Name: Charlotte Vitale

Social Justice Group: Food insecurity in NYC (B)

Date of Fieldwork: January 17, 2025

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):BJ Neal, Director of NYC Program Services, City Relief

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:

My group met with BJ Neal the Director of NYC Program Services at City Relief. We asked him about the work that City Relief does to combat food insecurity. He told us that City Relief has two main things that they do, one being directly offering food, an immediate solution but not a long term solution. He compared this to grabbing buckets to stop the flood. Another one being City Relief uses their connections to connect people with services (employment, shelter, food), and also navigates people with assistants and connects people with where they need to go to really help. BJ says when helping people with food insecurity you have to meet them where they are. He also explained that it takes a long time for people to turn their lives around and that you have to “actually just get in the trenches and join people where they are”. We asked BJ Neal about different reasons for people not being able to turn their lives around and the main reason he gave us was mental health. He talked about how people are not alway prepared to accept help and their pride gets in the way.

In this interview BJ also talked about his personal experience with homelessness, as a child he lived in shelters with his mom and two sisters. He said that that influenced his choice to work with City Relief.