The ugliness under SNAP’s veil and the beauty of sharing our food
The goodness of people’s hearts and willingness show up for each other is good soil that grows community and builds democracy.
I’ve never seen the threat of hunger hit the headlines in every American news outlet, including late-night comedy, the way it did in the past few weeks. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was interesting only to policy wonks and a handful of public health professionals like me. Now, it’s central to the discussion of the ever-growing ineptitude of the current administration. I struggled to get people to pay attention to SNAP. Now, I’ve been inundated with press inquiries: “What is SNAP?” “What are the implications of withholding SNAP payments?” and so on. But I wish I could get to what I really want to talk about: How our government’s moral decrepitude is sparking a revolution of values based on compassion and care.
But first, it’s important to know some SNAP basics:
SNAP is an entitlement.
There was no legal justification for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to withhold SNAP payments. Because SNAP is an entitlement, funds must always be available. That’s why there were almost $5 billion in SNAP contingency funds.
SNAP has always relied on bi-partisan support.
SNAP helps the most vulnerable Americans buy food.
People with incomes below 130% of the federal poverty line (FPL) are eligible for SNAP. Some states provide SNAP up to 200% FPL.
An average of 42 million people participate in SNAP. (More than 90% are U.S. citizens. The remainder are immigrants with legal residential status who have been in the United States at least five years. About one-third of participants are white; almost 40% are children, 19% are seniors, and 1.2 million are veterans)
SNAP promotes health and wellbeing.
SNAP stimulates the economy.
For every $1 spent on SNAP, $1.79 gets generated in the local economy.
Lift the veil, however, and you’ll see some ugliness. More details are in my book, “The Painful Truth About Hunger in America,” but here’s a whiff of what’s underneath: SNAP pimps poor people to large corporations to enhance their profits. In my previous Contrarian essay, I explained how Walmart, America’s largest employer, profits by keeping wages low in order to get the U.S. government to cover for its stinginess through SNAP and Medicaid benefits. It’s no wonder that Walmart’s owners, the Walton family, are among the richest families on earth. Consider the flip side: Most low-wage earners are women, primarily women of color, and primary caregivers of children. It’s not solely low wages and no health care that are problematic, but also the lack of labor supports such as paid family leave. Low wages are gendered and racialized. Right wing think-tanks refer to this dynamic as SNAP “dependency,” as if it’s low-wage people’s fault that Walmart and others are scrooges.
Consider this moral code embedded in SNAP, then look at the president and his sycophants.
The night before illegally denying SNAP benefits, an almost-naked woman danced and jiggled inside a giant spinning metal martini glass at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Great Gatsby Party. “The Great Gatsby” book warns its readers of the lethal harms of greed. Trump and his invitees, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, feel no shame. Many commented on their ugly theme choice, yet there’s no sign of remorse. They seem to get sadistic pleasure in flaunting their over-the-top trifling.
Why should they have remorse when this kind of frivolous wealth is what we celebrate in America? To be blunt: Our society encourages Trump’s greedy, party-down, grab-her-by-the-pussy behavior. We give him and his creepy associates all the attention they crave. Many Republicans do this, too. They voted to increase costs of health care while giving even more tax breaks to the rich and greedy, and, because of fears of what’s to come out from Epstein’s pedo-files, they chose to shut down the government while continuing to collect their paychecks and furlough government workers—and worse, force them to work without pay and line up at the food pantry.
This moral decrepitude is not isolated nor new; it’s part of a larger call to cowardice. Revelers range from legislators trying to restrict voting rights and white guys signing up for Immigration and Customs Enforcement cosplay, who mask up to throw down and handcuff women and children or anybody suspiciously brown. It includes all Republican members of the House who shut down the government while ghosting their Democrat colleagues. Then, while the country’s chips were down, they sneak in potentially millions of dollars in cash prizes for cheering on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
We’ve seen this kind of violence before when the U.S. government starved Indigenous people into submission, pushing them off their hunting, fishing, and farming lands and forcing them at gunpoint to tiny reservations where they were given rations of rancid beef and pest-infested flour. We also saw this during times of reconstruction after supposed emancipation when the red shirts murdered Black people who showed up to the polls. There’s always been a group of people willing to transgress basic human decency to join government-sanctioned violence.
This is why I invite everyone to join the Mass Blackout Nov. 25-Dec. 2. We can hit these greedy bastards where it hurts. Simultaneously, we can shift how we build our economy and work toward a new type of democracy. The blackout magnifies raw American solidarity.
These past few weeks have seen an outpouring of kindness and care as people share food, money, and other resources. Black Farmers and non-profit leaders in Mississippi, North Carolina, and Georgia donated free produce and meals to their neighbors, no questions asked. Black-owned nongovernmental organizations, such as Gardening the Community, and restaurants in Massachusetts have done the same. Regular folks are becoming grocery buddies to their neighbors. Similarly, Philadelphia mutual aid networks and city leaders who know how to provide food and protect families from utility shut-offs have been igniting their care. Serving meals in the park are the stalwarts of the continuously active Black Panther Party. Queer organizers are helping their friends. And, as always, native communities, such as the Colville Confederated Tribes and Indigenous communities from Oregon and Washington State, along with the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Osage in Oklahoma, are feeding others as if they are kin.
This is the key, my friends. Treat everyone as kin—as someone we care for, cherish, and nourish. During this SNAP crisis, I’ve been in awe of the American people and how they emerged to help their neighbors who are struggling to buy food. Of course, these pop-ups of kindness can’t meet the needs of millions of families living in poverty, but they’re a sign that our society has widespread elements of caring, compassion, and mutuality as our government systems implode. The goodness of people’s hearts and willingness show up for each other is good soil that grows community and builds democracy.
Thank you to those who came out to feed your neighbors. You are bringing forth beautiful values that will save us all.
Mariana Chilton is author of “The Painful Truth about Hunger in America: Why we Must Unlearn Everything We Think We Know and Start Again.”
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It's always the poor people who give the most. Where were the Gatsby partygoers' wallets when federal workers, thrown out of their jobs or working without pay, checked their resources to see how much we could afford to give to food banks? Yes, many civil servants are the working poor, and many hit food banks themselves. If you're not a greedy rich bastard, you, too, can write a check to your local community action center.
We donate nonperishable food items to our church and they distribute it to the local food pantry and also to a children’s shelter as well.