NYC boxing gym, organizer launch plant-based community fridge

ByJosh Einiger WABC logo

Thursday, February 11, 2021

Boxing gym, organizer launch plant-based community fridge

At Overthrow Boxing Club on Bleecker Street, they've stocked a community fridge full of plant based, organic, healthy food -- all for the taking.

LOWER EAST SIDE, New York (WABC) -- A New York City boxing club is helping its community knocked down by the coronavirus pandemic by providing a kind gesture that's good for the body.

"We got knocked down on the canvas but we getting right back up and we fighting," said Power Malu of Overthrow Boxing Club.

In a city pummeled by a pandemic, a boxing club north of Houston has a plan to get its neighborhood back in the ring.

At Overthrow Boxing Club on Bleecker Street, they've stocked a community fridge full of plant based, organic, healthy food -- all for the taking.

A community refrigerator created to help people in a Queens neighborhood who are struggling with food insecurity was vandalized Friday, State Senator Jessica Ramos said.

"You see students, you see the unhoused community -- all different kinda people coming together ... that's New York," Malu said. "The melting pot. This is the mecca."

All day and all night, people pick up what they need and stock it with what they don't, much like similar fridges which have popped up across the city.

The last place you'd expect to find one is on a block of high-priced apartments and trendy boutiques, but that's the point.

"People look at this and the first thing they say 'why you putting a fridge there? those people got money?' well guess what -- not everybody in this community has money," Malu said. "It's an illusion. You see all these nice buildings come up, but the majority of the people have left throughout the pandemic and the ones that stood here were forced to stay here and now they cannot even afford to eat."

Michelle Charlesworth has more on the owner of a heroic German shepherd who was released from a New Jersey rehab facility Tuesday.

"More than ever now people are fighting to be seen, people are fighting to be heard and they're fighting. They're fighting," said Joey Goodwin of Overthrow Boxing Club.

New Yorkers can take a punch, but they can also fight back.

It's a fight for equity and progress that will long outlast COVID.