In 2008 I worked as the co-manager of an all-volunteer local food bank. During that economic turndown we were feeding approximately one thousand families each month. Clients had lost jobs, homes and/or had come into tough times due to circumstances beyond their control. It was disheartening to look into the eyes of people who had lost everything. These were people who wanted to work but most importantly wanted to feed their children.
I fail to understand the cold comfort they would feel by having a multi-million-dollar ballroom built at the White House to entertain their president’s rich friends. Surely the struggling people who cannot get federal food programs to feed the nation’s unemployed, disabled, homeless and children must feel betrayed by their leadership.
It would be enlightening if our elected officials (our civil servants) were required to assist helpless hungry families and experience their desperation — parents eating less or going without food to feed their children or elders, giving their pets to animal shelters because they couldn’t afford to feed them. One elderly woman wanted to give me her best friend, and companion, her precious little blind dog, because she did not have the means to feed it. We are the United States of America — not Democrats or Republicans!
Your political party means nothing to a hungry citizen who has lost all they had. I would love to see members of this administration, including the president and vice-president, put in one shift at their local grocery store and learn what work really is. They could watch people put back items that put them over the amount they had; and the president could find out what people must pay for milk, eggs, and bread, which he promised to lower if elected.
Kathryn K. Jones, Bountiful