Outside a church on Haywood Road (a major commercial strip in West Asheville) a child held a huge posterboard sign that read “FOOD BABY,” smiling and waving at the cars… because there was free baby food being given away at the church. Keep going, and you’ll go past lines outside restaurants where food is being cooked and given away for free. Then another church with another relief site. Then the fire station, more relief. Then the anarchist bookstore, bustling with people self-organizing to get supplies out everywhere across the region. Every day there’s a community meeting out back, with spanish and english translation available. The punk bar across the street set up a portapotty after they cooked and gave away all the food in the walk-out freezer.
Yesterday I waited by the back door of a grocery store with a fireline of people collecting the food that was going to otherwise be thrown out. There wasn’t a line of people waiting to take it home personally, which would have been fine, but instead fifteen cars of people connected to probably half a dozen different mutual aid organizations, constantly discussing which small town’s distribution hub currently needs fresh produce, or water, or insulin.
Read the rest at Birds Before the Storm
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