Communal meals
JUST BEFORE 3 P.M. ON A WARM WEDNESDAY IN FEBRUARY, 30-year-old Jammella Anderson—donning heart-shaped glasses, a Black Lives Matter tee and 2-in. platform boots—strolls up to a small bicycle-repair shop just north of Albany, N.Y. She’s here to persuade Troy Bike Rescue to let her use an electrical outlet so she can plug in a new refrigerator just outside the shop’s front door.
“It’s just two prongs,” she explains to one of the employees. “All I need is an outlet.”
Anderson, who works as a part-time doula and yoga instructor, is here on behalf of the one-woman organization she launched in August, Free Food Fridge Albany—an ad hoc network of half a dozen publicly accessible refrigerators that local farmers, market operators, restaurant owners and individual shoppers stock with free food multiple times each day to serve hungry people in the community. If Troy Bike Rescue’s owner agrees to give Anderson access to his electrical supply, Free Food Fridge Albany will be up to seven fridges citywide—a small but crucial service that helps thousands of local low-income families get enough to eat
