Last summer, months before Memphis became overrun with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, local activists and Latino leaders came together to figure out how to best meet their community’s needs. The Trump administration’s expansion of ICE was still nascent; the agency had conducted raids in Los Angeles, but hadn’t yet begun its operations in Chicago or Minneapolis.
Amber Hampton and another member of Indivisible Memphis, a volunteer-run chapter of the nationwide civil rights organization, attended the meeting. Though neither of them spoke much Spanish, and many of those gathered from the Latino community spoke little English, they understood each other, Hampton told the Guardian.
“There was a communication barrier, but there was not a feeling barrier,” she said. “You could see the emotion and feel the pain and fear in that room without even having to understand the words that were being spoken.” Some people were afraid to leave their homes, and when ICE began their foray into Memphis months later, some parents kept their children home from school.
After the meeting, members of Indivisible Memphis met again to figure out how they could aid the community. They didn’t want to just be reactive, showing up after a raid had done its damage on a neighborhood. They wanted to proactively help people. The Immigrant Pantry, which provides direct food assistance to those who need it most, was born, ensuring that community members who are afraid to risk leaving their homes don’t have to.
Some people in the group have opened up their homes as pantry bases, places where non-perishable food items and other necessities, like hygiene products, are stored. Other volunteers, delivery drivers, pick these items up, purchase fresh meats, produce and dairy from a grocery store, and then deliver the goods to those who can’t leave their homes to get it themselves.
“What if there’s a mom with a child that needs medicine because they’re sick and they have a fever? What if they need food because they haven’t been to the grocery store and they’re scared to go?” said Jessica Miller, a volunteer with Indivisible Memphis. “Just the thought of people being prisoners in their home because of this was something that just didn’t settle right with any of us.”
In the first few months of the pantry’s creation, volunteers made about eight deliveries a week, Miller said. The first week after the announcement of the national guard’s deployment to Memphis, in September, that number rose to nearly 30. Since then, there have been as many as 200 people on the waiting list to receive food.
But the community rose to meet the challenge. Initially they had nearly a dozen people who volunteered as delivery drivers; now they have about 130. One volunteer built an app to help make the process smoother for people working on the logistics side. “The pantry is really the truest example of a community effort,” Hampton said. “People from all across the community, different walks of life, different religions, different ethnicities, everyone came together to make this happen.”
Volunteers with the pantry are wide-ranging, from stay-at-home moms who deliver food while their children are at school, to doctors and lawyers who provide assistance. They also are not all aligned politically; Hampton and Miller both noted that not every volunteer is ideologically in sync with Indivisible Memphis. Still, they come together with one goal: assisting their fellow Memphians.
The Immigrant Pantry’s volunteers are keen on ensuring the foods that they offer are culturally relevant – if people are already in a difficult situation, they should at least be able to prepare and eat foods they are used to. “We wanted to make sure that, throughout this terrorism that they were experiencing, they could at least have comfort in something that was familiar,” Miller said. “So we had community members that advised us on what was best, what things would stretch, how we could really reach out and get people what they needed.”
The group keeps dry beans, rather than canned beans, on hand, as well as canned tomatoes, Nido, a popular powdered milk for young children, and masa, a staple flour, vital for many Hispanic dishes. Recipients of the groceries aren’t limited to dry, pre-made or non-perishable foods. The Immigrant Pantry provides fresh produce, fresh meat and fresh dairy, like fresh chillies and avocados. There are also specific drivers who assist those who require a halal diet. The organization spends $50 per family to buy fresh meat, dairy and produce, but people also receive diapers, baby wipes and shampoo and other hygiene items.
On one of her first deliveries, Miller heard a baby crying as she walked to the door of an apartment complex. The mother who answered the door told her that she had been trying to feed her baby with sugar water for two days. Recently, the Immigrant Pantry received a call from a man who said that he couldn’t feed his five-year-old daughter. A doctor contacted the pantry on behalf of a patient, a newborn baby who had been discharged after being in the hospital due to weight loss. About 80% of the deliveries are to families with children, Hampton said.
“It’s hard now as an immigrant pantry organization to constantly hear about the decrease in crime when the humanitarian crisis that it’s creating is being ignored,” Hampton said. “Because there is a real serious humanitarian crisis within this community in Memphis right now. We see it every day. We work with it every day. And it’s like a tale of two cities, basically.”
