“The donations just kept coming, and coming, and coming.”

Cereal boxes, diapers, detergent and other items piled up at Sanford Middle School in Minneapolis, as hundreds of people dropped off supplies for local families in need. (Auguste Bernick)

Washington Post

By Sydney Page

June 2, 2020 at 4:00 a.m. PDT

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, flames raged through the 3rd Precinct police station in Minneapolis on Thursday. Neighborhood stores were ransacked and closed amid widespread anger after a video showed Floyd — a black man — begging for his life, then going limp as a white police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck.

A nearby middle school found many of its students and their families who live blocks from the police station were stuck without access to food.

“The area has become a food desert for these families, many of whom don’t own a vehicle to drive elsewhere,” said Amy Nelson, the principal of Sanford Middle School.

School food services and public transportation were suspended across the city, affecting the school’s 970 students, about 60 percent of whom are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Nelson decided to step in.

We had to do something,” Nelson said.

She and her staff emailed friends and others in the community, asking them to bring a total of 85 food kits to the school parking lot Sunday morning. They asked for staples like cereal, bread and apples, as well as diapers, detergent and other essentials. The kits would be distributed to anyone who needed them.

Word of the food drive spread on social media and local news, with hundreds of people offering to help.

Still, staff at Sanford Middle School said they anticipated no more than 150 kits would be delivered Sunday morning. But at 8 a.m., an hour before people were sup

posed to drop off deliveries, the school loading docks were already full of food.