During the pandemic, East Brooklyn experienced higher death rates than NYC’s average toll. In Ocean Hill and Brownsville, nearly half of the community experience hunger due to lack of income, and East New York is one of the biggest food swamps in NYC. This lack of access to healthy food stands in direct correlation to the community’s death toll, and East Brooklyn Mutual Aid (EBMA) is on a mission to transform the food landscape of East Brooklyn to serve its people.
EBMA was organized to support those affected by COVID-19, particularly immunocompromised and unemployed people, by providing free groceries and social support, and we have expanded to strengthen movements for food sovereignty and community-reliance through direct community organizing.
EBMA's longest running program is Black Radish in which we source low-cost groceries from predominantly Black distributors and farmers and deliver them directly to the doors of hungry New Yorkers. We have successfully distributed more than one million pounds of food to over 100,000 residents throughout Brooklyn’s eastern neighborhoods, prioritizing elderly people, disabled folks, and low-income families. For those that need support with meal preparation, EBMA partners with Collective Fare, a Black-owned chef-collaborative, to ensure community members can receive culturally relevant and nutritious meals.
What is Mutual Aid?
It’s about living in solidarity with one another,
about exchanging resources to best support the
community at large. People give what they can and
take what they need
– all without the expectation of receiving something in return.
