When the only grocery store and pharmacy in Metcalfe Park shut its doors this summer, we weren’t surprised, but we were devastated. The closure of the Pick ’n Save at 35th and North didn’t just end access to fresh food and medicine for thousands of residents. It was another blow in a long pattern of systemic neglect that treats poor Black neighborhoods as disposable.Metcalfe Park is 87% Black. The median household income is $26,565 a year. Nearly half of residents don’t have a car, and more than half rely on SNAP benefits to feed their families. Yet in July, our last grocery store closed. And now, as if to deepen the wound, federal SNAP benefits have been halted, then released, leaving even less food on the table while pushing our neighbors into impossible choices between eating, paying rent, or keeping the lights on.
For years, we’ve been sounding the alarm about these structural crises: food apartheid, environmental racism, housing disinvestment, and a local economy that extracts from us while rarely reinvesting. When we said, “We are in a food desert,” policymakers nodded. When we said, “This is food apartheid,” some hesitated, because naming racism as the root means someone must be accountable.
Now, Milwaukee County has made history as the first in the nation to declare food apartheid a public health emergency. Alongside that declaration, a resolution allocating $150,000 for food resource aid passed. It’s a critical step forward but it’s not a fix. It will take sustained investment, not just one-time relief, to undo decades of structural harm.Metcalfe Park Community Bridges and the Food Justice Collective (Working Groups) have been leading this work long before resolutions made headlines. Since 2020, we’ve distributed tens of thousands of grocery and care packages, launched a Mutual Aid Shed Network where neighbors share food and hygiene supplies freely, and are now building a Community-Powered Fridge Network across the city. We’re also opening a targeted People’s Pantry designed to meet residents where they are. But mutual aid should never have to fill the gaps left by broken systems. It’s what keeps us alive while we work to transform those systems.
Opinion: There is a quiet war on the poor in America. SNAP reflects fairness, compassion.
Long-term solution: Create community-owned co-op grocery store
We are also advancing long-term solutions rooted in self-determination: the creation of community-owned cooperative grocery stores that keep wealth circulating in our neighborhoods and provide dignified work, healthy food, and ownership for residents who have been left out of every so-called “revitalization” plan. We’re reclaiming and restoring homes, turning vacant lots into community farms, and organizing alongside neighbors to ensure policies serve people rather than profit margins.
The struggle for food justice is not just about groceries, it’s about power: who has it, who is denied it, and what happens when we build it ourselves. When poor Black communities sound the alarm, we’re not only warning of our own crises we’re sounding a signal for everyone else. Because when the systems fail us, they will eventually fail you too.This moment calls for courage, creativity, and collective action. It demands listening to those most impacted and resourcing them to lead. It means rejecting charity models that treat poverty like a moral failure and replacing them with justice models that build ownership, equity, and healing.
Everyone is needed to step up and help
No cavalry is coming, so we build, we organize, we feed each other. But we need everyone, individuals, organizations, and elected officials to step up, show up, and align their values with action.
Here’s how you can join us:
-
Volunteer your time and skills. Join a Food Justice Collective working group: policy and zoning, co-op grocery development, mutual aid, or political struggle. We meet monthly, virtually or in person. Sign up at bit.ly/foodjusticecollective or volunteer at our food distribution events. Join a group or volunteer.
-
Advocate for policy change. Contact your state, county, and city representatives to demand sustained funding for food sovereignty, not just emergency relief. Urge them to invest in community-owned grocery infrastructure and anti-displacement housing policies.
-
Shop and share locally. Support community growers, local farmers, mutual aid networks, and small food businesses. Share resources, buy local produce, and help circulate dollars in our neighborhood economy. Real food justice begins with community-controlled markets.
-
Tell the story and spread the truth. Use your voice, your platform, and your privilege to uplift the truth: food apartheid is not an accident, it’s systemic injustice made visible. Follow and amplify the work of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges on social media (Instagram. Facebook) to expand our reach and impact.
Letters: A traffic-snarled I-94 sure beats a walkable Milwaukee with a free streetcar
The truth is, we can’t afford to look away, not when children are hungry, elders are rationing medication, and mothers are taking two buses just to buy groceries. The systems that abandon poor Black communities today are testing grounds for broader dispossession tomorrow.So when we sound the alarm, don’t just listen. Move. Act as if everyone else is next, because history shows us, they will be.
Melody McCurtis is deputy director and lead organizer of Metcalfe Park Community Bridges.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: SNAP delay, store closure devastate Milwaukee community | Opinion
