Hunger gnaws in richest country
The pandemic that tore through America’s heartland struck just as Aaron Crawford was in a moment of crisis. He was looking for work, his wife needed surgery, then the virus started eating away at her pay.
The Crawfords had no savings, mounting bills and a growing dread: What if they ran out of food? The couple had two boys, 5 and 10, and boxes of macaroni and cheese from the dollar store could go only so far.
A 37-year-old United States Navy veteran, Crawford saw himself as selfreliant. Asking for food made him uncomfortable. “I felt like I was a failure,” he says. “It’s this whole stigma . . . this mindset that you’re this guy who can’t provide for his family, that you’re a deadbeat.”
Hunger is a harsh reality in the richest country in the world, even during times of prosperity. Now, with staggering job losses and business closings, millions of Americans are worried about empty refrigerators and barren cupboards.
Feeding America, the nation’s largest anti-hunger organisation, has never handed out so much food so fast — 4.2 billion meals from March to October. The organisation has seen a 60 per cent average increase in food bank users during the pandemic; about four in 10 are firsttimers.
An AP analysis of Feeding America data from 181 food banks in its network found the organisation has distributed nearly 57 per cent more food in the third quarter of the year, compared with the same period in 2019.
Those fighting hunger say they’ve never seen anything like this in America.
Across the country, cars line up for kilometres to wait for food handouts, each driver waiting hours for a box or bag of food. In New York, and other large cities, people stand, waiting for blocks on end.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, Norman Butler and his girlfriend, Cheryl, arrived at 3am at a drivethrough food bank in New Orleans. They joined a pre-dawn procession of mothers with their kids, the elderly and folks like him — unemployed workers.
Before the pandemic, Butler, 53, worked as an airport shuttle and limousine driver, a valet and hotel doorman. Since March when the normally bustling streets turned silent, jobs have been scarce in the city. “A lot of people are in limbo. The main thing we need is to get back to work.”
For communities of colour, the pandemic has been a compound disaster with blacks and Latinos
reeling from disproportionately high rates of deaths, infections — and joblessness.
Unemployment surged among Latinos to 18.9 per cent this northern spring, higher than any other racial and ethnic group, according to federal statistics. Though it has since fallen, many are still struggling.
More than one in five black and Latino adults with children said as of July 2020 they sometimes or often did not have enough to eat, according to a September report commissioned by the Food Research and Action Centre. That was double the rate of white and Asian households. It also found that women, households with children and people of colour are at greatest risk of hunger.