A Black elder stood in her doorway, a place the Sun Fresh closure on 31st & Prospect had rendered a boundary between her and dignity, and held the weight of what our people have always known: that when the state abandons you, you must build your own infrastructure.
“We are so deeply grateful for y’all,” she told us yesterday as we made our first delivery, her voice carrying the particular exhaustion of someone who has been failed by every institution designed to catch her. “We’re struggling real bad right now. Our SNAP is going to be cut and we just don’t know what we’re going to do. God bless y’all.”
This was October 28, 2025. The Hamer Free Food Program was conducting its second distribution to Black families within a one-mile radius of 31st and Prospect, the same stretch of geography that the capitalist food system had already written off as unprofitable, unworthy, disposable. The same corner where the last full-service grocery store for miles had shuttered its doors mere months ago, leaving thousands of people without accessible fresh food. The same neighborhood where, come November 1st, the federal government will yank SNAP benefits from over 650,000 Missourians, a deliberate choice, wrapped in the language of “shutdown,” but what it really is: starvation as policy.
But when we spoke with her she wasn’t thinking about policy yesterday. She was thinking about the next month. About her grandbaby’s nutrition. About survival in a nation that has made survival itself radical.
The Prophecy of Black Food Justice Leaders
The fact of the matter is: Black farmers, Black organizers, and everyday Black folks saw this coming for months.…