Food banks need help to weather ‘perfect storm’

It’s an expensive time to be alive. Gas has reached an all-time high. Inflation keeps on rising. Grocery bills are draining wallets. By one measure, Americans are paying $460 per month more to buy the same things they did last year. It’s hard to imagine how many people have already been pushed beyond their breaking point.

And when it becomes a burden to buy food for your own family, it becomes especially infeasible to buy extra food to donate.

So it’s no surprise then that donations to several local food banks have dropped. For Boulder’s Emergency Family Assistance Association the situation is getting dire.

“The current cost of living is putting the squeeze on many in our community, and we speculate that that’s having an impact on our donations,” EFAA Communications Manager Julia Woods said in an email.

And while inventory at food banks has gone down, visits to the food bank have only gone up.

“This shortage comes at a time when we are seeing more visits to the food bank than during the worst of the pandemic. It’s sort of a perfect storm,” Woods said.

It can be hard to imagine Boulder as a place of need. It is, by most metrics, affluent and healthy. But the fact is 12% of children here are food insecure. That’s 9,000 kids who can’t count on their next meal. Zooming out, some 46,000 people are hungry in Boulder and Broomfield counties.

Pair these numbers with the stark reality that 30% to 50% of all food produced in the U.S. is thrown out, and it’s hard not to feel like more could be done. In fact, according to a 2016 food waste audit from the Boulder Food Rescue and researchers at CU Boulder, “there is likely more than enough good food being discarded in Boulder and Broomfield counties to meet the caloric needs of all of the food-insecure individuals in the area.”

Solving all of these problems when they need to be solved — now — is not going to happen. To do that, cities, counties and the country as a whole would need to take decisive action and prioritize the right to food as a foundational need in the right to life that is guaranteed in our founding documents.

For now, it is time for those who can — people, businesses, organizations, cities and counties — to step up and make sure our local food banks are stocked. Make sure there is no demand that is not met. Make sure that, as best we can, no child — no person — ever has to worry about where their next meal will come from.

Democracy in the U.S. is under strong attack. According to Nancy Maclean’s book, “Democracy In Chains,” very wealthy and powerful people in the U.S. are working to dominate the Country. They have gained control of the Republican Party and now the U.S. Supreme Court. Women can no longer control their own bodies and the Environmental Protection Agency is no longer allowed to work against Global Warming and for the protection of air quality.

We still have the power to vote, although it is also under attack by many Republican and a few Democratic politicians. Our votes have never been more important. We need to vote en masse and ignore lies told by the wealthy on public media and through slick advertisements. Involvement in politics may not be fun, but an informed voting public is needed to save democracy. It cannot be left to others.

The detailed plan of Charles Koch for the demise of democracy in the U.S. was uncovered by Maclean and explained in her book.

Important voices from the past can be heard on Democracy Now’s July 4, 2022, program. whether or not to conceive babies, would be able to afford to raise them, would love them and would have supportive, helpful mates. They would all have whole, healthy babies.

But this is not a perfect world. In 1931, my grandmother was murdered by her father-in-law, because she wouldn’t have sex with him. My mother was an 8-month-old baby at the time. She never knew her mother, an outgoing, comely woman who was said to enjoy singing.

The killer was sent to prison. When he was finally released, other family members, including six daughters, made certain he wasn’t allowed near us young girls.

It happened in Texas, which has already made abortions, even for incest or rape, very difficult to get. How is that fair in this imperfect world? If my murdered grandmother hadn’t resisted, would she have been forced to carry an unwanted child?

How many women today will be coerced to carry babies they didn’t choose to conceive, because they weren’t physically strong enough to resist, because their mates didn’t use condoms, or they couldn’t get birth control help?