Our History
In March 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across NYC, people were sick and dying, facing unprecedented unemployment, and many of our neighbors weren't able to qualify for even basic government benefits like unemployment and food stamps. We looked around and saw countless neighbors who were falling through the cracks in a time when our safety net was needed the most. At that moment, hundreds of Astorians looked at what was happening and said - “how can I help?”
The Astoria Mutual Aid Network started as a way for people to help their more vulnerable neighbors during the early days of the pandemic. We sewed masks and wiped down groceries with sanitizing wipes. We called our elderly neighbors and put up flyers to spread awareness, and we started doing errands for people who were the most at risk of COVID. |
As the city started to shut down, the economic damage started to compound with the sickness. Many Astorians were already rent-burdened and struggling to afford basic necessities, but loss of income led to even more people unable to afford their needs.
The Astoria Food Pantry was created by 3 people who handed out food from the back of a car, outside of one of the city's public school meal sites, because they knew that people would need more than school lunches to get through this crisis. Neighbors who could dropped off food, even in a time when a trip to the grocery store could mean exposure to an unknown deadly virus. At one point some bread "fell off the back of a truck" when a delivery driver saw our pop up pantry. |
A couple months later, we were gifted a free storefront on Steinway St and 28th Ave.
We grew a lot in that borrowed space, getting fridges and furniture and adding people and food until we had a team of 10+ regular volunteers distributing 200+ bags of groceries and meals every week. In this location, Astoria Food Pantry and Astoria Mutual Aid merged many of our operations. We also used the space to open the Free Store and the Rolling Library, and shared the space with the Connected Chef, the People’s Bodega, Astoria Tenant Union, and DSA. |
In January of 2021, we moved into our own space at 25-82 Steinway Street, continuing to provide a venue for the community to take care of each other through direct aid, political organizing, and community building. We've been providing food, clothes, books, and a community space ever since.
We started this project in Astoria because this is our home, and living here we saw the need around us. Astoria had food insecurity even before COVID-19, and much of it is related to other issues: gentrification that has pushed rents up, the defunding of NYCHA and the negligence in upkeep of its buildings, lack of protections and unions for workers, negative health effects from our power plants and highways, violence from the police, and more. We work to change these things, so that when the next crisis comes, people won’t be left behind again. |