So many of us have been searching during the Trump years for ways to act on our opposition to his efforts to move the country toward authoritarianism. We’ve marched in the demonstrations and rallies that have grown larger each time we get out our signs and head downtown. We need to continue doing that. We’ve reached into our bank accounts to contribute to political candidates and organizations that stand in opposition to the country’s rightward drift. We need to continue doing that. We sign petitions and add our names to lists that show our support for democracy and our opposition the administration’s most egregious actions. We need to continue doing that.
Yet all of the above still leaves me with a hunger in the pit of my stomach for something to DO, something concrete, some action I can point to that bends that arc toward justice by even a fraction of a degree. I’ve mentioned before that we’ve heeded the advice of many commentators to choose one area among the many where our freedoms and the freedom of others are endangered to prevent being overwhelmed into paralysis. We chose immigration when the administration made it clear that Chicago was going to be a prime target in its deportation efforts. We connected with a local project that was helping people with their asylum applications and their filings for work permits. Our contributions were limited by our lack of Spanish (the project’s clientele were largely recent arrivals from Venezuela) and our shaky technical skills, but even the work in that area dried up as the borders closed. Once again, we felt frustrated.
Then, recently a new opportunity arose, a product of the increasingly more brutal crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the city. People were scared to leave their homes for fear of being snatched off the streets while taking their kids to school or going out to eat in local restaurants or doing the shopping to keep their families fed. Credentialed citizens in Chicago have done an admirable job of stepping up to address the needs of the undocumented who, thanks to a massive education campaign, knew that they were relatively safe if they stayed home and didn’t answer the door. A group of suburban mothers came to the local detention center to stage a sit-in as a proxy for those who weren’t free to protest; Others walked children to school, so at-risk parents didn’t endanger themselves.
And – here’s where we come in – our asylum project posted on Signal a request for volunteers to shop for people who didn’t feel safe doing it for themselves. This is such a small unromantic way to contribute to the cause of democracy, but at the other end of this request was a family with a toddler and a baby on the way who were in need of food and toiletries. My kind of humane revolution is made up of numerous small acts of kindness and support for those among us most in need. It was the opposite of sexy. A staff member had prepared a shopping list, a formidable task in itself, created in collaboration with the family. It was a multi-stop project, either pursuing low prices or because no single store carried the full range of items on the list.
First stop was the Dollar Store for discount prices on soap, shampoo, sponges, bleach and the like. Next was Aldi, a supermarket chain that is frequently, though not exclusively, found in low-income neighborhoods. Truth to tell we had never shopped there before, so this was a learning experience for us. It’s a barebones kind of place, with items on the shelves still in their original cartons, where you had to come armed with a quarter to liberate a shopping cart. (You get your quarter back when you return the cart.) There are no baggers or bags, but oh my, the prices are right – often half of what we pay at Jewel, a few blocks down the street. The choices are more limited, but frankly the choices we face are excessive, dizzying and unnecessary. In the 80s and early 90s when Russian Jews were finally allowed to leave the Soviet Union we heard stories of new immigrants totally paralyzed in the supermarket by the ridiculous array, for example, of breakfast cereals on offer. We saw a lot of contented customers wheeling their laden carts out to the parking lot.
Finally, we headed to more familiar grounds – Jewel – in pursuit of items not available at the earlier stops, particularly baby supplies – diapers, diaper rash cream, wipes. This was the most powerful revelation of the expedition, which ran three and a half hours door to door. The cost of diapers for a toddler and an infant on the way was just a few dollars short of the cost of the entire grocery bill. How does a low-income family bear that expense. Our family is undocumented and therefore ineligible for SNAP, but even if they were, SNAP covers only food items. A quick, very impressionistic estimate was that for two children still in diapers, the annual cost would be a couple of thousand dollars! Our kids were born in the era of cloth diapers. The diaper service showed up every week to pick up the stinky pails and return fresh diapers. It couldn’t have been anywhere near as expensive. Good middle class folks like us have read lots about the challenges low income families face stretching their limited dollars, but it suddenly descended from the realm of the abstract to concrete reality when we reached the cash register with those two boxes of diapers sliding down the conveyer belt.
By the way, buying sanitary napkins for someone you don’t know is a challenge. We had no idea what she preferred and what might have been available to her in Venezuela. Reluctantly, we passed on that purchase.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to meet the recipient of our shopping efforts because she was at the doctor’s. We dropped it off at an apartment that would keep it till the evening, when yet another Good Samaritan retrieved and delivered it. We did get a note from the person at the asylum project that M., the expectant mother, was extremely grateful for the bounty.
All this was such a microscopic contribution to the larger resistance effort, but it wasn’t nothing. It was exhausting, but we’ll do it again, with some modifications the next time around. And it wasn’t one-sided; we learned a lot in the process.
PS. One of the project’s staff who is close to M., the recipient of the groceries, read this piece and sent the following note, which reminds us that there’s a complex back story to even simple transactions like these. Recipients of aid are proud people, not always comfortable with the “gifts” we bestow on them:
Please share with Marv and his wife this obstacle was even harder to overcome given M’s strong reluctance to accept help for something she has always done for herself. First, she wouldn’t even look at the form, then she wouldn’t submit it, but after much coaxing and mutual understanding that asking for help is in a strong woman’s wheelhouse (all from a person with limited Spanish), she finally agreed. And when these groceries arrived, she sent a warm message of gratitude.
