A New Safety Net Is Born
A New Safety Net Is Born
By Chris Carbone
Fortune.com recently published an article titled, “Solving hunger is America’s lowest-hanging fruit,” -- the first sentence of it reads, “Hunger, sadly, is as American as apple pie: a crisis we seem to revisit each budget cycle but never resolve.” Is it trivializing to compare hunger to fruit? Maybe, but it also may be apt--something so abundant, so powerful, yet often overlooked. There is a whole section dedicated to it in the grocery store, yet we often rush to something saltier, sweeter, more convenient. But if we stopped for a moment and picked up that fruit, what untold wonders of progress could it nourish?
The recent government shutdown was not only the longest in our nation’s history, but the first one in which SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) was disrupted. Yet the end of the shutdown after 43 days does not come without scars. The administration’s refusal to tap contingency funds forced nonprofits and the states they operate in into panic mode. In an article from Newsweek, “...advocates warn the lapse has left lasting damage…eroding confidence in the nation’s largest anti-hunger program.” The delays left families rationing and food pantries seeing record-numbers. The saddest part? This may have been part of the plan all along.
According to Marianna Chilton from the UMASS Amherst Department of Nutrition, in a recent appearance on Democracy Now, there is a long history of governments using hunger to ensure compliance (treatment of the Native Americans comes to mind). How could a government do this when there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for the benefits of actively attempting to end hunger? The Bread For The World Institute claims that hunger costs the U.S. economy over $160 billion annually. It results in avoidable healthcare costs and children performing worse academically due to malnutrition (the latter reducing future earning potential). It leads to higher rates of chronic disease, diminished mental health, and workplace absenteeism. These ramifications are not delegated to any political party…they are universal problems that, in any other context, would be treated as a national emergency. This all while government agencies apparently go amnesiac to the fact that every one dollar invested in reducing food insecurity generates roughly three dollars in economic activity through direct solutions to the problems listed above.
To add insult to injury, as a result of the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” folks may have to re-apply for their SNAP benefits in an effort to mitigate fraud (state SNAP agencies already require recipients to update their employment, income, and other personal information as often as every six months). The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that about four million Americans will see their benefits eliminated or significantly reduced as a result of these new requirements. This includes children, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities. There is such an impact that Depression-era foods have been enjoying a bit of a renaissance on social media, with influencers posting reels on how to make the likes of pork cake or water pie. I’m not sure whether to grin at the creativity, or frown at the aching suspicion that we have found ourselves on some sort of retrograde train to the worst chapters in our history.
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Is it a blessing or a curse for the catalyst towards action being the elect stooping to the lowest of lows just to prove a point? Reverend Sara Smith, our President and CEO, seems optimistic. “The social safety net is torn apart - but people who are giving money, food, time and effort to help us care for our neighbors are the heroes who are becoming the new social safety net. This may be the silver lining to all the pain and hardship. We are learning how to be a compassionate caring community again.”
The outpouring of support from our community over the past several weeks has been substantial and moving. Schools and local businesses have been putting on food drives for us that have continued even after the government shutdown ended. Generous monetary donations, often from anonymous folks who simply stumbled across us online, have been coming in left and right. Perhaps it’s always been the way that most of the work we do around here gets done--rolled up sleeves, grassroots…Perhaps, there’s no better example of this than our Thanksgiving Feast-In-A-Box, which happened this past Saturday, and saw 500 of our neighbors in need and their families (totalling 5,000 meals) receiving a box with all of the fixings they needed to prepare Thanksgiving dinner in their own homes. Countless donations and dozens of volunteers came together from all over Fairfield County to carry out this mammoth act of service.
We recently asked one of our neighbors what our Super Food Pantry means to them. They responded, “... means the difference between starving most of the month…” As long as our neighbors are responding like this, as long as our community continues to show up and knit together a new net of compassion, nOURish BRIDGEPORT will continue to feed our neighbors with food, love, and hope.