Spokane Community Against Racism Provides "Burritos for the People"

BY MORGAN MARIE

Every Sunday at 9am outside of the Main Market Co-Op, you can find volunteers with Spokane Community Against Racism distributing free coffee and breakfast burritos provided by local restaurants Boots and Ruins to anyone looking for a warm breakfast as a way to foster community and fight hunger.

One would be hard pressed to find a person that didn’t support free burritos. Look at that thing! The flavorful creation pictured here is made with fresh ingredients from the kitchens of a local favorite, Ruins. It isn’t served on a plate inside the restaurant though. Instead, it is wrapped in an envelope of love and foil to be served on the streets of downtown Spokane.

200 burritos are pulled on two carts that journey from Main Street to cover a populated stretch of streets to people that aren’t typically met with delivery. “We meet people down on their luck and they are so thankful for a warm burrito,” a volunteer says.

Within thirty minutes those burritos are gone and the cart returns to its tent on Main where another forty burritos are given out with a warm cup of coffee or hot chocolate. “We wish we could give out hundreds more, and we could if we had more volunteers and funding,” another volunteer adds. Connecting with the community and raising awareness of food insecurity is why these volunteers show up every Sunday morning.

Serving a Local Mission

“You don’t have to tell people that they should treat each other better when you are leading by example and doing that,” Spokane Community Against Racism (SCAR) steering committee Scott Mueller says. That is the vision coming to life on Sunday mornings from 9-10am at Main and Browne. “One of the more radical things you can do is feed people for free,” Mueller adds.

Justice Forral leads the charge from a place of deep empathy as he grew up food insecure. “My mom was a lifelong renter and statistically 92% of people stay in the same economic class as their parents,” Forral says. “This program is a beacon for me in so many ways,” he adds. “When you don’t have community, resources or the ability to talk to people is when you get the most desperate,” Forral recalls.

Leading by experience is a powerful position as he is able to relate to anyone that comes to enjoy a free burrito. He says “it feels like we are doing the impossible but we can do this! We can feed each other, we can build community around each other and not make it about cost.”

Bringing Together the Community

Although this program benefits many low-income members of our community, it doesn’t matter what your economic status is. “It’s kind of cool that you'll see people who aren't food insecure, but they catch the vibe and head out to help us clean downtown,” Mueller adds, “We get everybody from houseless folks to Land Rovers pulling boats pull up” and it’s all the same to SCAR.

One man who asked to remain anonymous shared his story as we ate our burritos together. “I live south of here on the streets, under the brown bridge,” he said as he took another bite of the warm burrito. “It’s the best food you can get around here at no charge,” he adds.

Free burritos on Sunday mornings is the public-facing manifestation of the tireless work behind-the-scenes at SCAR. When people come to enjoy a burrito and leave with a full stomach, the side benefit is often that they leave knowing what SCAR does in our community.

If one story can embody SCAR’s mission, it is this–one Sunday morning when someone came to return a burrito and said “I can’t eat this, I am racist” to which the SCAR team replied, “even racists need to eat.”

As of mid-January 2022, SCAR has delivered over 6500 burritos to the people of Downtown Spokane.

For more information or to volunteer, donate, or sponsor head to www.scarspokane.org.

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