SOMCAN Food Drive

(In collaboration with Mary Claire Amable)

San Francisco’s South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN) changes their storefront computer room into a temporary neighborhood food bank every Thursday morning.

Here SOMCAN member Mary Claire Amable distributes a takeaway flyer in both Spanish and Tagalog, catering to SOMCAN’s local community. The flyer notes how her mother immigrated to San Francisco to work at a fast food restaurant. Her mother mostly ate hash browns when pregnant with Claire, while trying to stay in the city. This flyer is circulated to families/seniors from neighborhood who not only have working relationships with Clarie’s mother but also may have seen Claire grow up in various parts of the area.

The project is part of a larger system of several works in tandem. Furthermore, this framework operates through SOMCAN to understand its members and area with a more complicated lens. I’m invested how projects reside long-term by participants already living complex lives as producers, organizers, researchers, timely visitors, and active locals in multi-vocal, intergenerational communities.