“Having food be accessible benefits all
of us.”
This statement, seemingly simple and
inarguable, comes from Bridget Burns,
co-founder of the group UNR, or
Uprooted & Rising: Indian Territory,
and one of the leaders of a band of local
activists that set up and maintain a free,
accessible pantry and refrigerator in
Norman. Along with the owners and
staff of the Resonator art space, and with
help from a few unaffiliated volunteers,
the pantry and fridge had provided much
needed availability of fresh, worthwhile
food, as well as providing cold water and
electrolyte drinks to help protect against
the blisteringly hot summer months, all
in one easily accessible place.
But that changed at the end of July
when an archaic city ordinance was used
to push the fridge over a mile away inside
the Outreach Thrift & Donation Center.
“It’s unfortunate, but Norman has
some people that are very unkind to
unhoused people,” says Alan Hatcher, a
volunteer with UNR that has helped to
develop and maintain free fridges and
pantries in other communities around
the OKC Metro. “The beautiful thing
about the original location was the visibility. People knew where it was and it
was easy to access, and other people
could see it being used and could see how
it was necessary and important.”
That necessity and importance
has become a ballooning concern in a
time of increasing pandemic-prompted
unemployment and expiring eviction
moratoria. UNR and the Resonator team
see the fridge and pantry combination
as a small and straightforward way of
helping to address those spiraling issues
without the bureaucracy at work in
many assistance programs.
“Getting on food stamps can actually be more difficult than people
realize, and it takes a long time,” said
Rai Fordyce, another one of the fridge
volunteers with Resonator. “There’s so
much paperwork, and you have to
provide proof-of-residency, which not
everyone can do.”
In June, the city government, at the
urging of some very active and vocal
citizen groups, hit the team with potential violations of two city ordinances
designed for health and safety. The first,
Section 10-203, involved questions of
trash and sanitation.
“They eventually just kind of dropped
that one,” Hatcher said. “Before it
moved, people had started to really take
care of it and clean it.”
The second, Section 10-204, wasn’t
so easily shot down.
“It’s about having an unattended appliance outside,” explained
Hatcher. “It comes from the 40s or 50s
when they used to manufacture refrigerators that locked from the outside, and
kids could get stuck inside them.
Obviously that’s not a concern anymore.”
The city demanded that they move
the fridge to a different location where
it could be kept indoors and attended.
Outreach Thrift was happy to oblige,
but the distance from the pantry and
their available business hours were immediately recognized as problems for
the community members the project is
intended to help.
“Going from the pantry to the fridge
at Outreach can be an hour round-trip
on foot,” said Jenna Ziegler, a volunteer
that got involved with the project after
donations of her own homegrown herbs
were a hit among the fridge’s users.
She said that, from what she’s seen, the fridge and pantry are a valuable re-
source for more than just the city’s
homeless population.
“A lot of the first things that we see
go are potatoes and eggs, things that
need to be cooked pretty quickly, and
milk, which needs to be refrigerated,”
Ziegler said. “So it’s clear that a lot of the
people utilizing the fridge are people
that maybe do have homes that are
maybe struggling with food availability.”
With so many different people and
communities within Norman seemingly all relying on the fridge for food
availability, the volunteers are adamant
that it should stay in a location easily
accessible by the city’s bus routes and
walkable areas, and that it should be
accessible 24 hours a day.
“Everybody in the community thinks
that this ordinance really doesn’t apply,”
Hatcher said. “I think it’s fair to direct
some frustration toward the city. Mayor
Clark says they’re fearful of a lawsuit. I
think it’s pretty awful that you would
be willing to limit people’s access to food
just to avoid a lawsuit or to avoid upsetting some people in the city.”
“I can see this potentially affecting
the mayoral race in Norman,” added
Helen Grant, part of the Resonator
team. “Mayor Clark has already been
forced to speak about it just because
it’s started getting press and people are
bringing it up.”
There has been a small bit of movement on the city’s part. An assistant city
attorney has been in contact to discuss
drafting a new ordinance that would
make a specific exemption for community fridges like this one, with plans for
it to go before the Norman city council
early next month. While the team said
that the city attorney does seem
“genuine in his support,” they said he
would neither commit to letting them
see the draft before it goes to the council,
nor would he give them specifics on what
part of the city code might be changed.
While they wait for some kind of concrete decision, the team continues maintaining the fridge in its current location
and stocking it with donations from the
community. Monetary donations come
in through Venmo and CashApp ac-
counts that they have set up solely for
the fridge and pantry, but they also see
a remarkable amount of generosity from
the public helping to stock on their own.
“Donations range from people
growing their own food and bringing it
by to people getting from the Food Bank,
taking the things they want from their
supply, and then bringing the stuff they
don’t care for to drop it off and pay it forward,” Hatcher said.
In addition to fresh foods, water, and canned goods, the team says that they
always need things like mosquito repellant and hygiene products as well.
You can find Venmo and CashApp
information for donations on Facebook
and Instagram at UNR_
ResonatorFridge, and Norman residents
can call or message Mayor Clark’s office
and the City Council to voice support
for the project.
For more information about ResonatorFridge, visit www.facebook.com/resonatorfridgeOK.
This article appears in All for one, one for all.