On AM Joy this morning, host Tiffany Cross highlighted the shocking number of Americans in food lines while Trump golfs and Sen. Mitch McConnell stays on vacation. She showed B-roll footage of a heartbreakingly long line of cars she saw at a Silver Spring, Maryland food bank.
“37 million Americans were estimated to be food insecure in 2019,” Cross said. “That was precoronavirus. What we’re seeing now, it’s just, it’s incomprehensible.”
Cross asked guest Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, if he could offer any hope or help to the millions of suffering Americans. Berg recommended people apply for food stamps (SNAP) and WIC benefits which, he said, “dwarf the charities.”
But Berg also stressed the need for a people’s movement to demand the Senate pass the relief package known as the Heroes Act.
I know Silver Spring, Maryland well. It's a suburb of Washington, D.C. I lived there for a decade in the '90s and Montgomery County, where it's located, is really a microcosm of the United States. In some respects, it's one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. It has very wealthy communities, like Potomac, Maryland. But Silver Spring, even before this crisis, had a lot of working-poor people who just didn't earn enough to feed their families. and now that has skyrocketed with schools being closed and no more school meals, senior centers being closed, with no more senior-center meals, a huge spike in unemployment.
And so while Mitch McConnell has taken a vacation and while the president has gone on repeated golfing trips, hunger doesn't take a vacation. Hunger doesn't take golf trips. And while we want to press the Democrats to come through on this and really be forceful, and I watched your previous segment very carefully and know that the Democrats need to deliver not just for people of color, who are struggling against poverty, but also white working-class people in swing states who are among the poorest people in America in swing states. …
This act that passed the House would provide $133 million in food aid to Kentucky and over $700 million of food aid to Florida. So people should stand up, push their senators, their Republican senators to pass this food aid. They can contact organizations like ours at Hunger Free America, hungerfreeamerica.org. … We have a comprehensive guide for where they can get help.
