On Monday night, my social justice group was given the opportunity to go on a food van that delivered dinner to the homeless or poor throughout the Bronx. Amanda Moretti, mother of former LREI student, helped to facilitate our collaboration with Coalition for the Homeless’ food van. Amanda. Moretti told us that running the food van program at Coalition for the Homeless was her first job out of college.

Carla, Rachel, Chiara, Amanda, Herman (our driver and leader), and I drove from the Coalition’s base on 51st street to our first stop. There we handed out the food: two sandwiches each, an orange, milk, orange juice, and (because Herman was the leader) chocolate. Since it was a holiday, none of the usual hot soup was served. People would line up in the spots they knew the van to stop, take plastic bags and our group (other than Scekem who couldn’t make it) would serve them each.

One thing that we learned about was that not every person got the same amount of everything. In the beginning, we were expecting many people, so each person got only one of each item. As the evening progressed, we realized that not many people were going to show up, because more soup kitchens were open for Martin Luther King’s birthday. After this, we began handing out more of the perishables like the milk, ham sandwiches, and orange juice. Although everyone knew that the amounts in the bags were not always fair, people only took what they needed and were very thankful for what they got.

We were able to have a couple of conversations with those waiting in line, some of the food van’s regulars were open to discussing their pasts. One middle-aged man had just moved into an apartment, the first home he had ever owned. Another young man told us that, “You can’t just stay bitter, somehow everyone will see it, and your life won’t get better.” This quotation reminds me of what Fernando Bermudez was saying at middle school meeting. I was very impressed by what this man had overcome in his lifetime. Yet another person (the only white female that I remember serving) was on the phone with her partner who had just lost his job. She was one of the last people we served so we gave her all the remaining orange juice.

Most of the people who came to the food van were African-American males, there were some Asian men and women, and a couple African-American women, but they represented a striking minority.