Bake sale for mutual aid held at gardening store

On Saturday, February 21, Mother Earth Gardens, 2318 Lowry Ave. NE., was filled with people milling about and purchasing goods. This wasn’t just area residents preparing for the spring thaw, though.

Customers could also visit the Bakers Supporting Neighbors Bake Sale, an event dedicated to raising money for mutual aid funds in the wake of Operation Metro Surge. (Mutual aid funds are spaces for communities to pool money to support each other in times of need.)

Food on display included a garlicky pão de queijo, a Brazilian cheese bread, as well as a variety of cookies, brownies and pastries.

A social-media post by Community Kitchen, which describes itself as a “Minneapolis food support” group, presents the event as a “bake sale to help our neighbors affected by ICE pay their rent and utilities bills.” The event lasted from 12-5 p.m.

“We’re doing a bake sale for rent assistance,” Gabriella Onikoro-Arkell, who helped organize the event, told the Northeaster. About 90 minutes into the event, Onikoro-Arkell said the room had been “packed the whole time.”

Onikoro-Arkell said they were caught flat-footed by the response to the event.

“I sent out a sign-up sheet to a couple (of) chats I was in, and I was very overwhelmed by how many people signed up,” they said. “And people showed up who hadn’t signed up, so it’s a bunch of people.”

This was not Mother Earth Gardens’ first ICE-related fundraiser. On January 30, the company hosted a “Blind Date With a Book” event at their location in South Minneapolis, with suggested donations going towards mutual aid funds.

Onikoro-Arkell said Mother Earth Gardens was a natural fit for the fundraiser. Beyond having familial ties to the organization, they said the company “has a clientele that wants to come in and support this kind of thing.”

“There’s lots of ways to get involved,” they said. “I really think it’s (about) keeping on with what we have been doing.”