(Image: CHS)
There is something new below the 250-foot-tall bell tower of Capitol Hill’s St. Joseph Parish. Like most things involving mutual aid in Seattle, it is a work in progress.
Last week, the church’s Faith Justice Commission installed a surprising addition to the parish’s front lawn along 19th Ave E. The new “community fridge” is hoped to provide healthy snacks, quick meals, and produce to those who need it, the group’s Mark Petterson, director of Communications and Justice with the parish, tells CHS.
The refrigerator as it is now has a simple shelter built to protect it from the weather and the electricity is handled by a long extension cord. For now, temporary boards provide a walkway to protect the lawn.
Petterson said the plan is to do more to square up the installation including giving the shelter a community paint job and building a more permanent walkway. The group of parishioners is also sorting out how best to stock the fridge and keep it clean.
The project is the latest for the Faith Justice group that has been making the St. Joe’s lawn a showcase of sorts for its social justice and mutual aid work. In 2021, CHS visited the Capitol Hill COVID Remembrance Project installed at St. Joseph’s to honor the lives of those lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Petterson said the plan is for the community refrigerator to become a regular part of the parish campus.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍
Terrible idea. If they’re to going to assist those who need food do it through a concerted, church centered effort to address their needs in full. Reach out to struggling individuals through already existing mutual aid efforts and make the availability of free food known. But do it in a way that brings those individuals into contact with someone at the Parish who can offer assistance beyond just a few apples. Dropping a fridge on the front lawn looks, and is, half baked.
You seem to expect as much from a local church as you do a local government. Neither can complete with the crushing weight of industrial consumer capitalism. But seriously, who keeps apples in the fridge?
Half baked ideas are better than no ideas. “Perfect is the enemy of good”. Glad to see people taking the initiative to help!
Often the best solutions for issues like this involve action on many levels; big and small; organizations and individuals. A free food pantry/fridge on any and every front lawn or neighborhood is helpful, not harmful. So many people are struggling profoundly in so many ways and the more options to help, the better, in my opinion.
You seem to have a lot of problems and anger, staying off local (or other) news may be helpful for your own mental health being.
Nope. Not angry. Just think this approach is performative, not substantive, and wastes making the church and it’s extremely resourced parish community the center of solutions in this realm.
Hi Glenn, just curious to hear what sort of solutions you are bringing to the table? You seem really good at shutting others ideas down, but we’re at a point where we need “yes, and” solutions and as many lifelines as possible. This isn’t the ideal solution in my mind, but might make people more likely to engage with folks at the church. Would love to hear some of your fully baked ideas here!
Matt. I’m disappointed. No shrugging shoulders emoji.
I was just waiting for your unproductive comment 🤷🏻♂️
I agree with Glenn. This is just another example of Seattle virtue-signalling, with little if any effect on the problem. What’s wrong with using local food banks?
Having grown up where there was food insecurity, I feel that it might be the best approach, but I don’t consider it “half bake.” I would suggest giving to the St. Mary’s food bank or your local food back to help address the hunger crisis.
I’ll give it a week before it is stolen or broken or both.
Is that one week from now? Still up and running just fine. Shows what you know. This is such a good thing and it’s no surprise people are attacking it already.
It just might happen – maybe it will join the missing Coca Cola machine that was on John St.
This is really a good idea, I’m very happy about it!