“Agency is redefining”
An interview of Eva Maria Lewis on building power through mutual aid, radical imagination, and thinking beyond survival
Meerabelle Jesuthasan
Who Cares is a series of Q&As about care—the many definitions and applications of the word, from individual to collective, as it manifests across contexts from friendships to grassroots organizations to neighborhoods to group chats. What are the radical potentials of care under capitalism, and how does care—in the many forms of work and relationships that it takes—let us reimagine the current conditions?
Eva Maria Lewis is a writer, activist, poet, and artist from Chicago. At 16, she started a grassroots arts and activism organization that evolved into the Free Root Operation (FRO), a nonprofit focused on intercepting poverty-induced gun violence through investment in community. We spoke over video call about FRO’s grocery program, the role of imagination in moving against the grain of colonialism, and the radical potential of agency.
— Meerabelle Jesuthasan
On creating a grocery program in Chicago. Over the summer, shit hit the fan everywhere. Our mayor, Lori Lightfoot, handled the uprisings very poorly. We have bridges that cover the Chicago River, which splits downtown Chicago and the North Side. After the first protests, Lightfoot rose the bridges to basically stop protestors from disturbing white residential areas. The National Guard formed borders around our highways. You couldn’t get anywhere. People started looting the grocery stores, and then we didn’t have any open for a couple weeks. Public schools stopped giving the kids free breakfast and lunch. The entire city erupted with different mutual aid initiatives to try to supplement what was happening.
I realized FRO could make a project where people up North could do grocery shopping for those who couldn’t leave the downtown area. It was possible to come in, but it was hard to go out.
We set a budget, and manually matched people who needed groceries with people who were able to get them. Say Sally on the Southside needs groceries. Cool, we’re matching her with Matt from the Northside. We tell Sally her budget and she writes the whole list to give to us. Matt gets the list and goes to a grocery store in his neighborhood. He makes sure he gets all those items, and drives and delivers them to Sally. Matt might ask FRO to reimburse him, or he could say, “I’m donating all the groceries.” If he donates, he can go over the budget. So the exchange fostered relationships because it wasn’t just a handout. The power was in both of their hands.
On agency and mutual aid. My mom and I, we’d been going to the food pantry since I was maybe 10 or 11. If we wanted to get quality food, we’d go there and see what they were giving away, and we would get some really nice stuff. I was grateful for that but, when you go to a food pantry, you can’t say, “oh, I want salmon.” You get what you get. So, when I thought of FRO’s Chicago Food Pairing Program, I was thinking about how we can bridge the need for food and also give people agency, especially in a time when our agency has been stifled by this city government that has decided to put property over people.
It’s kind of impossible to give people full agency with a lot of these mutual aid initiatives. Even something like a fridge is not going to have everything that a grocery store like a Mariano’s has. Building agency into this program was important for us. We give you a budget, you decide how much of it is for supplies, how much of it is for food. If you say, “I want crab legs,” that’s your business! If that’s what’s going to make you feel secure and cared for, get your crab legs.
On self-care. Collective care has to include the understanding that you can’t understand everything about other people; with self care, though, your goal is to get to know yourself. Self care requires you come to a point of understanding of what you need, why you need it, what you want, and why you want it. Neither collective nor self care is absolute, but one of those things is non-negotiable, and it’s you.
My own journey with self-care has expanded my perception of what we define as need versus want, desire versus necessity. I grew up somewhat impoverished, and I went to a high school where some of the kids were rich, who had things that I didn’t have. Being a descendent of enslaved and Indigenous people, I grew up with a mindset of survival. I was told “you are blessed to have this.”
But there’s a difference between access and agency. I was able to access a quality education on the North Side; there’s also the fact that the other kids were waking up at 7:00, versus me waking up at 5:00, not having enough sleep, not being able to choose what I eat for breakfast, not being able to choose what I eat for lunch. Of course our people can make the most out of anything, all Black and brown people know we can make the most out of any circumstance, but there’s always that question of agency. They say we want a seat at the table. What if I want to build my own table out of a different material? The ability to swap things out and imagine a course that is counter to the one colonialism has ingrained in us—that agency is redefining.
On judgement. When I was able to not feel guilty about what I needed to feel cared for, whether it be from people or things I could provide for myself, it expanded my potential, my confidence, my self-love. By understanding and breaking down that dichotomy for myself, I could see other people and ask “what do you need?” without judgement, and with the wholehearted willingness to provide it.
I’ve experienced the negative and positive extremes of it all. I feel like having those experiences, and pairing them with a large sociological imagination, means that I approach my work with a lot of empathy and a lot of understanding, including the understanding that I won’t understand. I think many people do this work, with gun violence for example, and are like, “I don’t get it. Why would they kill someone?” But why do I have to understand why they did it? Does that mean this person is beyond redemption? Understanding that you cannot possibly understand most things helped me approach collective care in a different way. Imagine having the audacity to tell somebody what they need! You are not that person.
On having nice things. Before school started, in 2020, I redid my room. It had not been redone since I was eight years old. We painted the walls beige, and I was able to get some stuff that really redefined the space for me. I understand that there are people who don’t have shelter, I understand that there are people who don’t have their own room, and that’s real. I also think we limit ourselves a lot. We say “be grateful,” but you can be grateful for what you have and still know that you deserve more.
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You can read Meerabelle’s essay “The Internet Is Not Forever” in issue 1.