11 minute read
Chilis On Wheels: Making Veganism Accessible To Communities In Need
Chilis on Wheels was started in the USA in November of 2014 by Michelle Carrera. When she couldn’t find a soup kitchen that served a vegan Thanksgiving meal, she decided to prepare her own chili and take it directly to the community. After seeing first hand the need for such a program, she became inspired and committed to bringing vegan food to those in need.
Eloisa Trinidad, who works with CoWS, brings us up to date.
LOCKDOWN MUST HAVE HAD A BIG IMPACT – HOW HAVE THE TEAMS KEPT GOING?
Lockdown changed our operations significantly. In New York we added pandemic relief and mini pantries to our existing hot meal shares which are held weekly in a few locations. The pandemic relief was a result of a very emotional reaction I had to seeing an article that said the City did not have a clear plan on how they were going to feed students. We got to work right away. At this time we are working with about 300 families comprising six individuals per family, that is on top of weekly distribution at the Department of Education sites. For the weekly school distribution we selected the two schools that have the most food insecure and housing insecure students in NYC. During the start of the pandemic, the BLM uprisings were also happening in NYC- we provided food support to protesters fighting for social justice. The weekly shares continued- we added a new share, for a total of three shares: one in Manhattan, one in Queens, and another one in Upper Manhattan.
We also added mini pantries throughout four of NYC’s five boroughs. It is an initiative we are looking to expand. We also recently just launched the first fully plant-based and vegan fridge in all of New York state which has been a huge success. It is located in an area that gives the illusion of wealth, however, there are seven shelters in the area and significant food insecurity that affects students and families who have lost their source of income during the pandemic.
Many people have the idea that we are a large team, but we are a pretty small team of about four individuals, two of which are doing the pandemic relief with volunteers that gift us their time whenever they can and the rest who handle meal shares with volunteers. This has been quite the challenge and a lesson in balance and communication fatigue, but also in love and community and what it means to come together in challenging times to provide support while also continuing to fight for Animal Liberation. As things have started to open, our volunteers are now less available and we are operating as best we can with the small amount of volunteers we have. What we are in need of are mostly drivers-- in NYC this is very challenging to come by as this is a walking city where people rely mostly on public transportation.
We always include vegan literature in our distribution and at our meal shares. This has been a great opportunity for us to talk about the root cause of zoonotic diseases. We felt comfortable doing this because we have always been in our communities and it was an opportunity to inform our folks even further.
Because the city was so desolate for so long, the pigeons and squirrels at the park were also hungry, so we became even more intentional about feeding them as well during the pandemic. They are part of our meal share as well.
HAS THERE BEEN A SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN DEMAND FOR YOUR SERVICES?
Absolutely. The economic downturn caused by the pandemic hit New York City extremely hard. A lot of people here depend on the service industry- these are people who may already barely be making ends meet in this expensive city so this was a new group of people we started to work with--even beyond the service industry, we saw many families who lost their jobs or had their hours significantly cut. The need not only increased in the unsheltered population, but in the sheltered and housed population that was facing a new food insecurity and hunger they may not have experienced before.
Many volunteer groups and organizations who were providing meals to the unsheltered stopped their operations due to COVID. Our unsheltered community faced an even greater amount of hunger and food insecurity and so did most New Yorkers who are not white collar workers. Volunteers were also fearful of Covid, and this led to less volunteers being available for this type of work.
WHAT’S THE LATEST FROM PUERTO RICO? THE HURRICANES HIT SO HARD, RECOVERY MUST BE SO TOUGH RIGHT NOW.
Right after Hurricane Maria hit and it was safe to fly, Michelle and her son Ollie went and distributed 15,000 meals within two months. These meals were distributed at institutions, nursing homes, orphanages, and domestic violence shelters. These places typically relied on the government for food, but the government had shut down and stopped providing food to the people. Chilis on Wheels stepped in. Chilis on Wheels also provided relief to communities in the mountain region that were cut off from aid due to their location, besides food, CoWs provided water filters, solar lamps, personal care items, and more. The relief was done in all areas throughout Puerto Rico during hurricane Maria. CoWs also joined forces with Santuario de Animales San Francisco de Asís to provide food and aid to dogs and cats affected by the hurricane.
Out of Hurricane Maria Casana Vegana de la Comminidad was born. In March 2018, after 5 months of providing relief the center was set up to serve the community permanently.
Michelle saw that aid and relief groups would come in for a few weeks and leave, leaving a hole and not truly building community. She asked herself “what is relief and what is rebuilding?” Casa Vegana is now a community center that hosts a micro sanctuary for rescued chickens, meal shares, and amazing education on veganism, speciesism, health, climate, and community.
Casa Vegana provided relief during the earthquakes of 2019 and 2020 and continue their meal shares which take place 3x a week and have continued amazing programming online during the pandemic.
AND HAWAII? I GUESS MOST PEOPLE THINK OF HAWAII AS A TROPICAL PARADISE...
Chilis on Wheels Maui has also been very active during the pandemic, they teamed up with other organizations such as Maui Rapid Responseto provide groceries, hot meals, and supplies to the unhoused community and anyone in need. They created a hub for people to come in to choose what they need which has worked tremendously well. CoWs Maui has built an amazing community where folks truly feel like they belong. During the protest for Mauna Kea Mountain in 2019, they provided food relief and supplies to Indigenous land protectors who were fightingfor their rights, many who were jailed because of it.
CoWS MUST BE SUCH A GODSEND FOR SO MANY. HOW DOES IT KEEP ITSELF GOING?
CoWs keeps going due to our amazing volunteers and mostly through individual donations. Our model is based on mutual aid, many of our volunteers have at some point also received assistance. When we eat at the mealshares, we eat together. We want to get rid of the shame that exists in needing food assistance and blur the line between who needs and who does not. We are a community.
As to how people can get involved? Well people can share our work on social media and make a donation. Also, be in community with those less fortunate- share a meal with your unsheltered neighbor.
HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED WITH CoWS?
CoWs started in NYC and I was very lucky to be at the right place at the right time- - in the amazing community that is the NYC Animal Liberation Movement. It spoke to me in such a big way. As an AfroIndigenous woman, plantbased food has always been a huge part of my life because my family grew a lot of their food while I was growing up. My great-great grandparents shared everything they grew and everything they cooked. This was the way of things for us-- to be in community. To me, making plant-based foods accessible to everyone was and is decolonization practice. It has always felt like love, community, and healing. No one in NYC was doing what Michelle was doing. It had the component of community that I was raised with along with the healing. She is and continues to be an inspiration to me.
ARE YOU CONFIDENT WE CAN ADDRESS THE PROBLEMS LONG TERM THAT YOU SEE DAILY?
Yes. While these systems are highly complex and exploit the human animals and the beyond-human animals in our home- Earth, I do believe food sovereignty and food justice that is rooted in the liberation of all Beings is possible. Of course this would require us to address poverty, speciesism, colonialism, and many other issues that prevent us from true transformation. We must hold corporations, the media, and governments accountable and the resource hoarders who have taken over this planet as well. There is no scarcity problem when it comes to food. We have a distribution and poverty problem. Even though dismantling oppression and abolishing exploitative systems is challenging, I believe that as a species we are capable of transformation. We have evolved and will continue to evolve, along the way we must decide and be intentional about liberation in our every day and in/ for the self, and in our activism.
WHAT WOULD HELP ACHIEVE THAT THE MOST?
We must recognize our own power to effect change and when we recognize this power, we must empower others. For us to truly have a plantbased food system and abolish industries that oppressed beyond-human animals, we must recognize and combat all forms of oppression. We must understand that workers picking strawberries who can’t afford those very same strawberries and whose rights are violated and are experiencing hunger and abuse are being exploited in the same systems where beyond-human animals are exploited, murdered and abused. We must understand that human animals can and many times are both oppressor and oppressed. This isn’t to excuse speciesism, but to highlight that we are in a complex, complicated system led by humans, we too, are those humans. Even if we are vegan, we exist in a system where our very existence still causes damage to the world because of these systems. We may like to believe that we are fighting individuals, but the reality is that we are fighting an economic system that is designed to depend on exploitation and a global belief that beyond-human animals are food, products, and things. How do you get rid of a global idea? Of a global belief?
THE VEGAN MOVEMENT SOMETIMES SEEMS SO DIVIDED JUST AT A TIME WHEN WE NEED THE MOST UNITY. WHAT WOULD HELP ACHIEVE THAT?
If we truly think about liberation and what it means, we begin to understand that any oppression gets in the way of animal liberation. It would be easy if things were black and white as we many times make them out to be, but the fact is that most human animals are not born vegan or raised with vegan values and that this is a transition most people make when they become aware either at 6 or 60 years --this should highlight the fact that animal liberation is much a more complex fight than any other liberation movement in history. We must strive to understand the complexity and the nuance that exists when it comes to being strategic about animal liberation. I wish all the screaming in the world was enough. It isn’t. We must be strategic in our approach and community driven. If we do not build sustainable communities that empower activists then our liberation work is incomplete and ineffective.
MICHELLE CARRERA, THE FOUNDER OF CoWS, IS A BIT OF A LEGEND. WHAT QUALITIES DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT MICHELLE?
Her capacity to care. Michelle is a soul that soothes with her ability to care and love. Just the way she has cared for me and keeps me in mind throughout me adopting this new role at Chilis on Wheels impresses me, that is on top of caring for every Being on this planet. I am lucky and grateful to call her a mentor and friend.
