Community-based action in Greensboro, NC has been in full effect in the East White Oak neighborhood to address its ongoing food access crisis. On February 24, 2024 Greensboro Mutual Aid (GMA) unveiled their second Freedom Fridge and hosted their Really Really Free Market at the East White Oak Community Center (EWOCC). The Freedom Fridge sat on the side of the EWOCC building inside of a container with shelves for perishables, painted with vibrant and warm colors, like a beacon of community support and kindness.
GMA is a community group dedicated to connecting people to share resources across the city to support housing and essential needs. Since its emergence in 2020 during the pandemic, GMA has utilized shared resources or mutual aid for the community through digital and social fundraising platforms, hosted protests, community gatherings, and events, created free markets, and a host of other projects supporting folks in need. This Committee on Racial Equity in the Food System (CORE) community partner has collaborated with several Greensboro community organizers on the Freedom Fridge projects, including the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and the EWOCC.
It was great to see GMA incorporate the celebration of the second Freedom Fridge with another community-run initiative, the Really Really Free Market. During all of their free markets, they ask that community members bring things like clothing and home goods that they don’t need and take the things that they do need. The space at the EWOCC, aka The Big Green House, was filled with household items, clothes, books, toys, medical supplies, small appliances, cleaning supplies, and so much more – including joy from the community.
Freedom Fridges are free and public refrigerators that are maintained by GMA and the community they serve. Similar concepts have been popping up across the country with communities of different backgrounds to help food injustices, like the free fridge by Southside Community Farm in Asheville and the Free Community Fridge in Charlotte. Greensboro Mutual Aid has cited its inspirations behind the Freedom Fridge from projects by organizations across cities in the US. This is the second time GMA has curated a Freedom Fridge, with the first fridge – a collaboration that also included students from N.C. A&T – located at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church on the south side of Greensboro.
EWO is no stranger to coming together and being its own leader, as the community center has its own rich history of providing for itself. Before the ribbon cutting of the Freedom Fridge, childhood residents Cathy Gant Hill and Alice Drake, who are board members of the EWOCC, spoke of the center’s past as a school in 1916. East White Oak School opened specifically to educate the children of Cone Mill workers in the neighborhood, and after its 35-year run as the school – as well as a church and a YMCA – it evolved into the community center we know today. During the 1950s, a coalition of community leaders came together to avoid city council’s raze of “The Big Green House” by raising enough money through fundraisers and selling plates to buy and operate the facility as a community hub.
EWO has been a historically marginalized community lacking food access since Winn-Dixie closed in 2005, leaving the community between two grocery stores that are out of reach. Other communities in Greensboro similar to EWO experiencing food insecurity indicate socioeconomic disparities that perpetuate poor health outcomes. One way neighborhoods like EWO address these systemic barriers is by collaborating with organizations like Greensboro Mutual Aid in community-based initiatives to improve support and food access on the east side of Greensboro. But this isn’t the only side of Greensboro suffering from unequal food access, as the first Freedom Fridge is just south of downtown at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in the Warnersville neighborhood.
This local food map created by the Wesley Foundation at UNCG shows that GMA is challenging the disparity of food access in that neighborhood, as well as EWO. Further studies from other institutions show that Warnersville and EWO are situated in an edge effect. In this situation, food retailers tend to choose locations directly adjacent to busy and easily accessible roads. They often run along census tracts and other geographic boundaries, resulting in adequate food access being out of reach for neighborhoods like Warnersville and EWO.
At the end of the unveiling, GMA asked young people from the EWO neighborhood to cut the ribbon of the Freedom Fridge. It was refreshing to see the involvement of young community members at the Really Really Free Market and Freedom Fridge unveiling. Some young people brought non-perishables to help fill up the pantry areas of the fridge’s outside container. Mural artist and CORE Director Bevelyn Ukah acknowledged a young person named Amuarin Niquae Watkins by painting a mural full of warm and vibrant colors all over the fridge’s shell container, including a drawing of a backpack overflowing with oranges. One day, Watkins brought oranges to the community center to share with others. Ukah stated in her speech, “This act wasn’t prompted. This act was loving, it was kind. This act perfectly exemplified what it means to be a community, and what it means to lovingly practice mutual aid.” From the generous acts that inspired this mural, watching young people maintain sections of the Really Really Free Market, and those helping to clean up the community center after the Freedom Fridge unveiling, mutual aid is an act that is felt throughout multiple generations. These moments, filled with mutual sharing and caring at GMA-hosted events, put into perspective the urgency of the Food Justice movement, specifically that GMA and young community members are ready to do the work toward food access equity.