“Our work is more prevalent in the summertime,” Butler says. “A lot of people were interested, and we would get a lot of people that would come off the bus [as we were] stationed outside.”
The giveaways are part of the Corner Store Campaign, a longstanding initiative organized by the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), and in the midst of a global pandemic, organizers say neighborhoods need access to fresh food more than ever before.
“This issue [of food insecurity] affects us all as most people tend to live near a corner store,” Butler says. “People should want to have access to fresh fruit and vegetables, particularly if they live in a food desert. So we should want to have less loitering and have more healthy alternatives in our corner stores.”