Hundreds of hungry people waited outside the Chelsea Collaborative last Thursday evening.
They had started waiting in line at 1:30 p.m. for a 5 p.m. start – just to get one box of food to take home.
people waiting for a box of food snake through Broadway, Third Street, Chestnut Street, and into the Cherry Street alley.
Inside, scores of volunteers had been scurrying about the former office – now turned food distribution center – packing boxes and making bags of fruit and setting up the human conveyer belt system that the organization has perfected over the past six weeks of COVID-19 life.
But first, before the hit the ‘Go’ button, they stopped.
“We have to pray first,” said Martitia, a long-time staffer there.
Gathering around the table of food in boxes, about 30 volunteers reached out to God to end this madness, to stop this pandemic, to ease the suffering outside their doors twice – sometimes three – times a week.
Speaking in Spanish, they lifted up a prayer for about two minutes.
Then they moved fast until there was no food left to give.
“We cry, we prepare and we run, then we do it all over again,” said Collaborative Director Gladys Vega, who had been at the hospital last Thursday after severely slicing her wrist on a food pallet. “We don’t have time to deal with this emotionally. We run and get the food, we deliver the food and we cry with the people. We just don’t have time to process things. It hasn’t been easy at all.”
The Collaborative closed up on March 20 due to the Pandemic, and soon enough they began delivering food to needy families door to door. Eight weeks ago, the Record spoke with Vega, who was using her in-laws’ SUV to get food and then to deliver it to people who were calling the Collaborative to say they had no food and were hungry. At the time, she suspected the worst might come.
Just a few days later, the worst came for a visit and it hasn’t left Chelsea yet.
They are one of several organizations in the city that is trying to fill the void for nearly and estimated 20,000 families who do not have enough food to feed themselves. Beyond the Collaborative, there has been a major effort by the National Guard and the City of Chelsea and the Salvation Army – to name but a few.
But the Collaborative has drawn major crowds at its operations Tuesday and Thursday as it is one of the most trusted faces in Chelsea – both before the pandemic and now, during it – for those in the Spanish-speaking immigrant community. The effort began at Councilor Roy Avellaneda’s Pan Y Café Coffee Shop at first, but after a few freezers were procured for the Collaborative, the effort moved downtown.
Last Thursday, Tenaira Garcia – Vega’s niece – was preparing to get 700 boxes of food out the door at 5 p.m. It was just 2 p.m., but the work was already frantic. Being in charge of feeding hundreds wasn’t exactly what Garcia – whose sister is School Committeewoman Kelly Garcia – planned for when moving to Chelsea in January after the earthquakes in Puerto Rico.
“I lived in Puerto Rico and had a great business going there – a coffee shop where I grew the food,” she said. “I moved here after the earthquake in January so that my kids could go to school in Chelsea. Then COVID-19 happened. My aunt asked me if I would help out and before I knew it I was in charge of the food.”
In the back alley, volunteer Reymer Pineda was hard at work loading up the car of a volunteer delivery driver. He had been a construction worker with Local 733, but the job was shut down and he was sent home. Having known Vega for some time, he and his wife decided to help out.
“Gladys called for help and we came right away,” he said. “I’ve lived here seven years and I’ve never seen this before. It does surprise me. We are living in the best country in the whole world and all these people still need food. I don’t know what to say. We just keep on working.”
Reymer was loading a box that was to go to a woman at a building in Chelsea. She had been delivered one before, but someone had kept stealing it before she could come out and get it. On that day, they were going to make sure she came out before they left.
“Not this time,” said Garcia.
The vegetables and fruits are stacked up six feet or more in the back room of the Collaborative early in the day. Behind boxes of potatoes and kiwi fruit are posters on the walls about rent control, workers’ rights and youth empowerment – a reminder of the organizational goals the Collaborative focused on just two months ago.
By the end of the day, most of the endless boxes of fruits and vegetables will be gone – clearing out the floor for the next time.
“I feel so sorry for so many people,” said long-time Collaborative member Patricia Ebanks. “I was talking with a woman from Guatemala last week. She just got to Chelsea not too long ago, but her husband died of COVID three weeks ago. She had three kids and lost her husband. It’s very sad what people are going through.”
As she told that story, Councilor Avellaneda came in with a large cart full of onions and bananas. They came from the New England Produce Center, where President Peter D’Arrigo has been very generous in giving whatever they can.
“He arranged for me to go to all the different vendors,” said Avellaneda. “He directs me to the terminals and I can get whatever they have that day. Every day it’s different. It could be apples one day and something else the next.”
Avellaneda started with the back of his SUV going to the Center, then moved up to a small box truck he had for his coffee shop. Now he has rented a large truck to do the runs to the Center and to bring back all that he can.
Just as Avellaneda left, a woman in a Browne Middle School sweater ran up to ask about a delivery she was making.
“Our union helped organize the teachers to help out by driving,” said the woman, Meghan McCormick – a middle school teacher at the Browne. “I miss my students and it’s a good way to feel connected to them and to help their families, even if I don’t get to see them.”
After a short rally in what was the conference room – a room where only two years ago Senator Ed Markey gave a press conference on the Federal Budget shortfalls – there is the prayer and then action.
In constant motion, volunteers mark the hands of those in line – who have gathered down Broadway, across Third Street, down Chestnut Street and snaking up and down the alley of Cherry Street. It’s an endless amount of people.
One by one, they approach a table at the front door of the Collaborative, a box is pulled across the table, bananas are put on top, and then it is handed off to someone in line.
There’s a lot of talking, fast movements and directions and instructions.
Many people return to say “Gracias.”
It is like nothing anyone in Chelsea still alive can ever remember.
No one.