Delores Jackson is a volunteer in Birmingham’s Gate City community. She pushes an old shopping cart through the streets while checking up on friends and delivering them care packages from the local food pantry.

She is an angel of this tired place, and lives here just down the street from Georgia Road. Residents count on her, and the other volunteers who operate the food ministry of Gate City’s Holy Rosary Catholic Church. They feed 900 families a month, and don’t turn anyone away.

Right now, they need help, and they need it badly.

Jackson has been volunteering for 10 years, and says she does it because of “love and service.” She’s risking her health and maybe her life right now to hand out and deliver food. Her resilient smile is somehow comforting even when she looks out over her beloved, misunderstood community and sums up its dire poverty.

How many people are out of work because of the pandemic?

“Everyone,” Jackson said.

Is the spread of the coronavirus a concern?

“Yes, but what can you do?” she said.

More. After spending time reporting from Gate City, we as a people need to do more for the most vulnerable among us.

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Across the state, volunteer food pantries like the one in Gate City are struggling to feed the most vulnerable in Alabama. To help bring awareness to our state’s fight against hunger during the coronavirus pandemic, “This is Alabama” has launched a state-wide fundraiser for the Alabama Food Bank Association. You can buy this awesome T-shirt to help the cause, or just donate money directly.

Anything helps.

Food banks like the one in Birmingham’s Gate City are low because of disruptions in the supply chain, but there is also a lack of volunteers right now to distribute food because many food pantries are run by older members of the population. They are at risk of complications to the coronavirus, and are understandably avoiding the public.

At the same time, the coronavirus has exposed gaps and cracks in our country’s health care system, leaving large segments of the population susceptible to COVID-19 outbreaks. This confluence for potential tragedy is a clear and present danger for communities like Gate City, and it doesn’t take a health-care expert to understand why.

There is a lack of testing for the virus, lack of access to care and a lack of education on how to prevent the spread of sickness. In Gate City, like Jackson says, people are just trying to get through each day. Physical distancing rules when thousands live in such close proximity to each other seem like a cruel joke.

Birmingham has come a long way recently, but it’s still a divided city of haves and have-nots. For the first six weeks of this pandemic, for example, good luck getting a test if you didn’t have access to a car.

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In partnership with the UAB Minority Health & Health Disparities Research Center, the Housing Authority of the Birmingham District has organized its first satellite testing center in the Gate City/Marks Village community for Monday between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. It will take place at Lewis Park in Marks Village. The Collegeville Community Center will have testing from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesday.

Until recently, little was done to address the spread of the coronavirus in places like Gate City and Collegeville, but these are the areas that need the most help. These are forgotten communities by Birmingham residents over-the-mountain, but outbreaks there will affect everyone.

“What concerns me is we’re starting with a population that already has a lot of challenges and chronic diseases,” said Dr. Mona Fouad, the founding director of UAB’s Minority Health & Health Disparities Research Center. “This is a formula for the worst disease outcome from COVID-19.”

Nothing was done for many weeks to address this high-risk group, and now it’s a challenge just to keep everyone fed. There is strong community spirit in Gate City, but there is a severe lack of critical services right now. That doesn’t even include disruptions to community outreach initiatives like reading programs at Gate City’s St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Learning Center.

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Allen Murphy, a local basketball legend who starred for the Louisville Cardinals and played for the Lakers, is Holy Rosary’s only full-time employee, and helps run the Learning Center. He has worked in Gate City for 23 years, but hasn’t been in the community since the second week of March. His wife has asthma, and he can’t risk her health by leaving his house.

“My biggest concern is seeing the individuals who I know need good health care and they are not getting it,” Murphy said. “People don’t go to the hospital until they are really sick.”

Marks Village is the public-housing community that abuts Gate City, and Holy Rosary’s food pantry is run out of an old house between the two neighborhoods. Retired pharmacist Mike Geerts is in charge of the operation, and it’s impossible to see him in action and not be inspired by his positivity and leadership.

In the face of so much hardship, he just puts his head down and works. His well-loved Knights of Columbus T-shirt is a blur as he spins around the food pantry organizing boxes, restocking peanut butter, pulling chicken thighs out of the freezer and teaching lessons on how to properly wash your hands.

“Do it long enough to say a Hail Mary,” Geerts said. “You’ve got to break down the cell walls of the virus and the RNA.”

I visited with Mike at the food pantry one day last week, and it took all of 10 minutes before I was tucking my reporter’s notebook into my back pocket and helping out. I’ve covered some Hail Marys in my day, but none like this.

Volunteers in Gate City hand out of boxes of food every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10 to noon. My furlough at AL.com begins on Monday, so you know where I’ll be.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He’s on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.

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