Heaping Tables, Long Aid Lines
By: Terry Schwadron
Tags: Unemployment, Table, Thanksgiving, Coronavirus, Hunger

Terry H. Schwadron

Nov. 23, 2020

Amid all the hoopla surrounding the safety this year of Thanksgiving get-togethers, what persists is the imagery of a table glutinously laden with food, so much more than the gathered family can eat that there are pictures of the leftovers too.

Every year, those pictures and over-concern with more and more food makes me uncomfortable, but in this year, in which a global pandemic is creating long lines from food need alone, they seem highly inappropriate. We’re busily swapping recipes, building bigger desserts and photoshopping our latest meals to post on social media while the numbers of those without day-to-day supplies are building.

Not to be a buzzkill here, but why can’t we tamp down the overload to remember that one of four American households have experience food insecurity this year.

Even before the pandemic hit, NPR reminds us, 13.7 million households, or 10.5% of all U.S. households or 35 million Americans experienced food insecurity at some point during 2019, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Job loss and furloughs from the pandemic’s effects have worsened that situation.

One estimate by researchers at Northwestern University says food insecurity more than doubled this year, hitting upwards of 23% of households. Perhaps we should be seeing more images of the lines at food banks and food drive-through pickup locations to drive the point home.

The medical establishment is making Thanksgiving all about necessary public health precautions, warning us to stay in our own homes and avoid travel. The political world is pitting perceptions about rugged American individualism and choice against government rules to govern our behavior.

But what persists here is a reality that hunger is growing — and we’re not paying sufficient attention.

Trump Policies

There’s been more concern through the Trump years of cutting food stamps than there has been for ensuring that people are eating. This administration’s answers to all have revolved around tax cuts, reduced government services and hope that the marketplace provides both jobs and support for those who cannot work.

At one point, the administration was moving to strike recipients of food stamps for not being able to work — amid shutdowns prompted by local governments responding to the pandemic. This is not only ineffective government, but cruelty.

The current continuing impasse over a coronavirus aid package only underscores a Republican belief, despite the obvious, that the pandemic is receding amid prospects for emergent vaccines, and that the economic is snapping back into shape in a sharp V-shape that is as fantastic as the idea that Trump won the election.

Meanwhile, food lines grow. In my own Harlem neighborhood, there are multiple church-front food sites, all volunteer community efforts, to hand out food in an area where 40% of the small businesses have closed or face extinction.

Among the biggest issues facing New York City in re-closing public schools this last week was the prospect of losing at least one hot meal a day for a million students.

Those USDA figures from before the pandemic show that Black and Brown neighborhoods disproportionately affected, with 19% of Black households and 16% of Hispanic households experiencing food insecurity as compared with a half that among Whites. There are similar disparities among those without high school diplomas as compared with graduates of high school or college.

About 19 million Americans are charted as living in food “deserts,” lacking transportation to larger grocery stores and paying higher prices for worse food.

Thanksgiving 2020

The holidays this year will prove difficult for all with the pandemic. But it will be worse for those who are worried that getting food the day before and the day after Thanksgiving has become a chore.

The same is true across the globe, of course, where hunger figures also are doubling.

Food insecurity — a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life — had been steadily falling before pandemic. But now, as economic instability and a health crisis takes over, new estimates point to some of the worst rates of food insecurity in the United States in years.

Yet the magazines and television images of holiday meals are not suggesting any restrictions. The imagery continues to promote the outdated notion over over-flowing tables with endless, day-long eating.

It would be a good signal for our leaders to use the holidays to suggest thinking about our neighbors.

But caring about eating is probably a lot like promoting the use of masks. For many, caring about one’s own independence and tradition tops thinking about others.

How about we Make America Eat Again and just donate the cost of the meal to those who need it most.

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www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com