When I first got wind that I’d be losing my SNAP benefits to the government shutdown, I was scared, but not surprised. It seemed like a natural function of the shutdown. I’d never been in this position before — I didn’t know that in the past, SNAP benefits were protected throughout shutdowns.
Then I found out. And I got angry. Our country has pretended for decades that hunger is a problem that doesn’t touch U.S. soil. We focus on “ending world hunger,” on the importance of feeding people in foreign nations that haven’t been embraced by the glories of globalization. Surely in our capitalist utopia, no one is going hungry. Every grocery store you walk into has rows and rows of every food you could imagine. Farmers are proximal, and sure, eggs are expensive, but they’re here. We’re not facing a food shortage.
Still, American citizens cannot afford to eat. My family can’t afford to feed ourselves with nutritious food every meal of the day, every day of the month. Sometimes a trip to Taco Bell for a $5 beefy 5-layer burrito is more cost-effective than crafting a meal for ourselves at home. Not to mention, when you’re working, going to school, caring for your home, and making time for activities that feed your soul, you don’t always want to surrender your precious time at home to make a meal.
It might sound ridiculous if you’ve never been there, but if you have, you know how valuable it is to get a small amount of money from the government each month to help you buy food that meets your needs. I use $25 of my SNAP benefits each month on 5 frozen meals that offer me over 40g of protein each, and when I don’t have them stocked, I feel it. I feel the panic of “What am I going to eat for lunch today?” or “What if everyone in the office notices that I’m skipping a meal?” It’s embarrassing. And it hurts.
It hurts so terribly to know that while politicians were busy fighting over (albeit important) funding decisions, Americans were forced to go hungry. That was a power play. It was meant to strike fear and submission in the hearts of politicians fighting for what they thought was an equitable budget, and to turn U.S. citizens against the Democrats who were fighting for mere health insurance protections.
At the end of the day, I don’t care what the fight was about. I don’t care whose fault it was that the government shut down. I don’t care that Republicans control the House and the Senate. I care that our federal government chose to fund agencies like ICE during the shutdown, but not our most crucial food assistance program. Roughly 1 in 8 Americans rely on SNAP benefits to help provide food for their families. The government allowed us to go hungry. They starved us to feed their political agenda. And we won’t forget it.
What I also won’t forget is the importance of community. The government might’ve tossed us aside, but people in our communities remembered us. Food banks were flooded with resources, and I myself was able to receive free meals at CU with the Swipe-It-Forward donated meal plan program. Even my landlord went out of his way to provide food for my family. My heart is warmed by the enormous impact of sharing human love and compassion during this time. We may not be able to rely on our nation’s leaders, but we can rely on each other.
There’s so much to be said about the power of small-scale community resource-pooling and mobilization, but I’ll leave it at this: We know now, at least I know now, that the government will starve us to prove a point. But they can’t starve us of human kindness — we have a great capacity to support one another. We must embrace seemingly small-scale impacts rather than focus on the power-wielding going on in D.C. We are capable of making change despite the hurdles that the federal government forces us to face. They want us divided, when what we need more than ever is to stick together. Out of all the lessons to be learned from this shutdown, the power of community is what we must take to heart most.