It was an opportunity for giving back at the third annual AccessMA turkeys, coats, and hot meals distributions at several sites across Dorchester and Roxbury last Saturday, including at the Sarah Greenwood School on Glenway Street.
In the Greenwood gym, frozen turkeys and winter coats lined one table, while the smells of curry chicken and collard greens came from another table that featured a hot meal for about 100 residents to enjoy.
Lines began forming just before the doors opened, and a crew of volunteers at the site that included Florence Smith, Boyd Price, Lenora Figueroa, Frank Robinson, Lena Perry, and Mr. Tyler got to work serving the community with a smile.
The gym was one of five sites with the same positive energy, the others being MLK Jr. Elementary, Torchlight Recovery, Franklin Field Teen Center, and Dudley Street Neighborhood Charter School, said Mac Hudson, executive director of AccessMA, which, among other things, aims to develop, support, and address reentry efforts and initiatives to assist returning citizens, their families, and their communities.
The event is part of the organization’s ‘Liabilities to Contributors’ program.
“In a lot of ways, they have come to understand what they did is wrong, and it hurt the community and serving in this way allows them to redeem themselves,” said Hudson.
“They want to be a contributor to the community now, and if there were other ways to do that, you would find them there, too. For that moment, there really is one label – that’s community. It’s not ex-offender or alien from somewhere else; we’re all one.”
After spending more than 30 years in jail, mostly for crimes he says he didn’t commit, Hudson says he relates to the need to serve.
“It’s hard for people to totally understand if you don’t have the experience of knowing the challenges facing people re-entering society at large,” he said. “It’s finding redemption in the community and giving back to the communities they once hurt and being a contributor – from liability to contributor.”
