Team up to feed needy:
A line begins forming as a van pulls into the parking lot of a senior living center in Southeast Washington. By the time the half-dozen masked volunteers set up the folding table and start pulling out plastic bags filled with fruits, vegetables and canned goods, about 15 people stretch down the block.
Organizer Charlie Gussom Jr advises those waiting to maintain social distancing by standing on every other sidewalk square. And those in line quickly take up the same mantra to organize newcomers: “One square apart, everybody. One square apart!”
The group moves quickly and efficiently as each person is handed a bag. When there’s no one left in line, the volunteers start going door-to-door inside the senior center, delivering food to elderly shut-ins. Then the whole operation packs up and moves to a street corner about six blocks away where the process is repeated.
“People can’t get out to the stores, and kids are hungry,” says community activist India Blocker-Ford. “People are just low on everything. They don’t have anything.”
These volunteers are the tip of the spear for a grassroots effort to keep Washington’s poorest neighborhoods fed during an unprecedented crisis that has nearly shut down the American economy.
In Washington’s Ward 8, the need is particularly dire.
As the rest of the city has prospered in recent years, the term “across the river” became a common local racial code. It’s D.C. shorthand for Wards 7 and 8, the overwhelmingly black southeastern part of the city that is being left behind as the rest of Washington rapidly gentrifies.
The area was already a notorious food desert, with one full-service grocery store for approximately 70,000 residents. And all manner of health issues strike disproportionately among its residents. (AP)