On my first day as a pantry coordinator, a woman handed me a piece of notebook paper. Since I have low vision, I asked her what it was about. She hesitated, then told me through frustrated tears about the "placeholders" outside.
People were placing rocks and cans on the sidewalk at 5:00 AM to hold their spot while they waited in their cars. Those who stood on their feet for hours were being "cut" by inanimate objects. Many mornings, we readied the pantry to the sound of raised voices—a "war of the lines" fueled by a singular, terrifying question: "Will there be enough for me?"
The Biology of the Line
When we talk about food insecurity, we usually talk about calories and logistics. We rarely talk about the nervous system. Chronic scarcity isn't just a financial state; it’s a biological siege. When you live in a world of "not enough," your brain stays locked in fight-or-flight.
In that state, the person in front of you isn't a neighbor—they are a threat to your family's dinner. The traditional pantry system, governed by rigid rules and federal tax codes, inadvertently reinforces this trauma. It demands that people prove their "need" and fight for their place. It’s no wonder a study found that pantry users discard nearly 49% of what they receive. In a state of high-alert, you take anything offered out of fear, even if you can’t use it.
Quieting the System: The Veil of Ignorance
To fix the line wars, we instituted a lottery system. It didn't matter if you were able-bodied and arrived at dawn or if you had a disability and arrived a minute before we opened. Everyone drew a number. Everyone became equal.
In philosophy, John Rawls called this the "Veil of Ignorance." He argued that a just society is one we would design if we didn't know where we would end up in it. But for us, the lottery was also a clinical intervention. By removing the "need to be first," we gave our neighbors’ nervous systems permission to rest, to drink a cup of coffee, enjoy some snacks, and visit with their neighbors. We promised that whether you were #1 or #100, you would have the same high-quality choices.
Curating an inventory to keep that promise was a radical act—and one that eventually cost me my position in the old system. But it proved that dignity is a choice we make in the design.
Shielding the Oasis
At Bringing Justice Home, we have lived our own version of scarcity. We’ve survived on "Hail Marys", what we call Holy Spirit math, with a barely legal board, and cash-on-hand often too low for comfort. For 71 months, we will have worked to shield our neighbors from that steady anxiety, living it ourselves so they didn't have to.
But we’ve seen what’s possible when ordinary people, near and far, decide that strangers deserve to shop the same grocery aisles they shop in.
Join the Collective: 76 Votes for Peace
We are feeling our way out of the deserts and apartheids of scarcity—places where wholly inadequate safety nets are hotly contested—and toward the possibility of Resource Oases where our nervous systems can finally find calm.
We aren't looking for donors; we are looking for 76 votes for Kinship. We are forming a Collective to vision and architect a system where the "floor" isn't a trap, but a springboard. We are building a world where the war of the lines is over, and our nervous systems can finally settle into the knowledge that together we are enough, we have enough, and that we were never strangers; we've been kin all along.
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