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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now to your calls on who history should remember is really having helped out your community during the pandemic of 2020. Name us a person or a group whose name belongs in a time capsule. We're dreaming about creating, thanking, builders of community well-being during this stressful time 646-435-7280, and Amanda in Bernardsville, you're on WNYC. Hey Amanda, thanks for calling in.

Amanda: Hey there. Thank you very much for taking my call. I would have to say our local food pantries have been tremendous. Daily, if not every week, they've organized gathering foods for people that simply can't work or afford to go to the grocery store during this time. I live right on a hill where we have a church at the bottom, and one of the food pantries has organized their setups. They have bilingual signs in both English and Spanish. It warms my heart and our children's hearts when we walk by and we see people greeting people with masks on, you can tell they're smiling through their eyes, handing out food. It really represents the community coming together during a really difficult time.

Brian: You're seeing different kinds of people there than before?

Amanda: Yes, much more diverse. We don't live in a typically diverse community although we do have a high Latinx population, but I would say the people that are organizing and benefiting from the organization are much more diverse than what I've typically seen.

Brian: Amanda, thank you so much for shouting out your local food pantry. Katesh in Stanford you're on WNYC. Hey, Katesh?

Katesh: For taking my call. I recently moved to Stanford, but before that, I was in Brooklyn, and I was attending BMCC which is a community college based in lower Manhattan. Their administration has been making really great strides and connecting with students during the pandemic to make sure that they provide them with resources so that they can focus on their studies. In addition to that, they're also creating discursive spaces so that students can learn about these economic issues and the ramifications of COVID and beyond and how we might create a better space moving forward.

Then in addition, a friendly colleague, Solange Burnett, she's been out in the field taking care of and speaking for equal civil rights and advocating for mental health.

Brian: Katesh, thank you so much, great shout out for the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Martha in Mountainside you're on WNYC. Hey, Martha.

Martha: Hey and thank you very much for this opportunity. I'd like to give a shout out for Kim Moriak who is our senior citizens coordinator at the very beginning of the pandemic. She had everyone all the seniors contacted and teamed up with younger families who could do our grocery shopping. Then she proceeded to team up with restaurants. Three times a week we can get restaurant meals delivered to our door. The maximum price is $10. We have the option of opting in or opting out, and this has been going on for the entire time. Also, there's a team of volunteers who deliver the food. It's unbelievable what she's done. We literally wouldn't have to leave our house if we didn't have to.

Brian: Wonderful Martha, thank you so much for that shout out. Listeners, if you're just joining us, it's a call in on who history should remember as really having contributed to community well-being in your community during this difficult year of 2020, 646-435-7280, or I neglected to mention before, you can tweet that shout out. We'll watch our Twitter go by. Tweet who should be in this time capsule. We're dreaming about creating and thanking builders of community well-being this year, tweet at Brian Lehrer.

Christine on the lower East side, you're on WNYC. Hey, Christine.

Christine: Hi. Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for the opportunity to come on and talk about the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side. Right as the pandemic began, they began to mobilize volunteers and repurpose staff to provide a food pantry delivery service which serves now over 400 families on the Lower East Side including NYCHA residents. They also provide cooked senior meals twice a week from their senior services kitchen to former clients who now can't come in person, but to other seniors, I've also heard about that. We also had cash grants early on in partnership with Robin Hood Foundation for undocumented workers, and smaller grants for people to help them pay their Con Ed bills and whatnot. Just a valiant effort overall on the Lower East Side.

Brian: Christine, great. Thank you so much for shouting out the Henry Street Settlement. Interesting, sometimes it's new groups, sometimes it's names we know like Borough of Manhattan Community College and Henry Street Settlement stepping up in new ways for new times. Here's one on Twitter Lynn Spock Tweets Commonpoint, particularly Sam Field Y in Little Neck, has helped me throughout this time. They call to check up and see how you're doing. If you ned anything meals, Zoom activities, to talk to someone, and child care for health workers and first responders, kindness. Shouting out the group Commonpoint in Little Neck in Queens. How about Carmen in the Bronx, Carmen you're on WNYC. Hi.

Carmen: Hi, good morning Brian. Thank you so much for having me in program. I listen every day.

Brian: Thank you.

Carmen: You're talking about a name that should be put in a time capsule, and there's a good neighbor on [unintelligible 00:06:37] Avenue in the Bronx, Pastor Blackstone Johnson did a phenomenal job in helping the community in providing boxes and food during the COVID period up until today. There you go. Thank you.

Brian: There it goes, Carmen thank you to call us again. Leticia in Corona Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Leticia.

Leticia: Hey my name is Leticia, thank you so much for having me. I was calling to shout out the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center. My mom is a street vendor on Roosevelt Avenue in Corona in Queens, and she's undocumented. She all of the vendors in the neighborhood, honestly, they didn't get any support from anybody except from the Street Vendor Project because they started a GoFundMe, and they helped her with some emergency income, they helped her apply for some grants because she couldn't get anything from the city or from the federal loans because of her immigration status. They hired her to make meals, to do food distribution in the neighborhood with Senator Ramos. That was the first income she'd gotten in almost four months when she did it. I just wanted to shout them out for stepping up and making sure that our family wasn't alone through all of this, and for all of the street vendors who've been really struggling.

Brian: May I ask how much things are back to normal for your mom in particular? Are people back out and shopping or buying from the street vendors where your mom sells like they were before?

Leticia: It's not the same. I mean it's not just the vendors, it's our neighbors who haven't been able to get any support from the city, from the state, from the federal government, so nobody has any money to spend. Our business it's really been down still. On top of that, we still have to pay like $20,000 every two years to pay for our permit to rent it because we can't get one.

Brian: Leticia, thank you so much for your call, good luck to you and your mom and everybody.

Leticia: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for having us.

Brian: Biba in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Biba?

Biba: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. This goes back to May 6th when I read an article in the Washington Post called New York's patron saint of PPE went $600,000 in debt to outfit medical workers. I would like to shout out to Rhonda Roland Shearer, this article is about her. She went $600,000 in debt, and it's amazing how much she has done even during 911, and then supplying PPE gears during the pandemic to the nurses and caregivers in the hospitals. She's a 65-year-old sculptor whose late husband was an evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould.

I saved this article and I posted on my Facebook page that New York city is home to several billionaires and millionaires. Why does this lady have to be in debt? Those very rich people, why aren't they contributing? It really struck me, so I went back to my Facebook page and I said, "I have to call in and give a shout out to her." Thank you, Brian.

Brian: Thank you so much. What a thing to be remembered as in a time capsule or anywhere else, the patron saint of PPE in the year 2020. Christopher in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Christopher.

Christopher: Hey, Brian. How are you? Thanks for letting me in. Listen, I wanted to shout out Restorative [unintelligible 00:10:31] Healing Circles of Brooklyn. We have a bi-weekly meeting that we have with men of color, supporting on those multiple stressors of the racial justice crisis, the COVID crisis, and just helping Black men to be better supports and better members of the community. We meet bi-monthly. We provide just across Brooklyn, and we're building it across the country as well. These are restorative healing circles, so we deal with everything from the mind, the body, and the spirit, around what it means to be men of color at this time of lots of stress and struggle.

Host: You're going to get our last word on the show and our last 15 seconds. What's new this year compared to how you were doing it before in a soundbite?

Christopher: What's new this year is that the impending stress of the racial crisis, the racial justice crisis, is not new. The racial justice crisis is an old hat that's being re-worn again. This has brought an increased pressure into the neighborhoods and into our families and a lot of worry, a lot of fear.

Host: Christopher, thank you so much. Thanks to all of you who called in on who history should remember as really having helped out your community to have some amount of community well-being, some additional community well-being during this stressful year of 2020 on whatever level. Thank you for so many wonderful calls. We will do more of these.

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