(upbeat music) - Now I have been collecting sneakers for over 25 years.

So, whether I'm collecting, cleaning, buying, trading, I love the hunt.

When I started collecting sneakers, I didn't really think about how collecting sneakers or being a part of a sneaker head community was actually a form of community involvement and engagement.

Now I've been a community organizer for about six, seven years, but I've been collecting sneakers for over a couple decades.

But it's just now that I realize that those two worlds are not as far apart as we may think.

And what if everything I learned from collecting these sneakers could actually be used to change the world?

My name is KJ Kearney and this is Citizen Better.

(upbeat music) Alright, this is where I need to be at.

- What's up man?

Welcome tO Harlems Closet.

- What's good man?

KJ, pleasure to meet you.

- My Name Ken, man.

I own this here man.

- All right, Ken.

I wear 13.

Y'all got thirteens here?

- Man I keep a 13, man.

I wear 13.

- Okay, my guy.

All right.

- What do we have over here?

That's a 13.

- Well, so we got the real magic fours.

- Okay.

- The fire Red threes.

- Okay.

Okay.

- I do have something you might like.

- What's that?

- I got these fragments, right here.

- Oh, I've never seen fragments in person.

Yeah, let's talk about that brother.

[KJ] What are some of the first shoes you started collecting?

- [Ken] I do like a lot of the older models, especially Jordan's.

- [KJ] Mm-hmm.

- [Ken] Like I played ball in college.

I had a scholarship but I needed money.

- Right.

- And I had a pair of space jams that I probably wore twice.

- Mm-hmm.

- And I sold 'em for $500 on eBay, and I was like, oh, people paying this money for value.

So, I was like, shoot, I'm gonna keep 'em.

I'm gonna keep selling 'em.

- Yeah.

- Ever since then I just was selling sneakers.

- From collecting yourself to collecting for the store, how have sneakers ingrained you into the community?

Like, how have you been able to build relationships through sneakers?

- We meet people from all walks of life.

I started off going to buy-selling trade events that helped me, like with connections.

- Kenneth took the community he started at these sneaker shows and built it into a business, but he also turned it into a way to give back.

- We've worked with the community, we've had individuals come in here and help us with some of our back to school drives.

We do plan on trying to sponsor a family this year for Christmas.

- Oh wow.

- Probably two to three.

But we do have a toy drive.

We work with another non-profit and our store is like a drop off point.

- Kenneth might be talking about sneakers, but his mission for giving back reminded me a lot of another store owner I recently spoke to.

- So, we wanted absolutely no limitations.

24-7, you come anytime, drop off food or grab it, anything you need.

- Brittany's not talking about sneakers or anything she sells inside the mercantile, her general store here in Rock Hill, South Carolina.

She's actually talking about the community fridge that's outside the store where anybody can pick up or drop off groceries for free.

- Hey.

Oh my gosh.

Welcome.

- What's going on Brittany?

- So glad you're here.

- Thank you for having us.

I love what I'm seeing so far.

Show me what we have going on.

- Let's go, we'll start over here.

- Start over here.

- So, these are actually extra fruits we had and some veggies from a charcuterie board from an event we did.

And we just take all the extras, put 'em out here.

It helps us clean up space.

And instead of throwing it away or letting it go bad, 'cause we're not gonna use it in time, we just throw it out here.

- How did that all come about?

- In 2020 when the pandemic happened, that's when we really noticed food insecurity taking a huge role on our community.

So, we wanted to do something and that just seemed like the most feasible way.

We literally put out a fridge outside of our store at our old location.

And had community just get involved, bring stuff over, kept it open 24 hours there as well.

We were finding that there was a ton of limitations around needing help, needing food.

You need an ID or you might need your income, or you might even have to join a church to get some of the help from them.

So, we wanted absolutely no limitations, being the safe space that we are, we set up a Facebook page so that we could alert others in the community of the needs.

It's been fun to educate people and get them on board with us, realizing the need for more hygiene, more baby products, things like that.

We set up our Facebook page and within a couple hours we had over 2000 followers, people responding from all over, wanting to know how they can set up their own community fridge as well.

It's been a great way to make announcements when we need more food or maybe we don't need them if it's full or overflowing right now.

But it's a call to action to the community and it's a way to get involved in, and it's easy.

- In creating community hubs for everything from school supplies to groceries.

Brittany and Kenneth are practicing something called mutual Aid.

Mutual Aid is a community model that focuses on solidarity and not charity.

Instead of traditional models of charity where people who have the resources share them with those who do not.

Mutual aid networks connect community members and reciprocal support.

Think your local buy nothing group, your regular carpool, or a group of neighbors who trade off childcare responsibilities.

Here everybody can receive help and offer it.

Some of the first mutual aid societies in the US were formed in black communities in Philadelphia and Boston in the late 1700s.

Philadelphia's free African society led by preacher Richard Allen raised money and shared education to support abolition.

And helped formally enslaved people establish their new lives by surrounding them with supplies and support.

Mutual aid once again, gained mainstream attention during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Communities organized through Facebook, slack, discord.

And plain old flyers with phone numbers to help each other make rent, distribute masks and supplies, run errands for the sick and high risk.

And give each other emotional support during an isolating time.

The Rock Hill Community Fridge was a part of that Wave too.

When two young students from Brittany's neighborhood approached her about using her store to replicate the model.

She knew she had an opportunity to make her store a community gathering place in more ways than one.

- We've partnered with a local farmer here, Jonathan Nazeer, with Victory Gardens.

And he's doing tower gardening for urban revitalization.

So, how cool to, you know, have a tower garden on your balcony in your apartment.

- Right.

- And giving healthy food is what's super important to us as well.

Not putting the stigma around that you're going to that fridge just because you're in need.

But maybe I grew some eggplant and I don't eat eggplant, but I'm really proud of myself that I grew it.

- Right.

- So, I'm gonna go swap it out.

Maybe I want some squash.

Because it's super important to us to not have the food waste around it either.

- [KJ] Alright.

Alright.

Now I do not have the box, but I want you to take a look at these shattered backboards.

Tell me what we can do?

I want to trade those in for something.

- These kinda worn, but maybe I can do something with 'em.

- All right.

- So, I mean you trying to get cash or do a trade in, or get store credit?

What you trying to do?

- I want to trade in.

- What shoe are you trying to trade in for?

- I need the reimagines dog.

I need them right there.

- The size nine, right?

- Obviously not.

We need a size 13.

- Okay, that size 13?

- Yeah, what could we do?

- You trying to do like an even trade?

- Can we?

- Yeah, we can do that.

- Okay, yeah.

We can do good business.

Okay, all right.

There's no box now.

- It's cool, I can sell em.

- You still, you right.

You can keep those.

Come to Papa.

- Sneakers essentially always brings us together.

We get people from all walks of life.

I always look at our business like, it's like a safe space for people to come in.

Talk about life, talk about issues, talk about their problems, talk about the good, talk about the bad, talk about the sad.

- The mutual part of Mutual aid is just that, it's not just a one-way street work.

Some people give and others take.

Instead Brittany and Kenneth know that everyone who walks through their door has something to offer.

That's why they intentionally make space for people to come check out the fridge or stop by the store, and find community care at any time.

But in addition to open doors, they also work to keep open minds - I'll open for us, so that will be amazing.

- Get it in.

- We've got some milk hair that's gonna expire in a couple days, so we'll go ahead and do that.

Because as our beautiful sign over here shows some local art that we've got 80 billions of pounds that goes to trash every day.

- Which, well, no, that's cool.

which is wild because when you look at this stat about one in six children in South Carolina struggling with hunger.

And 80 billion pounds of food going to waste.

I feel like this in its own small way is trying to close that gap.

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

With 30% of kids in Rock Hill food insecure, why can't we have one of these on every single corner?

- That's real.

- It's pretty easy.

You just gotta put in the effort, get involved.

- Absolutely.

That's mutual aid in practice.

- Exactly.

- One assumption I'm letting go of that my sneaker obsession has nothing to do with helping the community.

Because when I listen to Kenneth and Brittany talk about collecting and cleaning.

And stalking and swapping and helping out their neighbors, I realize sneaker collecting is a lot like mutual aid.

It may start off by contributing to an existing community fridge.

Or a back to school drive in your area, but it can go as big as you starting your own mutual aid project.

And if you have any doubts that something can start off small and then grow big or exponentially, just look at my sneaker collection.

I mean, this is just half of what I got.

My name is KJ Kearney, and thank you for watching Citizen Better.

(upbeat music)