After 11 days of hurting people’s ability to eat and survive, the government shutdown ended, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, food assistance, were restored to all Americans.
41.7 million Americans receive SNAP benefits, and Trump and his co-workers denied all of them the right to eat. And due to the passage of his “big, beautiful bill”, millions of those Americans are going to have their SNAP benefits cut indefinitely.
During the government shutdown, people were stuck without knowing when the government would restore their funds. With the aid cut, they had to choose between food and other essentials like healthcare, childcare, and rent. Their lives were disregarded in favor of politicians’ agendas.
Even ordinary people were spreading arguments in favor of Trump. He is not coming to save you. He is incredibly dangerous. Trump and other Republicans were willing to cut the ability to eat for the one in eight Americans who receive SNAP benefits, what do you think they are willing to do to you?
Many brought up the decades-old stereotypes of people on SNAP benefits that derive from hatred against Black women. The stereotype came from the Ronald Reagan presidency, and spread that SNAP recipients are Black women who have multiple baby daddies, multiple kids, and don’t work a job. It was created to convince Americans that SNAP should not exist, even though millions of Americans could not afford food, a basic human need.
And now, this new wave of presidential admirers is using AI to create FAKE videos of Black female SNAP recipients, and they are passing them as real. Broadcaster Brittany Hughes and many others are doing this to argue that SNAP being cut during the shutdown is good, and that Trump and his administration should not be despised. They attempt to be louder than the tons of people who are screaming for basic human empathy and protection.
The reality is that white people are the largest racial group receiving SNAP benefits, 40 percent of SNAP recipients are children, many SNAP recipients without jobs are disabled or elderly, and a majority of adult recipients of SNAP are in families with one person working.
Unlearn what the American Nightmare/Dream told you: people are not poor because they do not work hard enough. People work multiple jobs, adding up to over 40 hours a week, and they are still poor. They are poor because our capitalistic system keeps them poor, so rich people and billionaires can have a group of people who work for low wages because they do not have a choice.
Even if the majority of people who received SNAP did fit the stereotype and were not hardworking, isn’t the right to eat something that everyone deserves? Especially when there are billionaires who could eat nine times a day for the rest of their lives and still have a fortune left.
Thankfully, in the crisis, there were brave people who brought the vision of food equity to life. Even when SNAP benefits were being funded, many organizations already did food justice work, because the government’s assistance is often not enough to pay for food. Even though organizations like these are often underfunded and underresourced, in the midst of increased government abandonment, they doubled down on their work to keep their communities fed.
The Food Justice Coalition in Utah partnered with 13 other food organizations, mostly minority-owned, to provide completely free and tasty meals to anyone who needed them.
Locally, the nonprofit Rainbow Pride Youth Alliance began a Community Food Box Distribution where people could receive free food and groceries.
There was also support amongst people who weren’t involved in organizations. People encouraged each other to send their loved ones and strangers money for groceries and to cook meals for them. They also donated to food banks and food justice organizations because these organizations had their demand spike due to the SNAP cut. On Halloween, the day before the SNAP cut, people had boxes of groceries outside their door for people to pick up, along with candy.
These people and organizations are true examples of how to care for people. When the government is lacking in examples, we need to turn to people who are doing community work to learn and create ways to care for our fellow human beings. We also need to support their work so they can be strong for the next crisis, because with this administration, it is definitely coming.