This episode we speak with three people in three cities who all work or volunteer for Burrito Brigade. This grass-roots organization was started in an effort to get food to people who need it, while building community. Jennifer is the current head of Burrito Brigade in Eugene, Ash is the main organizer in Portland, and CJ has started another Branch in Chicago. Listen to learn more about food insecurity and the way that these folks are making a difference.
To find out more about Burrito Brigade Eugene, you can visit: https://burritobrigade.org or call 541-632-3239
To find out more about the Portland or Chicago branches, you can visit their Facebook pages at Burrito Brigade Portland and Burrito Brigade Chicago.
For a recipe to make your own 100 burrito batch from the Burrito Brigade, email me at whitebirdmutualaid@gmail.com.
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
This episode we speak with three people in three cities who all work or volunteer for Burrito Brigade. This grass-roots organization was started in an effort to get food to people who need it, while building community. Jennifer is the current head of Burrito Brigade in Eugene, Ash is the main organizer in Portland, and CJ has started another Branch in Chicago. Listen to learn more about food insecurity and the way that these folks are making a difference.
To find out more about Burrito Brigade Eugene, you can visit: https://burritobrigade.org or call 541-632-3239
To find out more about the Portland or Chicago branches, you can visit their Facebook pages at Burrito Brigade Portland and Burrito Brigade Chicago.
For a recipe to make your own 100 burrito batch from the Burrito Brigade, email me at whitebirdmutualaid@gmail.com.
To find out more about White Bird Clinic, visit whitebirdclinic.org.
You're listening to White Bird Mutual Aid. I'm Hana Francis. This show explores different community focused organizations and how they work. We talk with folks who offer services to their communities about what they do, how they do it and why it's so important. This episode is about an organization that started locally in Eugene, Oregon; Burrito Brigade. One of the founders went on to start similar models in Portland and later in Chicago. Today I speak with the current head of the Eugene burrito brigade Jennifer Densen, the organizer of the Portland brigade Ash Brantingham. And one of the original founders CJ, who now lives in Chicago. Burrito Brigade is an organization with a purpose of addressing unfair food distribution resulting in food insecurity. According to the US Department of Agriculture in 2021, about 10.2% of households in the US reported being food insecure. That's 33.8 million people living in a food insecure household. Being food insecure is defined as a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active healthy lifestyle. This can be a temporary situation or can last a long time. Food Insecurity is one measure of how many people can afford food. To get these statistics, the USDA uses information from the US Department of Commerce, the Bureau of Census and the current population survey food supplement. It is worth mentioning that there are a lot of people who are likely not counted in the survey such as undocumented citizens or people living outside. There are big holes in this way of counting food insecurity. But if this is the documented number, you can only imagine how many more the actual number is. In 2021 Food for Lane County reported that one in five people were experiencing food insecurity in Eugene and Lane County as a whole. In Portland, 11.8% of the population experienced food insecurity. In Chicago, one in four people are affected by food insecurity; over 25% of the city's population, or about 785,890 people, are experiencing food insecurity.
CJ:Well, there's plenty of food. I mean, to go around. Tons of food is wasted. You know, Chicago has this amazing, like fine dining scene. You know, like you can go spend $100 on a small plate of the most amazing food. Yet there's like, you know, half the city is living in poverty. I mean, maybe not half. I don't know the actual [number], but there's a lot of poverty here. And there is a lot of food insecurity. And there are places that I mean, you can live in a city in a neighborhood, and be like 10 miles from the closest grocery store. You know, that's, that's insane. So I think, you know, one thing greeter brigade does is it takes like, excess food and distributes it to people and we go to them, you know, we don't make them come to us. Yeah. So my name is CJ Meyers, my pronouns are he/him, and I am starting burrito brigade for the third time in a third location in Chicago.
Hana Francis:The causes of food insecurities are very different in Eugene, Portland and Chicago. But food aid is needed everywhere, nonetheless. Burrito Brigade is a grassroots organization, which has become a 501 C3 nonprofit in Eugene, and is still in the beginning stages in two other cities Portland and Chicago. At this organization, volunteers come together to make and hand out free burritos to anyone who needs food, no questions asked. The model is so simple that it's totally customizable and can be changed to suit the needs of whatever community you're a part of.
Jennifer Densen:I think the thing is, is so simple. Like, you know, we allowed children almost of all ages, like we before the pandemic, you know, 13 and over was able to use a knife under 13 We'd like find other tasks. We were making payroll and jellies or counting the burritos or putting the burritos into the coolers or you know, it's very, you know, we've always been very inclusive, you know, and it's such a simple like, it's three hours from start to finish your yo, we've made 300 burritos, you know. So I think that's the awesome part. hear that people appreciate and get behind that it's so easy.
Hana Francis:The Eugene branch is now an official nonprofit, and also has a few other projects including the little free pantries and the waste to taste program which Jennifer and I speak about later. Burrito brigade all started with a group of friends back in 2014. The current head of the Eugene branch Jennifer Denson joined just a few months after the start of burrito brigade, Eugene.
Jennifer Densen:So we started in February of 2014. Making burritos in a house. I saw a Facebook post in about July of that year that they were needing volunteers and I had never done anything like this. You know, I'd always wanted to be I got involved in July of 2014. So right when we were babies got instantly hooked and wanted to do more.
Hana Francis:One of the original founders CJ started it with the same values that they carry today.
CJ:I mean, I wanted to get involved in like activism that felt, I don't know accessible to people that feel like a lot of stuff in Eugene was, emanates a college town, so a lot of stuff was kind of Akkad Demick, which is good. But burritos or burritos are like a really easy thing. My favorite thing about it is how it's kind of worked as a springboard for people that just want to do something and then all of a sudden they get into activism. All you have to do is come you know, diced vegetables and start talking and be like, Oh my god, capitalism is terrible.
Hana Francis:Burrito Brigade was such an effective simple model for getting in touch with community that CJ went on to start a Burrito Brigade in Portland when he moved there. This branch is now overseen by ash branding him.
CJ:The Portland branch started in 2016. We started running out of CJs kitchen, which was a really it was like fun and also really chaotic. I don't really know how he and Kelly manage that because they were like, do the whole thing and have all the volunteers and make all the burritos and distribute all the burritos and then it guests have to like go home and clean their whole house which seems wild to me that's like so much.
Hana Francis:After moving on from Portland to Chicago, CJ has started yet another branch.
CJ:We always get the most like success when we like grow organically through like connections and people becoming regular volunteers and like taking on leadership roles. And in Chicago, it's still just me and Kelly, my partner that are pretty much like the organizers. And we both work full time and like are trying to like get donations and you know, it feels pretty chaotic. But like in Portland like when Ash got really involved and a few other organizers and then it just kind of started happening on its own. In Eugene, we had all these regular organizers and I like would take weekends off and then eventually moved away and it's still going
Hana Francis:Back in Eugene Jennifer Denson took on leadership of burrito brigade and now as a full time paid position. She has innovated her own ways of providing food security for people in Eugene.
Jennifer Densen:The founders both kind of drifted in life happened and went different directions. And then so I've been with the group since then, you know, we got bigger and then we launched two days of burritos. So we played around with recipes in the beginning. And then in summer of 2019 I launched the little free pantry project which is similar to the national project, but ours are kind of cabinets instead of their very small boxes that are concrete. I'm like the little free libraries nationally, but I wanted something that we could move. Or if a homeowner decided to they they moved, they needed it to be moved or we had any issues we could move it. So now fast forward and we have 50 of those in Eugene and Springfield
Hana Francis:during the breakout of the pandemic and the initial isolation period. Having food on the table became even more of a pressing concern for many people in our community. Jennifer saw a need in the community and found more ways to get extra food where it was needed.
Jennifer Densen:The onset of the pandemic was pretty heavy on everybody and I saw the food pantries were being closed or at least temporarily on hold or drive thru. And so I had talked with some friends and family, and I wanted to do something that could still be COVID safe and people could still choose because there are so many I have so many family members that have dietary restrictions that I just wanted, not pre packed boxes. And so we did an online appointment form, where everybody has five minute appointments. And then we were asked at this church in North Eugene, if we could help, or they could help us because it was was a perfect setup, they have like a really long building. And so there's one entrance and one exit. So families come in shop down the line, just like a grocery store. And then they leave out the other door. And so yeah, that it's interesting to look back on, like, everybody kind of was like, wow, what, what is this you want to do? And I was like, nobody else has done this. And this is what I want to do. And you know, people took a chance, and we're two and a half year. Two and a half years later, we're about 16,000 households have been served. And then we do a delivery system via like a Google form. So if somebody is homebound or white bird uses it for us, if they have like a client in a hotel or something like that. So we let people shop once a week. So it's not the our count isn't like technically, you know, 15,000 households, it's, uh, you know, because people do take advantage of being able to use it. You know, every week, some people like depend on it, because they're right in between, you know, qualifying for food stamps, or rent assistance or energy assistance. And that, you know, that little bit of groceries is such a help, you know, then I guess so then short, long story short, I became executive director in full time executive director in January of 2021. So I left my job at the school district, I was part time like stipend. Before that, and then with COVID, we were able to use funds for me to do this full time.
Hana Francis:The food pantry was given the name waste to taste, and is now sustained part of the Eugene burrito brigade program.
Jennifer Densen:So then the waste to taste is what we call the food pantry, because it's all food that is destined for the landfill. So kinda like imperfect foods. And no questions asked. So I mean, we ask, I mean, you obviously go online and make your appointment ahead of time with your name. And that's it. And so somebody is at the front desk checking people in, but there's no other questions. So we have an amazing team of volunteers every day that sort things that are actually consumable, you know, there might be a peach that's completely squished in the bottom of the box. So we have, we have animal food pickups every single day. So there's very little waste on the landfill end. And then the things at the end of the week. You know, a lot of food ends up in a burrito. You know, there's a lot of tomatoes, peppers, onions, potatoes, zucchini, chard, kale, we all use that in our burritos,
Hana Francis:burrito brigade partners with a lot of local organizations to bring food that might otherwise be wasted to hungry mouths. White bread clinic is among the organizations that gets food delivered from the burrito brigade weekly.
Jennifer Densen:We partner with obviously, white bird gets food in the lobby from us. And then we've partnered with the service station on highway 99, which is a day shelter that makes food and so she'll ask us, you know, maybe this week she needs burger buns, hot dog buns, sliced bread, often we'll send her like rolls for cautious stuff that can be side dishes. If we get big bulk versions of coleslaw or peppers or things that we can't use in the breeders or can't use it the pantry then we are facilitating it to other groups.
Hana Francis:The Eugene burrito brigade acquired a new space in September of 2022 where the waste to taste food pantry now operates. The kitchen is being remodeled to hold a burrito brigade operations. These operations used to be mostly out of churches. Pretty much everyone who has participated in a burrito brigade has rented out of a church space before
CJ:we really prefer and only work with churches that are like social justice based and et cetera, but like a lot of those churches are dwindling and needing to do stuff with their space. There's all these empty churches like the the one in Portland that we were cooking out of for a while became a community center because it couldn't afford to be a church anymore. And so there was this kitchen that was just there. And so I mean, in every neighborhood, there are unused kitchens that if you know the right people, you can just use I mean, I think in Eugene, it's, I don't know if it's free there, or if they pay a small amount, but here we pay like a very small amount just to cover like the utilities for the church.
Hana Francis:Since the Eugene burrito brigade has been a part of the Eugene community for so long. They have a really big group of volunteers.
Jennifer Densen:So we have about 60 volunteers at the pantry. And then each brigade takes about 10 solid volunteers for each brigade. So Saturday, Saturday and Sunday are still both going strong. So Saturday makes about 250 burritos, and Sunday makes about 350 Burritos. And so a good 10 to 12 solid volunteers have been through us through the pandemic, you know, we didn't want to stop doing burrito. Because, you know, the weekends is the most food insecure day of the week. And so we just altered you know, we like food filling County was able to offer us their kitchen during COVID. So we were able to spread out really well.
Hana Francis:While the Eugene burrito brigade has grown to have a full time position, the Portland branch is still run entirely by volunteers. Ash Brantingham, at the main organizer up there.
CJ:I got involved in burrito brigade through some friends, I think you also are maybe talking to CJ at some point. And so I like knew him through a mutual friend of ours. And when he moved to Portland and started burrito brigade chapter up here, I was like, I should go to that, like, that's a super easy thing to do every once in a while, and like see your friend and like do whatever. And then I kind of started going and never stopped going. So yeah,
Hana Francis:the Portland branch operates on a slightly different schedule. There are a lot more food aid projects happening in Portland. And to be sure there are a lot more people as well. Ash and their brigade meet once a month to make burritos.
CJ:Currently, we are meeting once a month. And so it's almost always the second Sunday unless there's like a scheduling conflict at our church or something. And we're meeting in the basement of Rose City Park United Methodist Church, which is out in Northeast Portland. And we do all of our cooking and like meal prep there. And then we do distribution kind of wherever we have volunteers to go. So I like to encourage people to take burritos like back to parts of town that they live in, or to like people who they already know, in practice, a lot of times that ends up being like inner se or kind of out in northeast by where I live. Currently, we're aiming for around 250 or 300 each time. And that kind of depends on like how many volunteers we're expecting to have. And then also what donations we get. We're not entirely running on donated food right now. But we are able to make a pretty significant portion of the burritos with donated food. So a lot of times why like produce and why we get a lot of soy curls donated from another group up here called veggies to a beggar. And a lot of times the amount we make is kind of based on like what food has come in as well.
Hana Francis:In Portland, the number of volunteers changes a lot from meeting to meeting.
CJ:So sometimes they'll just be like a handful of people. I think last time we had like four volunteers. And then other times we'll have like a lot more people just show up or sometimes we'll have groups volunteer with us. And so there's like a little scout troop who likes to volunteer sometimes. And so that'll be like 12 Kids and like all of their associated adults. So it can really vary from month to month.
Hana Francis:Ash is definitely not opposed to growing the Portland burrito brigade, but they are more interested in collaborating with some of the other many food aid projects which is started in Portland. We were
CJ:working on growing before the pandemic and so we had started meeting like twice a month and it was working on building up kind of more organizers who would be able to come and like run the kitchen if I wasn't there. We really pulled back during the pandemic We met sometimes. And we were kind of trying to follow like city guidelines about like when it's safe to meet in groups and like masking and et cetera. But for probably the first year of that it was just me, like cooking at home or like delivering ingredients to people so that they could cook at home. And we did not have to be in this space together. And like, Now, obviously, we're back, we all meet together again. And I think I'm interested in growing more, but I think it's also a good opportunity to kind of meet with more of the groups who are doing this work around Portland, there's just a ton of different kind of mutual aid. Groups up here, who are doing other people are like delivering food, and other people are, you know, delivering supplies and collecting donations and all sorts of things. And so I think, instead of focusing so much on like, burrito brigade as an organization growing as like that specific thing, I'm really interested in figuring out how we can kind of work with other teams as well. Just to kind of combined expertise and resources and time and all of those things.
Hana Francis:A quick search for food aid groups and Portland will give you a bunch of resources including sisters of the road, Blanchette house, Oregon Food Bank, feed the mass free hot soup, Rahab sisters, St. Francis dining hall, and Clackamas service center.
CJ:I think that was like, one of the heartening things to see during the pandemic, too, is I felt like a lot more groups kind of like sprang up in Portland, when especially that first year when a lot of people were like, suddenly at home, and like maybe weren't working, or were like working from home or whatever the case may be. And so I think a lot more people were suddenly like, wait, I can also do this, just like for my house. And like some of those like started and then kind of ended, but I think a lot of them are still like going on in some way, which is
Hana Francis:cool. If you would like to know more about these organizations, and how you can access their services, you can find information from the Portland mercury or the Rose City Resource Guide.
CJ:We're still kind of a Facebook based organization as far as like, that's where all of our events are posted. And if I'm like, trying to notify people of anything, and I'll post on our Facebook page, which is Portland burrito brigade. So that's still the best way. You can also email us which is Portland at burrito brigade.org. I'm a little bit flaky about email sometimes. So definitely prefer people like look at the Facebook page. But I tried to get to the emails too, it's just gonna be a little bit more delayed.
Hana Francis:And like, as far as donating items also, like the same contact kind of deal, how does that usually work?
CJ:Yeah, the same way. Like you can usually reach out and contact me either like through the Facebook group or through email, or at a certain point, if you donated more than once, you'll probably just have my phone number and then you can text me after that. And we take obviously all have the donation or all of the foods that would like go into a burrito. So a lot of like dried beans and rice. Spices are especially good and like salts. Also like oil. Tortillas we can take donations out but we try and have a specific size of tortilla so that we're making people like a normal size burrito. And so the size we usually go horse 10 inches, we'll take again, we'll take pretty much anything. And if we can't use it for a burrito, we'll like put it in the free fridges or something like that. And then we can take produce donations to but that's a little bit trickier. timewise since we're just meeting once a month, and so I don't want to get like 50 pounds of tomatoes, two days after we did it because they're just gonna get kind of weird in my basement for a month.
Hana Francis:CJ and his group in Chicago are also meeting once a month. They started during the pandemic. So we
CJ:go monthly, started it during kind of the peak of the pandemic I graduated for from grad school for social work, and had a bunch of unemployed social workers at my disposal to help start it. The first one here was in my backyard, like socially distanced, and I used my barbecue to like heat the tortillas and I was cooking inside and running stuff back and forth to my backyard. Nice. That's pretty well. Sounds like it. Let's see, that was June 2020. We started it. It's been going roughly monthly. We just kind of pick a different weekend that works for everybody. And as of Cooper 2021 We've been in Morgan Park Presbyterian Church using their kitchen. So that's a big
Hana Francis:pool. Yeah. And do you have a lot of volunteers?
CJ:Yeah, I mean, we have probably, like 15, regular dish volunteers. And then we get a lot of like new people each week. It's harder to grow quickly, like in Eugene, we grew up really quickly because it happened every week. And it's smaller towns. So it was really easy to like, get the word out. Chicago has 9 million people in the metro area. So it's really hard to like, spread the word, especially if we're only happening once a month. Right? Yeah, it looks way different here. Yeah.
Hana Francis:If other people do want to get involved with y'all, how do they get in contact with you,
CJ:or Facebook page is probably the easiest. We always have the next event posted on the Facebook and you can message us through Facebook. That's how we connect with a lot of other organizations to
Hana Francis:one way that Chicago's food insecurities differ from Eugene and Portland is the scale of the food deserts in the city. It makes sense thing as the city is much bigger than the other two towns. But this proves a lot more difficult to physically get the burritos to people in Chicago.
CJ:Yeah. So another way Chicago is different is that it's there are there are plenty of unhoused people here. But there's a lot of food insecurity that looks that in a whole bunch of different ways, like there are food deserts, where people are housed, but like temporarily housed, maybe they're staying with people. And it's much harder to find people that need food when they're not as visibly like unhoused. Like in Eugene and Portland, you know, we just walked through downtown here. We drive all over the city. And we rely a lot on other organizations to connect us with people that need food. Wow, gotcha. So one is testimony ministry, they do a lot of work on the south side. We give out 100 Burritos at like a red line, the Metro metro train at 95th and Dan Ryan, which is the expressway and there's like 100 people that just live around there or take the train and get off and know that we're there. This amazing woman we work with knows everybody by name. And it's that is probably the most similar, you know, we're actually handing burritos to people. I do a lot of driving distribution, I'll go up to the north side. So like, just to give you an idea, Chicago is huge. So like, we feed people up in Rogers Park, which is on the very far north side. And we make the burritos on the far south side. So it's an hour and 20 minutes, like without traffic, just to get to the other side of the city. So I have gone up there before there's a few camps and a lot of people. A lot of people that are in house, like on the south side go to where there are more resources, which in Chicago tends to be on the north side. So I'll just get off on like every freeway exit under the like bridges, and there's like little camps throughout but nothing like huge and organized. Like, like in Eugene. They're very organized. camps where we do drop. So here distribution has been the hardest part.
Hana Francis:Wow, interesting. Yeah. How many burritos do you guys usually make?
CJ:About 300? We could make? I mean 2000. I mean, we have a lot of support, like with donations and people coming to chop vegetables, but it's all about distribution.
Hana Francis:Yeah, gotcha.
CJ:But it could be so much more here. And I'm excited for that networking to expand. Because I do feel like we struggle finding people sometimes, you know, so we only give out 300 Because we would struggle giving up more. But there's so much more need than that. I mean, Chicago is one of the most segregated cities due to a lot of reasons, redlining, all kinds of different things. But like,
Hana Francis:for those of you who may be unfamiliar with this term, redlining is a discriminatory practice in which services specifically banks and other lending services mark out neighborhoods with a high number of disadvantaged inhabitants to avoid lending to or serving. This leads to a lack of access of many folks who are black, indigenous or people of color, from getting housing or other services that they need. It also stops the flow of money into these neighborhoods and thus reinforces the unequal distribution of wealth. This used to be a much more literal practice, where companies would outline certain quote unquote hazardous neighborhoods and read to make sure to avoid them. This practice of lending discrimination has since been outlawed by the United States, but the practice persists. Wb e z and city Bureau In Chicago, looked at six years of lending, and found that for every $1, banks lend in mostly white areas, banks lent 12 cents in mostly black areas.
CJ:You know, there are some neighborhoods that are extremely impoverished. And you can go over like three blocks and be in a completely different neighborhoods. Yet on the south side, it's a lot further from a lot of that, which is why most people go into this city. But it is like, really, I mean, I love Chicago, but it's a very interesting place. And you can live in Chicago in a wealthy neighborhood and never even see poverty at all, if you don't leave that part of the city, where like, Eugene was so much smaller, you know, it was more accessible. But also you see poverty everywhere, because a lot of folks are unhoused. Here, if people are at house, they tend to live in shelters out of necessity, because the weather is so cold. But that's one hard thing about feeding people is a lot of shelters, don't let us feed them. Really, I don't know if it's like, they're afraid of like legal stuff, if someone were to get sick from the food that we gave or what, but there's one shelter on the west side, we go to where if we hit it, right, like 100, people will come out and get a burrito and go back in, but we can't go in. But if we hit it at the wrong time, we won't feed anyone there. So I've gone there with 50 burritos and ran out. And I've gone there with like 100 and not giving out a single one. So it's kind of just depends on what time what the weather is. And if they're feeding their I think they don't have a regular schedule, or it's different food. So yeah, it's we do a lot of driving in Chicago to give out a free dose. But that's a great thing as we started partnering with bike, like bicycle groups. So there's a Food Not Bombs group up in Rogers park that I'll just like, drop off with a guy on a bike and he'll go around all the camps. And most of our just as of like four weeks ago, or four months ago, there's a guy downtown in the central, like South Loop, Pilsen in all these different neighborhoods that does all of the distribution down there on a bike. Which is great, because a lot of a lot of the camps that do exist are like in a median in the middle of a really busy road. And like, it's much easier to reach on a bike than like turning on emergency flashers, and like pulling over and having people you know, feeling unsafe to get out of the car, because like people are whizzing around you. So I think it Yeah, the the bike groups have been one of the really great folks to partner with here.
Hana Francis:They are hoping to grow to a more sustainable stable point. But right now they're just focused on connecting with community and collaborating.
CJ:We actually have a document that has a how to make 100 Burritos thing and I think the best thing that could happen instead of having these like chapters is if everybody just went out and like did stuff like this all the time, then we wouldn't need you know, well, we would still need to organize and do things but one great thing is it's really easy with like, $50 to make 100 worried I was gonna give them to people. Very simple, but like anybody could do it.
Hana Francis:Yeah, absolutely. That's like the most amazing thing about this for me is that like, I keep hearing these people be like, yeah, it was so much easier than I thought to help other people and like just make a difference in someone else's life.
CJ:You just needed a big pot.
Hana Francis:If you would like to get involved with Burrito Brigade in Eugene, Portland or Chicago, you can visit their Facebook pages or the Eugene Brigade at burritobrigade.org You can also reach out to me and I will connect you with the right people. Links to each of these organizations are in the description of this episode on Buzzsprout, Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you'd like to listen to your podcasts. Thanks to all the folks participating in burrito brigade and contributing to others food security. And as always, thanks to Kiki Soto for their musical contributions. If you have any questions or comments, please email me at whitebirdmutualaid@gmail.com You've been listening to White Bird Mutual Aid. I'm Hana Francis.