NEW ORLEANS — From the outside, the abandoned Family Dollar store in the Lower 9th Ward looks intimidating. It’s covered in graffiti, with aluminum cans and trash dotting the parking lot. It sits on a street with other empty lots and decayed buildings — symbols of the lasting devastation this neighborhood, one of the city’s poorest, has endured since Hurricane Katrina.
But inside, the store is a welcoming oasis. Twinkly string lights adorn racks of donated clothing. Shelves and bins overflow with children’s books, allergy medications, and toiletries. Curtains cordon off one side of the room, where there’s a stage for musicians and a neon sign depicting roller skates for weekly free skate nights.
The space is part free thrift store, part over-the-counter pharmacy, part punk show venue — and wholly “a radical community center,” said Dan Bingler, who runs the place.
Bingler is a waiter and bartender in the city who founded a mutual-aid organization called the Greater New Orleans Caring Collective. He said the building owners allow him to use the space as long as he pays the water, electricity, and trash bills.
On Monday evenings, volunteers from other community organizations show up — some used to set up in the parking lot before Bingler opened the store. They offer free testing for sexually transmitted infections, basic medical care, hot meals, and sterile syringes and other supplies for people who use drugs.
The purpose of the space is simple, Bingler said: “We’re going to make sure we provide for the community.”
Although it’s been open for a few years now, the space has become even more crucial to this community in recent months, with the Trump administration slashing funding for many social service organizations and taking an aggressive approach to homelessness and drug use. In Washington, D.C., the administration has bulldozed tents to push people living on the street to leave the city. Nationally, it has called for people who use drugs to be forced into treatment. It has decried harm reduction — practices that public health experts say keep people who use drugs safe and alive but that critics say promote illegal drug use.
The community space in New Orleans — named the Fred Hampton Free Store after the famous Black Panther activist known for bringing together diverse groups to fight for social reforms — aims to be a haven among this sea of changes.
It doesn’t receive federal funding, state or local grants, or money from foundations, Bingler said. It’s simply neighbors helping neighbors, he said, tearing up and adding, “It’s a really beautiful thing to be able to share all this space.”
All items inside are provided by people or organizations in the community. Bingler said one time a local hotel undergoing renovations donated 50 flat-screen TVs.
On nights the store is open, often more than 100 people visit, Bingler said.
One fall evening, dozens of people browsed for free clothing and over-the-counter medications. Others sat on the grass outside, chatting while keeping an eye on their bicycles or grocery carts full of possessions.
James Beshears stopped by the harm reduction group in the parking lot to get sterile supplies he uses to inject heroin and fentanyl. He said he’d been in treatment for years but relapsed after his doctor moved away and he was referred to a clinic that charged $250 a day. Street drugs were cheaper than treatment, he said.
He wants to stop. But until he can find affordable care, places like the free store keep him going. Without it, he said, he’d have “one foot in the grave.”
Another man in the parking lot was waiting for the arrival of Aquil Bey, a paramedic and former Green Beret well known for helping people overcome obstacles to getting health care. As soon as the man spotted Bey’s black Jeep, he ran up.
“I’ve got stage 4 kidney disease,” the man said, adding that he was scheduled for treatments at a hospital but was struggling to get there.
“Do me a favor,” Bey said as he unloaded folding tables and medical equipment from his car. “When our team gets here, come and see us. Maybe we can get you transportation.”
Bey is the founder of Freestanding Communities, a volunteer-run organization that provides free basic medical care and referrals for people who are homeless, using drugs, or part of other vulnerable communities. The group has a steady presence at the free store.
That day, Bey and his team connected the man needing kidney disease treatment to reduced-cost transit programs. They also did blood pressure and blood sugar checks for anyone who wanted them, cleaned infected wounds, and called clinics to make appointments for patients without phones.
A man with a leg injury mentioned he was sleeping on the concrete floor of an abandoned naval base. Bey noticed the free store’s furniture section had a mattress. He and another volunteer hauled it out, strapped it to the top of a car, and delivered it to where the man was sleeping.
“We’re just trying to find all these barriers” that people face and “find ways to fix them,” Bey said.
The clinic at the free store helped Stephen Wiltz connect with addiction care. He grew up in the Lower 9th Ward and had been using drugs since he was 10.
Fed up with discrimination from doctors who blamed him for his addiction, Wiltz said, he was reluctant to go to any treatment facility. But after years of knowing the volunteers at the free store, he trusted them to point him in the right direction.
At 56, Wiltz was in sustained recovery for the first time in his life, he said during a phone interview in the fall.
Those volunteers “cared for people who didn’t have nobody to care for them,” he said.
As the sun went down that fall evening at the store, a punk band started setting up for a show across the room from the medical clinic. Lights dimmed and music blared — a reminder that this was not your everyday clinic or community center.
Bey continued consulting with a patient who had gout.
“I get used to the sound,” Bey said of the rapid drums and loud power chords. “I like it sometimes.”
