Jammella Anderson kneels beside a bright pink refrigerator on a sidewalk in Albany, New York, stocking its shelves with fresh loaves of bread and heads of lettuce—food that is free for the taking. A passerby stops to ask how to donate. She tells them where and how to sign up to give veggies, dairy, or prepared meals. They continue walking, then double back and ask Anderson whether they can donate the stale contents of their apartment fridge ahead of a move. The answer is an emphatic “no.”
To Anderson, the question epitomizes the problem she’s trying to solve as founder of Free Food Fridge Albany: A prevailing attitude that poor, Black, Indigenous, and people of color, as well as others who disproportionately face food insecurity, deserve only leftovers, day-old bread, or scraps. The Free Food Fridge flips that idea on its head.
“[Food] seemed so inaccessible to me because food insecurity is something that I dealt with, and because we live in a city, you don’t really see where the food is coming from,” Anderson says.
Food insecurity in the United States, defined by the USDA as the consistent lack of food on a household level, severely increased during the spring of 2020 when the coronavirus swept across the globe. The pandemic exposed the tremendous faults in our structural systems—specifically our economy. Anderson knew the problem would only worsen as neighborhoods already cut off from resources were disproportionately harmed by the economic shutdown, and millions across the country lost their jobs. In the Albany metro area, more than 30,000 other people were without work compared to the previous year.
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