As the longest government shutdown in U.S. history draws to a close, much of the news cycle has centered on the struggles of 42 million Americans missing benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
While benefits remain delayed, many of those 42 million may have spent more than a week unsure of how to pay for groceries. It’s difficult to grasp such a large number. For those without direct connections to food insecurity, the issue can remain hypothetical and far off.
Terence Lester, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Love Beyond Walls, is used to serving those our political system forgets. Love Beyond Walls is a nonprofit focused on poverty and homelessness, based in the Atlanta suburb of College Park, Ga. The organization has partnered with local school districts to convert unused classroom space into resource centers designed to make sure students in poverty can get their basic needs met at school. It also provides hygiene stations for people experiencing homelessness throughout the city.
As SNAP benefits began to be delayed, Lester wanted to protest both the shutdown and the $186 billion in cuts that President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut from the program. He found a unique way to make his protest concrete: He committed to working from the top of an empty refrigerator outside his office for at least 42 hours—one hour for each million people receiving SNAP benefits. As of Nov. 10, he had continued the protest into 60 hours atop the fridge.
In addition, he’s hoping his protest will inspire more food donations on behalf of those facing food insecurity. I interviewed Lester last week, in the 20th hour of his protest. We spoke by phone, while he sat on the fridge outside Love Beyond Walls headquarters. We discussed food access, the importance of education, and the impact of poverty in American schools.
This interview was edited for length and clarity. [Editor’s note: This interview took place before the Senate struck a deal that, if passed into law, would restore SNAP funding.]
Ethan Meyers, Sojourners: Could you tell me a little bit more about who you are and the work that you do?
Terence Lester, Love Beyond Walls: I started Love Beyond Walls 12 years ago in an effort to raise awareness about homelessness. I took my cellphone, and my family dropped me off underneath a bridge in the heart of [Atlanta] to live on the streets for a little over a month, to walk in the shoes and experiences of those who are unhoused, but also to bring attention to the everyday struggle of it. Little did I know that it would turn into a bigger organization.
Underneath that bridge, I built a lot of community. I was able to reunite tons of people with family members, and I used the awareness campaign to help people find housing.
A month later, we were given a building. We became an official nonprofit, and we started operating helping people to recover identification cards and vital documents. Then we started advocating for getting people access to healthy foods and access to housing or temporary housing. I would start mobilizing for more communal days where people come and get food, get access to eye-glassware, sometimes showers, right?
That led to me sleeping on top of a bus in a tent, in the middle of winter. It turned into the first mobile makeover unit, or mobile social service, to the unhoused community in the city of Atlanta. So we put a barbershop in it, a clothing closet, and a hygiene station. We were mobilizing barbers and all these things in an effort to provide grooming and support services because many of those who would come to us, would say, you know, I need access to a shower or like grooming services so I can look presentable when going out to interviews for jobs and stuff like that.
Organically, our organization has just kind of evolved over the years, and we’ve done all types of things to serve our community. Each year we’ve mobilized thousands of people to come and be proximate to the community.
All of those things are great, but it’s always been about relationships and having equity in those relationships. People think that because you’re poor, it’s synonymous with criminality and you have nothing to offer, but there’s this sense of brilliance that comes from being with people. Just because a person doesn’t have an address does not mean that they’re not our neighbor.
What inspired you to start this work?
I experienced homelessness briefly as a teenager, and I was a high school dropout. I overcame a lot of that, and I went on to get a Ph.D. and start this organization.
I have a lot of education, but many people think that to amass a certain level of success means to forget the community that you emerged from. I see anything that I’ve been able to do in my life as a way of expanding my capacity to serve my neighbor.
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Can you tell me why you’re sitting on a refrigerator right now?
All this year, our organization, Love Beyond Walls, has been partnering with Title I schools, building what we call Zion’s Closet. Zion’s Closet is a classroom that we retrofit into a community hub or a resource center.
When we launched our first one, at Finch Elementary School, [Tara] Spencer, who is the principal, spoke about the student population in the school. Finch has the largest unhoused population in the entire APS school system. She would talk about food insecurity here and how it’s causing students to disconnect from their lessons. Sometimes students stay in a shelter or live out of the car with their families. Maybe they have small shoes on, or their families can’t wash clothes.
They gave us a classroom, and we retrofitted the entire classroom. Washing machines and dryers are in there. Refrigeration and produce and food access is in there. Digital labs for the parents to come in and fill out job applications is there.
It’s a classroom retrofitted into an all-encompassing space where social workers and educators don’t have to think about reaching outside of the school. They can just go into this community hub right in the school to serve students.
Every day and every time I walk in at school it breaks my heart. We see what’s happening with SNAP, and the resources that are starting to drop for people who are food insecure. There’s this social and political rhetoric that targets a population of people to say, “Hey, people are abusing the system.” That’s not the case.
There’s a diversity in the community of who receives these subsidies. You have those who would be considered the working poor, you have veterans, you have those who are elderly, you have people who live with a disability, you have a massive amount of children who actually benefit from these subsidies, and it’s just breaking my heart.
I was trying to think of a way—as we are about to build our Zion’s Closet—to stand in solidarity with children, this population who didn’t ask to grow up in an impoverished environment, who never asked to be unhoused, who never asked to have some of these struggles.
What imagery can I use to stay in solidarity with students who are going through that struggle? So, that’s why I’m sitting on top of this refrigerator.
I just passed 20 hours. I’m gonna do it for 42 hours to represent the 42 million. I’m gonna be sitting on top of this refrigerator all month because it should be a month of giving thanks.
Food invades every aspect of life. It’s physical because it determines not only nutritional value, but your health and your strength. It’s geographical, because sometimes where you live or don’t live will dictate whether you can have access to food. It’s emotional, because not only does it carry memory, but it can carry shame and impact your mood and sense of self. It’s environmental. Where you are in your social location can dictate how food is cared for with the land and the air. And it’s social, because there’s a communal aspect that happens around food that reminds us that we need one another. So, food impacts the whole person.
How have you found the rhythms of your daily life changing while you’re stuck on top of the fridge?
Oh yeah, I’m taking this meeting on top of the fridge. I’m answering emails on top of the refrigerator. I’m grateful that I have a great volunteer team that helps and the staff that’s helping to offset some of the things that I would be doing.
I’m trying to do as much as I can on the fridge while I’m up here. And it’s hard, actually. I have an extension cord right now running from the office, which is about 20 feet away, just so I can have power to send emails and continue to do the administrative tasks that I’m supposed to be doing while I’m leading. So it’s a little different, but I am committed.
At the top of this call, I heard you talk to somebody who was walking by. Has that happened a lot?
I’ve had community members who are in need stop by and we were able to feed them. Yesterday I had a man named Mr. Randy, who I met for the first time, who wandered over. He doesn’t have an address, and he asked me what was going on and let me know that he was hungry, and we ate lunch together. I was right here on top of the refrigerator while he was right here standing with me for a couple of hours.
Just before I got on this call, a lady who stopped by in her car is a volunteer, and she said she was going to go and get some resources and bring them back to donate nonperishable items for community members.
How is your team adapting to the uncertainty around SNAP benefits?
Well, we are bracing ourselves, right? We might be a smaller nonprofit, but we do a lot in our community. The need continues to grow. It is overwhelming just realizing what we will be able to do, what we can do, and hoping that our campaign inspires others to get involved, to donate, not just to our organization, but other organizations that are on the ground doing the work of the community.
While I was preparing for this interview, I did a bit of looking around the Love Beyond Walls website and saw lots of emphasis on dignity across the projects you’re doing. How is dignity important to your work, and is there a faith component to that emphasis?
Dignity is everything. Dignity is inherent to all persons who have breath in their bodies. I don’t necessarily lead a faith-based nonprofit organization, but I am a person who is a leader in this context that is driven by my faith. I would consider myself a follower of Jesus.
I was just reflecting on Matthew 25 earlier. Jesus is talking about two groups of people. They either did or did not physically stand up for those who were sick or in prison or hungry, found themselves disadvantaged. When he’s talking to the group that actually embodies what it means to practice faith or live faith, he says, when you were hungry, you fed me. Jesus wasn’t hungry, right?
My faith in that type of God has given me strength to do all sorts of things, knowing that God has created every single person that has breath with inherent worth and value and dignity. And so that drives everything that I do as a leader and how I communicate and how we do programming.
When you end your time on top of the fridge, what’s next for your work addressing hunger in the U.S.?
We’re gonna continue to build Zion’s Closets in as many schools as we can. Right now, we’re on school number three, and we have about five schools waiting.
Student hunger is very important to me because it’s a part of my story. I know what it’s like to grow up in a single-parent household, have your mom work, you know? And it touched me, but I was able to find community and hope and overcome.
What better way than to support students who need to have their confidence and worth and dignity affirmed than in providing access to resources as they continue their educational journeys?
“Just because a person doesn’t have an address does not mean that they’re not our neighbor.”— Terence Lester
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