With the news that unemployment has reached 8.1% in the United States, the nation’s food banks are putting out an urgent call for donations to help deal with the increased demand for their services. The number of participants in the Supplemental Nutrition, formerly known as food stamps, program is up 27.5%, while demand at food banks is up 30% from last year.
“These are truly staggering and frightening figures,” said Vicki Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America. “Just three months ago we released a new survey that showed that the 200 food banks we serve are experiencing an average increase in demand of more than 30 percent in the past year. Unemployment was cited as the primary factor for the increased demand. Many Americans are relying on food banks for assistance while they are waiting for their unemployment or SNAP benefits to arrive. Our food banks tell us they simply cannot provide enough food to all of the people who need help. A terrible situation has just become much worse.”
Despite the fact that corporate America and the Obama administration have both stepped up their aid efforts, food banks are still facing a daunting challenge, as growing numbers of Americans are requiring their services. I think that stories such as this one provide a stark reminder about who is really hurt the most by an economic downturn. Every day we see more stories about Wall Street’s suffering due to this recession, but the unreported story that doesn’t get the headlines is the story of middle class people who are falling into poverty, and the working poor, who previously were teetering on poverty, and now find themselves unable to afford food.
These are the people that the Republicans and Wall Street are attacking when they complain about the budget deficit, or the increase in government spending. The people who need help the most are the ones who are least talked about. They are the person who makes your food, or stocks the shelves at the grocery store. They are the retail worker whose store has closed. They are the elderly and disabled who subsist on a fixed income. These aren’t bad people. They are people for whom even the good times are a struggle, but bad times are devastating.
I am 24 years old, a college student, and would be considered one of the so-called “working poor” (I made less than $12,000 last year – and I have that term. Poor is a label now that designates a class that conservatives and righties either denounce or treat like we don’t exist.) and having worked in retail and food service for the last several years while trying to put myself through school… I’ve come to the conclusion that its nigh impossible to do it on your own anymore. My fiancee and I (who have lived together for 3 years now) still have to live with roommates, have no clear plan on how someday we might be able to live with out them, because quite simply there isn’t any way we can make enough money and still go to school without having to subsist entirely on ramen noodles and tuna, or borrowing money from our parents, which might be an option for some people… but our parents aren’t rich either. Both of our parents are late baby boomer generation middle class types. My dad is a tech writer and his dad drives for UPS. Both of our mothers still work… my mother as a writer and fitness consultant (ironically enough, my liberal self-employed parents had to give up that status so that my dad could take a job with health insurance because my mother is terminally ill… and still working) His mother drives a bus for her local school district… and his parents are considering selling their house because of the insane interest rates they are being forced to pay nowadays. These people have slaved every day of their lives to have that house and make it their own… and now it may have to go. One of my roommates, a construction worker, has been without work for 4 months, unemployment is witholding his pay for another 2 weeks because he supposedly overdrew last year (when even what he supposedly overdrew was barely enough for him to get by on) and he has been subsisting on food given to him by his mother (who volunteers at a soup kitchen) and eating at his girlfriend’s house, if he’s lucky. He finally broke down and went to a food bank yesterday after running out of the food his mother gave him. My uncle, a limo driver in Sonoma, CA is barely able to afford his rent now – or his student loan payments – because no one is hiring limos nowadays. I myself, the waitress, can barely get the 3-4 shifts a week I need to survive… and those 3-4 shifts are hardly enough now because tips are not what they used to be. I guess this somewhat long story about my friends and relatives may not be interesting,,, but its real. I’m so tired of hearing these rich Wall Street motherfuckers (pardon me, but I can’t think of a better name for those greedy assholes) and all the other rich white assholes whine. This is the biggest problem I think – that their whining matters. We should have taken these giants and dismantled them years ago, selling them off bit by corrupt bit and barring the CEOs and executives of these companies who have literally raped an entire middle class of their savings and bribed Washington into almost total deregulation and… I can’t even talk about it anymore. What they have done to this country is criminal and I need – the country needs – to see someone else pay for a change. I vote for the motherfuckers.
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IT IS SO FAST
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