Mission to Save The Mission Sheroics

When COVID hit, longtime activist Valerie Tulier-Laiwa knew her neighborhood would be greatly affected. With the help of several childhood friends, she jumped into action to meet the needs of the Latino community and beyond.
Transcript:
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: What you see here are like I said, the manifestations of about three or four of our committees. The Latino Task Force has a range of services that we provide. 
C. Yulin Cruz: T his is Valerie Tulier Laiwa, one of the leaders of the Latino Task Force. During the early days of Covid 19 pandemic, the group came together to provide their community with essential services like testing, vaccines and food. 
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: Everything we see here is related to a hub, so that testing and vaccine hub, food hub, resource hub, which we'll see upstairs.
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: That's chef Julio.
C. Yulin Cruz: Valerie took us through the group's headquarters on Alabama Street, in the Mission District of San Francisco. 
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: Here they sort the food. So I wanna be very clear about this. We call this a Mission Food hub. We don't call it a food pantry. We don't call it a food bank, but bless the food pantry and bless the food bank. Nothing's wrong with that, but there's a stigma attached to those words. 
C. Yulin Cruz: Valerie has been serving the Latino community in the Mission for decades. 
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: Go ahead, pick that up. Up. Pick this up. See? 
C. Yulin Cruz: She loves her people and she knows them inside and out. 
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: So we give people culturally appropriate food. We give them arroz, we give them beans and they have a choice too.
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: We give three types of beans. Cause not everybody's, not everybody who's Latino is Mexican and eat pinto beans, right? So we offer black beans, red beans, and pinto beans and rice. 
C. Yulin Cruz: She also knows how to get the best out of each one of them. 
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: So the women, it's really funny cuz you have volunteers, they have tables set up and they're, we buy these huge bags of beans and rice and they would bag them.
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: And if you try to help them, they'll tell you no, this is my area I'm bagging. And so we say okay. So they take it very serious and many of the people who volunteer at the food hub are actually people who were in our food line for so they became that. So let's come on over here and that's why I say again, is food up.
C. Yulin Cruz: I'm Yulin Cruz. In this episode of Sheroics we are talking with Valerie Tulier Laiwa about what it takes to preserve and protect a community besieged by sickness and hardship. Valerie and the Latino Task Force are showing how deep community roots, organized leadership and love can transform lives and create a platform for support that is more potent and more capable than any governmental agency.
News Clip: The breaking news, stay at home. That is the order tonight from four state governors as the Coronavirus Pandemic spreads. New York, California, Illinois, and Connecticut, all ordering non-essential employees to stay home. Those orders cover 75 million people across the United States,
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: So I remember March 20. I remember that we had a very abrupt shelter in place order from the mayor of San Francisco. She said, beginning tomorrow, everything shut down. Completely shut down. And I remember where I work at, there was a huge event that was supposed to happen. I'm like, oh my God, can't we just shut down on Monday?
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: Can't we just get through this Saturday event? But it was like no.
C. Yulin Cruz: It was soon clear to Valerie and other leaders in San Francisco's mission district that the citywide shutdown was just the beginning. 
Valerie Tulier Laiwa: The Mission is very strong in terms of, of movements in terms of community organizing around different issues. So we all knew each other. We were all oh, okay, you're handling that, you're