Government Shutdown Sparks Food Crisis | Virginia Mothers Open Community Pantry - Vídeo Dailymotion

Ver Government Shutdown Sparks Food Crisis | Virginia Mothers Open Community Pantry - Diario As en Dailymotion

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00:00I think it's important that we remember that humans deserve to have food and water and housing

00:23and medical care for free. Those are things, but I think that historically we've taken

00:29those things and commodified it to now where the people who need it most can't get it.

00:34And when we look at who is a part of these communities, it's always been the marginalized.

00:39It's always been the disabled.

00:54When I left TV, I got a snap and it kind of is one of those things of these are supplemental

01:00resources that help.

01:06I know what it's like to give my kids food and not eat for the night.

01:10I know what it's like to make sure that at the end of the day, my kids have all that they

01:15need while I go without.

01:33We really believe that during this time where the government has their hands in a lot of

01:37pots on how people can eat, we wanted to create a resource for people to just come with no

01:43judgment because we know what it's like to be in that situation.

01:46We both were unhoused at one point because of domestic violence and we needed resources.

01:57I'm concerned, right?

01:59I know that I have community that isn't going to let me go hungry.

02:03And I know for me, if we have the resources to crowdfund, you know, food for people, we're

02:09going to make sure that we help.

02:11Because an HBCU would fit a lot of these students, all of them are brown, all of them.

02:18So in looking at that, this shut down, like there's so many other things that you could

02:24have pulled back on, you know, cut off other than people's food source when they have none.

02:31We're not relying on systems right now, clearly.

02:44This is the new foundation, the foundation of community, the foundation of understanding

02:50what community means and how you support each other.

02:53One of the things that I always remind people is that you can never look at someone and tell

03:08that they are actually hungry.

03:11And when you're assessing hunger, the question is, have I had enough to eat today or do I have

03:16access to enough?

03:17And you can't tell that by looking at someone.

03:28We know that households with children are the highest percentage of SNAP recipients in

03:33the country.

03:34And so you think of the benefit that those SNAP allotments, as we're going through several

03:38waves of the pandemic, we're still dealing with price inflation.

03:42We were dealing with supply chain shortages.

03:45So there was a lot of compounding issues, again, that those SNAP emergency allotments allowed

03:49us to see our way through.

03:51Now what we're hearing from families is that this is not enough.

03:54Food is a basic human right, whether however you align yourself politically, people still need

04:08to eat.