Starving For Dignity

Social supermarkets, soft capitalism and sovereignty

We arrived for our 3pm appointment and rang the doorbell

I thought I knew what a social supermarket looked like but my only reference point was hearing about how they were struggling to keep up with the demand.

The company my partner works for volunteer at this social supermarket for their end of year break up and in exchange they get referrals during the year for staff to use the service. So we thought why not, we could possibly get some pantry fillers.

If I'm honest, I was expecting something closer to the movie The Platform. Where the people at the bottom accepted whatever everyone else had left behind to survive.

I expected it to be crowded. Picked over. Leftovers from society.

The door opened and a woman greeted us by name.

She smiled, welcomed us in, explained how everything worked, we went on a tour around this wonderland and grabbed our trolley.

We were the only people in this place. Just us and the lady that welcomed us.

This was bougie

The place was spotless. Peaceful. Organised.

There wasn't that frantic supermarket energy. No fluorescent-light rage. No kids screaming. No one taking up the aisle talking about what Lucy was doing this weekend.

It was just us.

There was a meat section, veggies and fruit, personal care, baby items, chilled goods and the things that filled the pantry

And then there were the fridge doors.

I have to talk about these doors because they were self-opening doors. And it deserves its own paragraph. They just flapped open when you approached them! To me it was magic I have never felt more important while selecting carrots.

I was wandering around with my mouth open like one of those sideshow clown heads you throw balls into.

Dammit.

I found myself looking at the sponsorship wall.

The logos were familiar.

Over the years I'd sat across bargaining tables from some of those businesses. I'd listened to explanations about why there wasn't enough money. Why wage increases weren't possible. Why the business couldn't afford more.

The same employers offered their workers twenty-five cents an hour and said they weren't budging.

Twenty-five cents.

About eight dollars a week after tax.

Not even enough to buy a block of butter.

And it's unsettling when the people filling the shelves had told me in meetings they couldn't even afford to shop in the supermarket they worked for.

To be honest I was a bit bummed out by that wall. As a union organiser I fought so for people to live with dignity. I pushed back hard enough that eventually they threatened to involve their legal team. That's how seriously I took it, and how seriously they took being challenged.

Communities and charities need support. This supermarket needs and deserves support.

Maybe a business can genuinely support its community and still fall short when it comes to the people who create its profits.

I don't know.

I just know that standing in a place built around dignity, and found myself wishing for that dignity to travel a little further.

I started thinking about how many people using services like this had already been at work that morning.

How many were doing everything society asked of them.

One of the things that job gave me was a front-row seat to people's lives.

The ordinary conversations that happen when people trust you enough to tell you what's really going on.

I was talking to Jo. He used to be a chef before this job at the hardware store. He told me it's just too hard at the moment, he goes home and makes his kids dinner while he went without, or he has what they didn't. As long as they were fed he was happy. At times he was starving.

It wasn't that he wasn't working. It wasn't that he wasn't trying.

I remember feeling sick. Not because it was shocking, but because it wasn't. That was the problem.

He was a father standing in the paint aisle in a hardware store.

Supermarket workers told me theft had changed over the years.

Less alcohol. Less expensive beauty products

More nappies.

More essentials.

These stories never make the news. But they exist.

There were times in my life when I was so hungry I'd walk around the neighbourhood picking fruit off people's trees.

I'd knocked on a door and asked if I could take a bag of fruit. Times where making something out of almost nothing wasn't a creative challenge.It was simply that I needed to eat.

Give me half an onion, some flour, a random tin of whatever was in the back of the pantry and I'll make something to eat.

It's not a superpower.

It's a learned skill.

Maybe that's why I was so impressed by the social supermarket.

When I looked around, I didn't see scarcity. I saw possibility.

I was thinking about what it would look like if people had enough before they ever needed it.

I've had neighbours share produce, baking and meals.

Another, who let us pick feijoas and we'd take over jam we'd made in return.

Every time it happened, it just felt so nourishing.

Maybe that's why I keep coming back to the same dream of having a piece of land.

I've always dreamt of it, and growing up on the land where food was all around us.

I just want some fruit trees. Vegetables. Maybe a couple of chickens. Some flowers.

Not because I want to become self-sufficient in some rugged survivalist sense.

But because people shouldn't have to go without.

I don't want abundance to be measured by what we can sell, keep or own. But by what we can share.

For me to say “hold on, let's grab some food for you to take home. Oooooo let me get my secateurs and cut some flowers for you too”

There was a time when food came from somewhere you knew.

People fished.

People hunted.

People harvested.

People understood the seasons because they determined what ended up eating that day.

Maybe that's why I love seeing Alfie disappear and come back eating an apple straight from the tree.

Why I get excited when someone sends us home with produce, jams and chutneys.

Why catching fish for dinner feels like a gift.

Why parcels of seafood gifted because they said "We've got heaps."

I don't know.

Maybe part of me still recognises something old. Something ancient.

To have enough. And enough to share.

For people to drive away with a basket of food and flowers on their passenger side seat

Because if dignity depends entirely on money, then too many people are only one missed pay packet away from losing it.

And no one should have to go hungry.

No one should have to wonder how they'll feed their children.

And certainly, no one should be starved of dignity.