Community

“Flushing Community Fridge” Bonds Neighbors, While Filling Hungry Bellies

By Nicole Wong

Thrilled to provide fresh produce, hygiene products, and other necessities to community members free of charge, rising high school seniors Kaitlyn Noemi and Isabel Noemi are celebrating the launch of the Flushing Community Fridge.

Mutual aid finds strength in communities by ensuring that those most affected by issues like poverty are also the ones making decisions about how resources and services should be equitably redistributed. With mutual aid groups serving as a network through which community members can support each other, mutual aid offers individuals the dignity of accountability and independence without the isolating undertones of “self-sufficiency.” Lee stressed that unity comes before all else; community members should feel welcome to rely on each other through tough times, despite the common misconception that it is “rude” or “shameful” to ask others for help.

Lee described education as the foundation for her involvement in mutual aid.

She shared that prior to working to develop the Flushing Community Fridge, she did not strongly identify with her Asian American heritage: “I didn’t know my community as people; I just knew them as background noise. I didn’t know who they were, what they were going through, or who they loved.” Now, having expanded her awareness of the various problems Flushing residents face, such as rent and immigration concerns, Lee felt encouraged to prioritize solidarity in her advocacy to be supportive of others in her community.

Critics of mutual aid often doubt the legitimacy of mutual aid groups in comparison to government-sanctioned programs, in which eligibility for aid may be determined through an application process or other criteria. Yet it is important to remember that such application processes are often barriers discouraging people in need, especially non-English-speaking or undocumented folks, from seeking aid.

While Lee agreed that stimulus checks, for example, are important examples of federal aid, she asked: How do you determine who is worthy of need? Why is $80,000 the brightline? What do we do when stimulus checks are not enough? She explained that by following a no-questions-asked policy, mutual aid refuses to cut people off from resources: “We won’t ever say ‘we won’t help you because you can survive on this wage.’ We want people to do more than survive. We want people to live happy and fulfilling lives.”

Critics also assert that mutual aid is unable to enact concrete change, unlike voting or lobbying, which aim to more directly impact government. Yet this fundamentally close-minded vision for political activism fails to acknowledge that local leaders and community organizers can work to change political conditions from the outside—not just through symbolic acts or pressuring government officials, but by building new, uniquely survivable social relationships. In this way, Lee noted, mutual aid actually does lead to systemic reform.

He added that mutual aid is moreover a sustainable form of systemic reform than politics: by tapping into resources that the community already has, such as supermarkets and bakeries with unsold food, the Flushing Community Fridge can alleviate food insecurity and reduce food waste in Flushing without relying on monetary resources or donations.

Mutual aid is often described as “solidarity, not charity.” On its face, charity seems to be the highest virtue: it is unselfish and loving. In practice, though, charity often is wrapped up in a vertical organization that creates an immense gap between donors and recipients, where wealthy individuals buy admiration in the eyes of society with their privilege and generosity and where people in need of that assistance are morally less. Charity often comes with strings attached; for example, a charity organization might only provides resources and services to sober people, or only to people of faith. Gatekeeping who “deserves help” is injurious to effecting meaningful change; people’s needs are valid no matter their lifestyles.

Mutual aid operates under the premise that it is overarching systems, such as unregulated capitalism and its intersections with race and gender—and not the people suffering under them—that create poverty, crisis, and vulnerability. In this way, mutual aid is a persistent effort to return the right of self-determination to individuals whose selfhood has been stripped away by harmful social conditions.

Lee noted that “when you see billionaires tossing money to poor people and saying ‘look how generous, how cool, and how amazing I am,’ charity never results in long-lasting, meaningful changes in communities.” Instead, she said, it perpetuates harmful rescue fantasies and saviorism. “Solidarity is different because it’s not a one-and-done ‘I’m going to put $50 in your GoFundMe,’” she explained. “It’s an ‘I’m going to support you because I care about you.”