Denying food to the poor is violence

December 4, 2019 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center One comment

Have you ever had to go to bed hungry?

I have. I know what it feels like to only have enough food for the kids to eat supper, so you say you had a big lunch and assure them they can eat their fill as your stomach growls.

And when it causes you to lose a few pounds, people tell you that you look great, and they ask, “What did you do to drop that 10 pounds?” you smile and shrug because you don’t want to say that you go without supper a couple nights every week so your kids can have enough to eat. There was –and is — a stigma to being poor.

One person, a close friend, once asked me why I didn’t just make more money, as though that were an option I had overlooked.

I was working full-time, but my kids’ dad wasn’t paying nearly what he should have been, given that his income was four to five times greater than mine.

I was in the biggest group of people in poverty in this country — single white women. I was working and trying to pay rent, utilities, a car payment, child care and all the other things a family needs to pay for just to scrape by.

That was 40 years ago, and people are still being asked to make it on the same income I had in 1979. And they’re being called lazy and immoral by people with more money than they can ever spend in one lifetime.

Now this administration is attacking food stamp eligibility, narrowing the number of people who can get the help they need to feed themselves and their children, all with absolutely no consideration of how we might get some of these people out of poverty.

Will we raise the minimum wage to a living wage? Nope. People just need to work more.

Well, it takes double to triple minimum wage to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in every single county in the nation. That means a single mother who has two children must work two to three full-time jobs to be able to afford a one-bedroom apartment.

So, she works 16-hour days and then we criticize her for not being there for her children.

If mom drops health insurance because that $50 monthly premium is also about one-third of her monthly grocery budget and then she gets sick, we criticize her for wanting a “handout.”

The problem here is that when you make public policy that impoverishes people, you shouldn’t then be allowed to criticize them for being poor. When the only jobs people can find are part-time or in the “gig” economy (meaning freelance, with no health benefits, no paid vacation or sick days and absolutely no job security) and the pay is less than $10 an hour, and then you work three of those part time jobs for a total of 80 to 90 hours a week, you shouldn’t need food stamps to put nutritious food on the table, but you still do.

This is not a moral failing on the part of the poor person, as much as you might like to think it is; it is a failing on the part of policymakers and of everyone who supports these immoral policies, including you, if you’re one of the people clapping gleefully at each cut of public assistance.

I have to keep saying this to “Christians:” Jesus never said, “I got mine, get your own.”

What Jesus did say was “For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat. I was cold and you didn’t offer me your cloak. I was a stranger and you didn’t welcome me. … Whatsoever you did unto the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did also unto me.”

Poor people are mentioned more than 2,000 times in the Bible, and not once are we told they are lazy or immoral. We are called to help them, as are the adherents of every major world religion.

Every faith has a version of the Golden Rule, which calls us to treat others the way we, ourselves, wish to be treated.

When we ignore the immorality of policies that impoverish, sicken and kill other people, we become the oppressors of those people. And when they sicken and die, their blood is on our hands.

Morality — compassion, empathy, the ability to love — is supposed to be written into our DNA, but we seem to have found a way to ignore that small voice that tells us we need to help.

Cutting food stamps means denying other people the food they need to live. If you think that’s OK, you’re wrong. It is violence. It is immoral.

If you’re not standing up to say this is wrong, you’re the oppressor. You’re the sinner. And you have the blood of innocents on your hands.

Fight poverty, not the poor

August 1, 2018 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

If I hear another person tell me poor people need to get a job, I may become violent — or at least verbally abusive.

Did you know most poor people who can work, do? Did you know that the vast majority of jobs being created in this economy are low-wage and part-time?

There was no real recovery after the meltdown of 2008. What there was, was a reset that took away most of the last of the living-wage jobs and left us with jobs that don’t pay the bills and don’t offer benefits like vacation, sick days, health insurance, disability insurance, a pension or 401K plan …

So, when a few people began camping outside 12 Baskets Cafe here in Asheville, the local (Sinclair Broadcasting) television station interviewed people and broadcast a story that seemed designed to stir people up.

Across the street from 12 Baskets Cafe (which the news station called 12 baskets) is Sunny Point Cafe, a real magnet for tourists because it serves local food prepared really well.

So, the WLOS TV “news” crew interviewed tourists, who knew nothing about 12 Baskets Cafe. The tourists, of course, don’t want to look at poor people in their vacation spot.

“Oh,” they say, “these people are bathing and sleeping right there by the road, where we can see them!”

The TV “news” reports that “12 baskets … gives food to homeless people.”

Wrong. 12 Baskets Cafe rescues food from restaurants, grocery stores and caterers and serves it, restaurant style and free of charge, to everyone who comes. And not everyone who comes is homeless.

The people who live and work in the neighborhood support the cafe, no matter what the “news” tells you. People stop by often with food from their gardens. One woman brings fresh flowers every week.

12 Baskets Cafe is a place where everyone is treated with the basic dignity that should be offered to every human being. Just walk into the space and see people looking after each other’s children, people enjoying conversation with others they’re meeting for the first time. The volunteers who serve and clean up are encouraged to sit down and enjoy a meal and good company.

This is a positive space, a loving place, and the food is good. People were paying $10 a plate for it the day before.

In a time when some 40 percent of food is thrown away, no one, no one, should go hungry.

Part of the problem here is that the powers that be would love us to think there isn’t enough to go around, so perhaps we won’t realize they’re pillaging our resources while more than 140 million Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, just one check away from financial disaster.

Well, there is enough to go around. There is an abundance.

What we all need to understand is that poverty is a political construct. When you send all the money to the top 1 percent, nothing trickles down.

Economic science shows that money given to the wealthy is stashed away, hoarded, because they don’t have to spend it. On the other hand, every dollar spent on food stamps generates $1.73 in the economy (https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/snap-boosts-retailers-and-local-economies).

When you give low-wage people money, they spend it on necessities. When you give rich people money, they stash it in an offshore account.

When you deny people a living wage in exchange for a week’s work, they become homeless, sick and hungry. It really is that simple.

Homeless people aren’t lazy or morally inferior. They’re people like you and me who have been forced into poverty by bad public policy.

Perhaps it’s time to change the policy-makers so we can have enough food, a living wage, decent public education, health care and affordable, safe housing for everyone.

 

This is NOT Blue Apron

February 14, 2018 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center 2 comments

Canned vegetables are lower in nutrients and higher in sodium than fresh, but the current occupant of the White House thinks it’s OK, as long as it’s poor people who are forced to eat them.

 

The current occupant of the White House has a new plan to feed poor people: Send them boxes of cheap, high-fat, high-carb, low-nutrient foods.

Again and again, I’ve seen the idea compared to Blue Apron, a gourmet food vendor that sends out boxes of food together with recipes for fabulous meals.

The comparison is wrong. The only thing this idea has in common with Blue Apron is that it’s delivered in a cardboard box.

If you get food from Blue Apron, you get a choice of foods, and the foods are fresh, not canned. You aren’t shipped canned peas and carrots, boxed milk and cheap cereal.

You don’t get steak tartar, you get Hamburger Helper, and probably just a cheap knock-off of that.

The right complained about the “nanny state” when Michelle Obama started advocating fresh, wholesome food for children. But now they want to choose what food poor people should eat, and what they’re choosing is bad food.

While advocates work to get fresh food to people in poverty, many of whom don’t have ready access to a supermarket, this administration is ready to squash these efforts in favor of boxes of unhealthy crap.

Research has shown again and again that processed food is less healthy than fresh food, that a diet high in processed foods (white flour, white sugar, salt, hydrogenated oils …) leaves us more vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and several types of cancer, including colon and pancreatic cancer.

But when we consider poor people as inferior, when we think we’re more worthy of anything than another human being, we are the ones who are morally bankrupt.

Jesus didn’t feed the thousands canned tuna on stale white bread, he fed them fresh fish and bread. When he went to the wedding in Cana and the host ran out of wine, Jesus turned water into fine wine, not high fructose corn syrup-laden soda. Read the passage in the Gospel of John, Chapter 2.

Our public policy (our failure to raise minimum wage to a living wage, for example), puts people in poverty. Minimum wage right now is about one-third of what it takes to live comfortably. Housing subsidies don’t even come close to serving the people who need help to stretch their meager wages. Child care subsidies have years-long waiting lists. Food stamps are a fraction of what it really costs to supply children (and adults) with the nutrition they need. Ask anyone who receives them. They give people about $5 a day. Try and feed yourself on that.

As food advocates work to get fresh fruits and vegetables onto the plates of children, this clown announces poor people only deserve canned food, and that the government should choose what they’re allowed to have — and that it should be junk food, as though poor people are just junk.

Meanwhile, those of us with privilege, those of us who still hold onto some semblance of a middle-class income, donate our cast-off clothing, our broken toys and chipped dinnerware, and we think the poor should be grateful for that.

We blame poor people for their own poverty, while we knock them down and apply our boot heels to their necks. We deny them healthy food, an equal education, safe housing, health care and a living wage and then call them lazy and accuse them of trying to get something for nothing.

The real culprits are the very wealthy who are buying up members of Congress and grabbing all the nation’s wealth for themselves. They don’t till the soil or harvest the crops, they don’t manufacture anything, they don’t make or serve food or clean up after themselves, they just take. And to justify their hoarding of our nation’s wealth, they spread propaganda about how the poor are robbing us blind. They use scandals to distract us while they pick our pockets.

This whole idea is deeply, deeply immoral. It is theft from the local farmer who grows and sells crops at tailgate markets that accept SNAP cards. It is theft from people who are struggling and it is the slow poisoning of poor people, who, after all, are still people. We all deserve to eat healthy foods and we deserve the dignity of choosing what foods we will eat.

This is not Blue Apron. Stop comparing the two right now.

 

 

 

 

More insanity from the anti-life league in Raleigh

September 28, 2015 a world of progress, letters, media, progressive living, progressive media center No comments

A North Carolina EBT, of "food stamp" card.

A North Carolina EBT, or “food stamp,” card.

The powers that be in Raleigh have, in the last few years, decided that health care, unemployment compensation, voting rights and education are not necessary for life.

Now they have added food to the list.

As though the passage of a budget that pretty much starves the mental health system out of existence weren’t bad enough, a bill before the General Assembly now would take away food stamps from more than 105,000 adults in the state.

Under federal law, states can suspend work-related time limits on federal food aid in areas with persistently high levels of unemployment. In July, the state applied for this waiver for 77 of its 100 counties because of a severe lack of jobs available in those counties.

The bill before the senate now would ban the state from pursuing this option permanently, no mater how poorly local economies are faring or whether employment and training opportunities actually exist in those counties.

This is one more anti-life measure in the criminalization of poverty by the very people whose policies make it nearly impossible for people to climb out of poverty.

My friend, Sen. Terry Van Dyun (D., Buncombe County), told me recently that her colleague, Sen. Ralph Hise (R., Mitchell County), called people in need of health care lazy.

“He told me they should get off their butts and get a job that offers health care or make enough money to qualify for insurance through the marketplace,” she said.

People who work at minimum-wage jobs can’t afford to pay their bills and buy food. It’s as simple as that. It takes more than double minimum wage to sustain even the most frugal lifestyle — no eating out, no cable TV, no movies or night clubbing, just the most basic apartment, an old car (if you can afford one at all) and the most basic phone service.

North Carolina is a mostly rural state with a few higher-density population areas. It is the seventh hungriest state in the nation. In rural counties, people can’t find high-paying jobs. They might work at a Dollar Store or a Burger King, but they won’t make a living wage in these places and they won’t get a 40-hour work week.

In a city like Asheville, service industry jobs are plentiful, but they don’t pay well, and housing costs are high. That means many people don’t earn enough to make ends meet.

I would ask you to call your state senator if you live in North Carolina, but they have shown no evidence that they care about us or what we think. They feel safe in their gerrymandered districts and they are arrogant enough to believe they can do as they please in all matters.

It looks as though the only way to stop these consistently anti-life policies is to put up candidates in 2016 and fight to unseat all of those who don’t care about us or our well-being.

If you aren’t registered to vote, if you don’t vote because you don’t think it will make a difference, you are part of the problem here. If you care about human life, get off your ass and vote in the primaries and in the general election.

 

Tired of the hate toward poor people

October 16, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living One comment

I just saw a meme on Facebook asking people to “like” it of they get pissed off at seeing food stamp recipients smoking cigarettes, watching cable TV or talking on a cell phone. One of the people who shared it was the daughter of a friend, a woman I’ve known since she was born.

It broke my heart just a little to see it.

Earlier I saw a post asking if the insanity at 7 a.m. at Home Depot involved (epithet for Latinos) standing in line waiting for day labor.

I work with people every day who qualify for food stamps. They do not live in the lap of luxury.

Did you know that food stamps provide less than $5 a day? Could you eat on that?

As for the people in line for day labor, plenty of them are not Latino, and they can’t find work elsewhere. In addition, undocumented immigrants do not qualify for any government benefits. Look it up.

As for what people deserve, did you know that people with certain mental illnesses almost always smoke cigarettes? No one seems to know what the connection is, but it is there.

Cell phones are a necessity for people who can’t afford a land line. Most of the people I serve have cheap WalMart cell phones and they buy a couple hundred minutes a month. When their minutes run out, they go without a phone for the rest of the month. I have yet to see a homeless person with an iPhone.

Most people who live on disability get less than $800 a month. Try to live on that.

How’s this for a story? One woman replied to the Facebook meme saying she is home all day because of a disability, and she smokes cigarettes. The government has decided she is too disabled to try to rehabilitate, in her words. She watches cable TV because there is nothing else for her to do. Even if she could get out, she couldn’t afford to do anything.

For every poor person I’ve ever known there is a story. The people I serve are NOT lazy; they are not bums and they don’t want to be on government assistance.

But if you start out poor in this country, despite the “American dream” myth, you likely will remain poor.

Nowadays, if you start out middle class, you’re likely to sink into debt and even into poverty.

Let’s say you have a good job as an art teacher. With the funding cuts to schools these days, art is one of the first programs to go. If you get laid off, what other skills do you have? Will you be able to find another job at the pay you’re making now? Not likely. Will you be able to maintain your lifestyle on half the pay you were making — or even less?

Since you can’t go out to dinner or the movies, does that mean you don’t deserve ANY means of entertainment, even basic cable? Does it mean you don’t deserve a telephone?

Very few of us are more than six months away from financial disaster. When you see someone  who is poor and talking on a cell phone, remember you could be in that same situation very easily.