The year of COVID: A decade of progress disappeared overnight | Opinion Updated Mar 09, 2021; Posted Mar 09, 2021 Carlos Rodriguez, president and CEO of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, says when the towers fell on 9/11 he was in New York City setting up an emergency food response. He helped during Superstorm Sandy, too. But he says he has never experienced anything to the scale of this pandemic before.Steve Hockstein | For NJ Advance Media Facebook Share NOTE: On the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 in New Jersey, we will publish several opinion pieces about our experiences over the past year. Today, the food bank administrator writes about how hunger grew during the pandemic. Wednesday, how the pandemic affected Black and brown communities.