-payment, harassing the tenant to leave?” Asks Daniel Puerto, one of the organizers of Love Wins. “The problem was, and is, the lack of affordable housing, the lack of access to health, the absence of a comprehensive approach to the needs of groups that were already on the margins of the system.”
On a once-commercial street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, displaying the metal closure of one store after another, three white-haired African Americans argue outside the old Bowery mansion, a Christian mission founded in 1879 – the antithesis in spirit. and Love Wins doctrine – if it is convenient for you to register at the hostel to access the closet. Autumn has suddenly taken on a sour look, and the rain reveals the decay of the buildings, needy, almost Dickensian in the rawness of brick. “We are old acquaintances in there [de la misión]They have given us food for a long time, but now with the pandemic and the cold we will not be able to get ahead, not even with help ”, Georges says as an epitaph, shrugging his shoulders, perhaps from cold.
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