GroceryLand survived Heartland Alliance implosion, prepares for the 'wild ride' to come

You can't buy shampoo, toothpaste or toilet paper with food stamps. An echo of tightfisted Dickensian notions of charity, making sure the shiftless poor won't be living it up on their dime, washing their hair and brushing their teeth and similar displays of wild extravagance.

"I don't consider toilet paper a luxury, I consider it a necessity," said Lori Cannon, when I visited her Saturday afternoon at GroceryLand, 5543 N. Broadway, the Edgewater food pantry for people living with HIV and, between us , for anyone else in need who stops by. "What we need are personal care items because people on food stamps aren't allowed to use them for anything but food."

Cannon prefers donations of goods rather than money, given the very public disintegration of the umbrella organization that used to shelter GroceryLand. "This has been a very stressful year," she said, thanks to “the utter and complete collapse of the Heartland Alliance.”

Heartland Alliance was a major provider of social services in Chicago and considered itself among the oldest social welfare organizations in the country, tracing its roots to Jane Addams.

Cannon, joined by local AIDS activists Greg Harris, Tom Tunney and James Cappleman, created OpenHand Chicago in 1988 to feed those in the LGBTQ community affected by HIV/AIDS.

“We had one thing in common," Cannon told the Sun-Times in 2019. "Everyone we knew was either dead, dying or struggling to help someone who was heading there. We were tired. We were scared. We were angry. And we needed to do something other than sew AIDS quilt panels.”

When I first reported on Cannon's efforts 30 years ago, the idea was to give AIDS patients independence by allowing them to select and prepare their own food themselves, rather than being forced to eat whatever meal was delivered that day.

Then she was serving 40 people a week. Now it's 400.

A flamboyant woman with magenta hair, Cannon tries to make GroceryLand as colorful and festive as she is.

"What we try to do is create a space that doesn't look like a doctor's waiting room or a government office," she said.

In 2011, OpenHand was renamed Vital Bridges and came under the umbrella of Heartland Alliance Health — a vital distinction, since HAH was spun off and survived when Heartland Alliance collapsed, kicking its staff to the curb.

Cannon credits her core of volunteers and donors for getting them through.

"The LGBTQ community is very familiar to being in a place of struggle," she said. "We live another day to fight, and I'm very happy to lead the charge."

Does Cannon, 74, ever think about retiring?

"I just can't in good conscience walk away," she said. "People need to be fed. They need to be housed. Food is medicine, as its always been, and this year, we are assuring that low-income men, women and children living with HIV AIDS will be served as they have for 40 years, same as always."

While we talked, people entered with groceries to donate and left empty-handed, or came needing help and left laden with food and supplies. As always, the food bank's stated purpose sometimes got overlooked. "I don't check their papers to see if they have HIV," Cannon said. "I don't have time for that."

A half dozen volunteers were working with Cannon on Saturday. Many, like her, have been doing this for years.

"When I came out, my introduction to the gay community was seeing young men walking around with lesions, and I thought — I want to do something," said Jose Jimenez, 54, who lives in Lakeview and has been volunteering for 35 years. "This is my community."

As festive as GroceryLand was the Saturday before Christmas, there was also a sense of trouble ahead, though Cannon insists that neither the implosion of Heartland nor the nation's lurch toward increasing intolerance will affect anything.

"I'm ready for the challenge," she said. "The hair is still red. I'm ready to roll up my shirt sleeves and do the basics. The recent setback is irrelevant. I'm going to make sure [GroceryLand's clients] have a joyful holiday. Because we're in for a wild ride over the next four years. But we're here to fight back."

Sometimes readers are moved at Christmas to want to do something nice for people who struggle the year round.

One option is to go to Costco, buy all the toilet paper, toothpaste and sanitary napkins you can carry and drop the supplies off at GroceryLand, 5543 N. Broadway. They'll see the products get to where they're needed most.