by Sophia Lehmann, CNS Community Action Working Group member
With the termination of SNAP benefits, the already troubling number of people in the Berkeley community suffering from hunger and food insecurity will dramatically increase. The McGee Avenue Baptist Church, located a mile from Netivot Shalom, has been providing cooked meals to those in need for over forty years. Its sister organization, the Center for Food, Faith, and Justice [CFFJ], both grows produce to supply these meals and broadens the Church’s commitment by tackling the underlying causes that contribute to widespread hunger by building community, teaching job skills, and modeling racial justice and environmental sustainability. That’s why one of their mottos is Harvesting Justice.
We are happy that CFFJ considers CNS one of their community partners. Along with about fifty other fans of CFFJ, Esther Brass-Chorin and I represented CNS at a recent celebratory tenth anniversary lunch. Part of CFFJ’s Harvest Festival, the lunch featured inspiring talks by Reverend Dr. Michael Smith, founder of CFFJ and pastor of the McGee Avenue Baptist Church, and Elaine Smith, Executive Director of Farms to Grow, whose mission is to connect Black farmers in California – a minority whose numbers are dwindling – with markets for their produce. Pastor Smith, a lifelong champion of social justice, recently completed his doctorate, writing a dissertation focused on Black Earth Theology and Greening the Church.
This linking of racial justice and environmentalism underscored all the talks at the lunch, which brought together a broad range of partners and admirers of Rev. Dr. Smith’s work and CFFJ, including rabbis and members of Berkeley’s three synagogues. I was impressed by the range of organizations represented, from Live Free, which is devoted to fostering alternatives to violence in the Black community, to Stop Waste, which works to minimize food waste in Berkeley and contributes food to the meals produced by the McGee Ave Baptist Church.
Their work will be even more crucial as the crisis of food precarity increases. CNS’s Community Action Working Group has been cultivating a relationship with the McGee Ave Baptist Church and CFFJ. In addition to soliciting donations to help fund their important work, we are now beginning to volunteer, helping sort food deliveries at the church’s food program as they work to increase the number of weekly cooked meals they provide.
If you’d like to help CFFJ and the McGee Ave Baptist Church’s Food Program, please go to the CNS website, and choose CNS’ new Housing and Food Security Community Action Fund from the dropdown menu.