The Tops Markets on Jefferson Avenue remains closed as the company – and the community – continue to grapple with the pain of last weekend’s mass shooting. While the community has rallied to provide food and other donations in the interim, the shutdown shines a light on the challenge to acquire healthy food in many East Side neighborhoods.
Staff and volunteers from World Central Kitchen were distributing meals to people Wednesday outside the Frank E. Merriweather, Jr. Public Library in the Jefferson-Utica neighborhood. Among their partners were players from the Buffalo Bills, Buffalo Sabres, Buffalo Bandits and other personnel from Pegula Sports and Entertainment, owners of the professional football, hockey and indoor lacrosse franchises.
“When our community’s affected, it's important that we step up, and we're all one community,” said Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott. “When you affect one of us, you affect all of us. And it's time this stuff like this stops, that it comes to an end. So we're just trying to do our part and affecting our community for the better.”
Across the street from the library in a parking, over the next few Wednesdays is the planned Buffalo Community Peace Market, where food, products and services will be provided. Numerous partnerships and volunteer projects have emerged to help the neighborhood address food needs, while Tops remains closed indefinitely following last weekend’s killings on the property.
It’s the only supermarket in that neighborhood and the only supermarket for many miles around. Much of Buffalo’s East Side is considered a “food desert,” with a lack of healthy food options available for quick access.
“We're stepping in and stepping up for our community. And we want to make sure that people can eat and they have more than just food, though, because they need diapers, they need Enfamil (baby formula),” said Alexander Wright, general manager and co-founder of the African Heritage Food Co-Op. “We have people who need pharmacies and medicine and stuff. This was a big hit to the community, because there's nothing else.”
Wright’s co-op is working to fill many of the gaps and are seeking to expand their reach, including construction of a new market at Carlton and Locust Streets in Buffalo’s Fruit Belt neighborhood. Other organizations stepping forward are the Massachusetts Avenue Project and the Buffalo Go Green urban farm.
The latter, located two blocks north of the Tops on Jefferson on Glenwood Avenue, is actively growing fresh produce including green beans, peas, collards, radishes, peppers and tomatoes. Rickey Fleming, who manages the urban farm, says the radishes and collards are nearly ready to harvest and distribute. Other items growing within the separate boxes along the property will require a full season before they are ready, such as the tomatoes.
“It's so important just to have your food right there. We harvest everything in the morning and then it's shipped out to whoever it's going to,” Fleming said. “It's especially, with that being the only supermarket around here, it's gonna be tough to get fresh produce to this whole neighborhood now. So hopefully we can supplement some of that to the community.”
What also results from the supermarket having to close is the loss a social center. Andrea Walker says her 86-year-old aunt is a regular customer of the Tops on Jefferson, but her aunt and other area senior citizens look to it for just more than food and household needs.
“Not only is that grocery shopping something that provides some sustenance for their body, that is a mental and it's a social outlet for them. Because they go to the grocery store, they see people they can, you know, interact,” Waker said. “Some of them live alone and they don't have that social interaction. So now I'm fearing that they're isolated and afraid in their home.”
Just getting Tops into the Jefferson neighborhood was a struggle in itself. Mayor Byron Brown recalls some argued that it would never work, citing low household income levels, crime and other conditions. Others, he said, argued that corporations wouldn’t care about the neighborhood. Tops did decide to invest and open a supermarket in the neighborhood, and Brown suggests it has proven that the immediate community has the means to make such a business succeed.
“This will open the eyes of other supermarket executives, other corporate leaders, that there is a tremendous market in this community,” Brown said. “And this is a community where people are warm, loving and caring and they deserve services that every other community has.”
For many, a concern is for what happens several weeks from now, when the broader community moves beyond this story, when the volunteer efforts become fewer. Wright says his Co-Op and its partners will continue their efforts, and address the systemic racism that created the food desert in the first place.
Meanwhile, many out in the neighborhood were able to smile for the first time in days, excited by the thought of having meals served to them by members of the Buffalo Bills and other pro athletes.
The Bills’ Dion Dawkins explained that the team reunited for practices on Monday, and they decided quickly they’d step forward to help the neighborhood. Pro athletes have frequently raised awareness of social injustice. But the mass shootings last weekend made is especially personal.
“This one hurt more than ever, because this is the closest thing to my actual home,” Dawkins said. “I live 20 minutes away. So if we would have come out here, it could have been any one of us. This is a regular local Tops, you know, and I'm a Black. I could have been targeted. So I don't look at it for what other people do. I look at it of what it was, this was an attack.”
There were signs, in some cases literally, reminding the public that the community is still in mourning. One person, a white man wearing a cowboy hat, held up a sign reading “The Cowboy Cares.” Another man, an older Black man, held up a sign offering “Free Hugs.” And he was indeed providing them.
Wright, after spending time explaining the ongoing work to make sure local residents’ needs were met, he was asked one more question: are you doing OK? He admitted, he is not, that he has been so busy he has not yet had the time to grieve.
“We're sad, we're hurt. We're nervous. But we're undeterred. And we're strong. And we're tenacious. And we're gonna be here.”
Wright continued with a message for the suspected gunman, who was held without bail.
“He did not win. My community is still here. Still standing. It’s still strong. And we’re still helping each other and we're not hiding. So you wasted your time, man, and you took lives for nothing because we're not going to fold. We're here.”
