Today's Action Item: Let's Eat
That means everyone
Did you eat today? If it’s early and you’re a breakfast skipper, will you eat today?
One of the things the fascist regime is doing is cutting food aid to farmers who specifically grow food bound for food banks. Here in Pennsylvania, in 2024, the monies from the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA) to farmers led to 22.6 meals for 5.5 million families. Source. And many states participate in the LFPA program. More context.
It’s a win-win both for the farmers, and the people they feed.
Have you ever been hungry? I’ve never been hungry. Sure, sometimes “I could eat”, but in my home is a fridge and pantry. And if I want something specific, I can get in my car and go get it.
I learned about hunger in 2010. From a girl who was 9 or 10, and whose dog often played with my dog at the local dog park. It was a Sunday, and she told me how proud she was that she hadn’t had anything eat since school lunch on Friday.
The Cliff Notes story is that her dad was unemployed, had a part time job delivering pizzas. Her mom had MS, and on Thursday night, the family (her parents, her sister and brother and she) voted to spend the money they had on medicine for mom.
She lived about a mile and a half from me.
Three children (she was the oldest) lived walking distance from me and were hungry.
Yes, they ate later that afternoon. But that’s not the point.
The point is that I guess that everyone reading this post has food in their house. (At least I hope so.) But there are hungry people, often invisible to us, in our neighborhoods, and lots of them are kids. Kids who won’t be getting school breakfasts and lunches as soon as school lets out for the summer.
So I beseech you - yes, times are tough. Yes, inflation sucks. Yes, we all have less money than we did before the inauguration. But PLEASE if you can, donate to your local food bank.
PLEASE
Even if it’s only $5.
Yes, we need to be out in the street (and yeah - it’s working) and we need to make sure our reps (especially Rethuglicans) know how bad the proposed budget bill is for everyone who’s not a rich person, but here is something you can do today to make a huge difference in someone’s life.
We all know my relationship with food. It's the one thing that unites every culture in the world. If we could all sit down and share meals with other cultures, I know we would find our commonalities.
We still donate regularly to the Chester County Food Bank, the Oregon Food Bank, and - most especially Feeding America https://www.feedingamerica.org/. We've supported them for years.
So sad that hunger exists for so many in America. The ever expanding inequality in our economy leaves so many in poverty. I contribute to All Faiths Food Bank, but assuring that all of our people are adequately housed and fed should come under the heading of "provide for the general welfare".