li Mae Miller had seen posts on Facebook about an initiative to offer Chicago residents 24/7 access to food and knew she wanted to help. The tagline, “Take what you need, give what you can,” immediately resonated with her, so she went to her landlord and asked if she could use his unoccupied refrigerator sitting in the garage. She painted the oncewhite refrigerator in shades of blue and yellow, added hearts and wrote “toda amor,” meaning “it’s all love,” because that was what she felt from many of the Spanish-speaking community members in Logan Square. “You'll have this fridge in the garage, and most people might want to throw some beer in it or something like that to just have a fridge in their garage,” Miller said. “But I was like, ‘Heck no, let's clean this thing up and let's get it out to the community – to people who really could use access to it.’” Miller is one of the first people in Chicago to create an independent refrigerator for The Love Fridge. The Love Fridge Chicago, a mutual aid group with a goal to nourish communities while combating food waste and scarcity, was founded in July 2020 after Ash Godfrey saw a similar initiative in New York called Friendly Fridges. Similarly, the Friendly Fridges were a way for more residents in areas of New York like Brooklyn and Harlem to have access to food without judgment. After asking friends of friends, she found someone who had already created an Instagram account and from there, they began to reach out to similar fridge initi-
A Love Fridge volunteer stocks the fridge at Moreno's in Little Village, which hosts a fridge with 24/7 access for the community at 3724 W. 26th St. (Kathleen Hinkel photo.)
by Dyana Daniels
tives in California and New York for ideas on how to bring the idea to Chicago. “Our first goal was to find a host – we had to find electricity,” said Godfrey. “We emailed and talked to businesses and community members. And our first host site was actually one of our Love Fridge volunteers. He owned property and lives in Little Village.” With a primary focus to support communities of color on the South and West sides of Chicago, The Love Fridge’s network now includes at least 19 refrigerators. The Greater Chicago Food Depository, the hub of a network of more than 700 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and other programs in Cook County, created a COVID-19 data map to help people understand which areas are being deeply impacted. According to data on the map from the United Way United for ALICE project, 39 percent of households in Cook County could not afford all of their basic necessities such as housing, healthy food, childcare, health care and transportation.
