Transfiguration Food Distribution
As one of our two Projects of Survival, Transfiguration Food Distribution has guided our organizing work in Baltimore It has allowed us to remain connected to the poor and dispossessed of our class in an ongoing, and deeply critical way. It has also been a great opportunity for some of our leaders to begin to understand and engage with the nuances of successful base building.
In this past year, we had to fight to keep the Transfiguration food distribution open, standing up to the Archdiocese of Baltimore and coming together to rebuild and expand the pantry’s footprint. At its height, the pantry served over 500 Baltimore residents, meeting an immediate need while also raising the deeper question of why so many of us are denied the basic right to food. Most of the people we are meeting at Transfiguration are employed but still find it difficult to meet their basic needs.
We have used it as a space to begin a journey for a handful of leaders toward United Workers that includes our other Project of Survival, the Hope Garden, and centers the struggle for food as a problem whose tentacles go beyond the imposed boundaries of our neighborhoods and really ushers folks into thinking about this, and all our human rights struggles, as statewide, nationwide, and truly global.
As the poor and dispossessed, we are called to come together to create and reshape not only ourselves, but our very understanding of what community means. The organizing work at Transfiguration reminds us why we must organize, organize, and until our last breath, organize to birth a more just society where everyone’s needs are met.