On November 21, students and educators from Hostos and Bronx Community College returned to the streets to continue our mutual aid work in the South Bronx. From our first effort, we learned that 60 bagged lunches were not enough, so this time we prepared 100 lunches, including vegetarian and vegan options. We were also excited to distribute hygiene kits—complete with toothbrushes, toothpaste, and body wash—as well as ANTI-ICE care packages containing Know Your Rights Red Cards, a whistle, and an instructional zine explaining how to use the whistle to alert and organize against ICE when they inevitably raid and terrorize our communities.
Our mission continues to grow, but our message remains consistent: it is long past time to organize workers into a force powerful enough to dismantle this fascist system and build a communist world—one led by workers, for workers—capable of guaranteeing and the fulfillment of all basic needs and a life of dignity for all.
Feeding the workers, permit or not
Giving away bagged lunches is a small and simple act of resistance in a time and place where the bosses would have us hate each other. If we, the workers, are distracted with hating each other, we lose sight of who the real enemies of the working class are. Despite the clear need for more mutual aid efforts like ours, surprisingly there was a small resistance to our presence in the neighborhood that day. We picked a corner close to a row of produce stands and even interacted with a few who were happy to take our literature. One vendor, however, who was manning the only NYC-run produce stand, decided we were the enemy and threatened to report our group for distributing food without a permit. We held our ground and did not move. Threats of reporting our operation proved empty, as no one showed up to remove us. Perhaps it is a coincidence that the workers in NYC-run produce stand voiced issues with our work, while the freelance produce stands, normally manned by immigrants, were warm and welcoming. Nevertheless, the lesson we learned from this situation is to always have a safety plan in place to deal with agitators and possible police interactions.
Our supply of sandwiches was depleted after an hour. We met many unhoused individuals who expressed their deepest gratitude for our work, one saying “Thank you so much for thinking about us! They don’t care about us and will let us die in the gutter.” This statement does not only ring true for the unhoused population but for the entire working class. This point is proved by the 400 million dollars in SNAP funding that was withheld from New York State during the most recent and longest government shutdown in U.S. history. No one deserves to go hungry, and the ruling class parasites weaponized hunger against us.
Staying in touch
As good as it felt to help those in need, simply feeding people may not be enough to gain traction on the road to revolution. Education is paramount, so we handed out over 100 copies of CHALLENGE as well as our club’s literature with our club’s email. We hope adding contact info on our literature will help us make more connections with students and workers in the surrounding area and encourage them to join in the fight. We are excited to continue our mutual aid work and will give an update after our next mutual aid event. But more importantly, we will continue our antiracist fightback to secure a communist future freed from capitalist hunger and racist deportations.
