My mom cried as a first year teacher when she realized many of her students were food insecure. She put a snack pantry in her class and has had one ever since.
My sister cried with anger as a first year teacher because of how few of her students grew up without being exposed to violence, poverty, and neglect.
My dad didn’t cry as a first year teacher, but was convinced he was the worst teacher ever for 4 years straight. (He wasn’t)
My aunt was exhausted for the first year because her students were convinced she’d only be at their school for one year and then move to a better paying school district like all of their other new teachers. She spent the entire time teaching, actively gaining trust, and calming anxieties.
Some of these things are not technically school related, but have an impact on students in the classroom. As new teachers, my relatives got varying levels of support. New teachers need better support.
3 quit at my old job because they didn’t feel like they were getting the pay or support that was appropriate for what they were doing in the classroom. All of the teachers I have encountered pay for many of their own supplies. Many take time before or after school to check up on students they feel are at risk.
There are teachers that have students live with them or end up fostering students. My mom fostered 2 students and had another 2 live with us.
What many teachers do on the job isn’t as supported as it could be. They aren’t paid like they should.
Did I mention that a lot of the first year teachers I have worked with qualify for SNAP benefits and/or WIC? 😦
This post has 2k notes.
Re: Why Teachers Provide Snacks (at my work)
ALL of the teachers I work with at my school provide snacks to students.
We’re a Title I school. This means almost all of our students are food insecure. It’s unreasonable to expect food insecure families to provide their own snacks to school.
ALL of the teachers and many of our other staff members provide snacks for their classrooms or offices. Our counselor has snacks in her office. Our health room assistant has snacks in her office. Our principal has snacks in his office. Our vice principal has snacks in her office. The office professionals have small snacks available as well.
Our new teachers usually can’t afford to do this, so veteran teachers and support staff often chip in.
When students DON’T have access to snacks, they get tired. Our students can’t focus. Students get irritable. They’re feeling the effects of hunger and cannot focus on their work. We see escalated behaviors because kids are hungry.
Providing food not only prevents some problems from happening, but it’s The Right Thing To Do.
Many of our students’ Only Guaranteed Meals are at school. School meals are not designed to provide a child’s only source of nutrition. The caloric value of school lunches isn’t enough. So—Kids get snacks with lunch. Kids get multiple ‘breaks’ (which they think are ‘‘regular breaks’‘) for snacks.
Anyone who wants a small snack will get one.
We have a Friday Weekend Bag Program, but many families HATE THOSE. Those snack bags come from the Thurston County Food Bank. They only contain shelf stable food since many of our families don’t have a reliable way to cook things. Most of the families decline the bags because the Instant Noodles, Dry Granola Bars, and Vegetable Soup aren’t what they’d eat anyway.
__
A lot of the kids DO want fruit/vegetables. (Downside is if they can’t store those at home). We have some kids who try to hoard milk. <—a problem since many kids don’t have access to reliable refrigeration at home! Our milk ‘‘collecting’‘ kids ALL don’t have reliable refrigeration since they’re in living situations that don’t have refrigerators or freezers.
We provide snacks for the kids because we need to.
My Personal Project this coming school year is connecting My School with local nonprofit Fairshare Food Share Resource. It’s a group of volunteers who harvest small amounts of fruit and vegetables and give them away. They’re for smaller home gardeners who aren’t up for sending items directly to our food bank system due to time/health issues/etc.
The Thurston County Food Bank is expanding our school garden this year. I’m hoping that the garden will eventually be a nice Community You Pick for our students and the surrounding neighborhood.
The last big ol’ update had links. I’ll add links to this because food insecurity TICKS ME OFF. It shouldn’t be a thing. We’re fighting food insecurity at my elementary school.
All of my coworkers and all of my now-retired relatives have paid for classroom snacks/pantries With Their Own Money.
Food insecurity is a big issue in the United States.
When our kids aren’t eating enough they are tired, can’t focus, and are irritable. It’s difficult to get work done when you’re feeling the effects of hunger.I’ll post excerpts of some articles below.
Feeding the need: Expanding school lunch programs
“Schools have always been the front line in the battle against
childhood hunger. It started with the National School Lunch Act, signed
by President Truman in 1946, which gave federal money to states to fund
school lunches.Today more than 30 million kids benefit. And yet,
by some estimates at least one in six still doesn’t know where the next
meal is coming from.“School
lunch is no longer this Brady Bunch convenience; it is a soup kitchen,”
said Jennifer Ramo, of the New Mexico anti-poverty group Appleseed.“It
is a place where kids who haven’t eaten at night or haven’t eaten that
weekend, go to get basic nutrition so they can function. I think
we just have no idea how big the problem is and how many children are
suffering. And the best thing to do is just must make sure they’re fed.”Growing Hunger in Schools is a Growing Problem (2012)
“What do parents tell their kids on the first day of school – stay
out of trouble, do your homework, and listen to your teachers,” Nelson
said.“That’s our message today: listen to your teachers. What are they
telling us? Hunger needs to be a national priority.”One in five children struggle with hunger nationwide and six out of
ten teachers report students regularly coming to school hungry. According to 80 percent of those teachers, the problem is only getting worse.Educators realize the toll hunger takes on students. Nine in ten
teachers consider breakfast to be “extremely important” to academic
achievement. Fifty-three percent of teachers spend an average $26 of
their own money each month providing snacks for their students.”Reading, writing and hunger: More than 13 million kids in this country go to school hungry
“There
is tremendous stigma of children going into a cafeteria before the
bell,” said McAuliffe, “whereas with the alternative breakfast model, it
normalizes it, creates community in the classroom around a meal, and
starts the day off strong.”Underscoring the crucial impact a
healthy breakfast can have, a 2013 study done by Deloitte for No Kid
Hungry found that kids who have regular access to breakfast score 17.5
percent higher on standardized math tests.Breakfast and lunch
programs in schools are making great strides in attacking childhood
hunger, but a huge gap remains. According to No Kid Hungry, a quarter of
all low-income parents worry their kids don’t have enough to eat
between school lunch and breakfast the next day; and three out of four
public school teachers say students regularly come to school hungry.Increasingly, advocates are focusing on programs that ensure kids have
enough to eat when they are not in school, and after school and summer
meal programs are on the rise.”Yep. My school is poor enough that it has all the kids on free breakfast and lunch, and nearly every teacher has a box of protein bars or fruit snacks or something to give to hungry kids in their classroom. We all buy them with our own money. How fucked are we as a society that this is pretty much normal at all the poorer schools?
A lot of our school funding is through property taxes. Low income areas have lower taxes which means lower funding for their neighborhood schools. It sucks.
Schools in high poverty areas are Title I schools. Almost every school in my district is Title I.
ALL public schools should be properly funded and NO ONE should be food insecure. (my 2 cents)
Further reading for anyone interested:
Why America’s Schools Have A Money Problem
Is It Time to Stop Funding Schools With Local Property Taxes?
School Funding Inequality Makes Education ‘Separate And Unequal,’ Arne Duncan Says
Schools with greater than 40% of families considered low-income are qualified to apply funding to school-wide programming
Federal Title I Funding for Students who Struggle with Literacy
Title I: Rich School Districts Get Millions Meant for Poor Kids
Then there’s schools that are literally falling apart:
I work at one of America’s underfunded schools. It’s falling apart
It’s Not Just Freezing Classrooms in Baltimore. America’s Schools Are Physically Falling Apart
Detroit teachers fed up with shoddy school conditions
Leaking sewage, splintering walls: Parents complain Wake County school is falling apart
Without State Support, Michigan’s Schools Will Continue to Crumble
We’re dealing with students and families that are food insecure:
Food for Thought: How Food Insecurity Affects a Child’s Education
And guys, you know… It doesn’t have to be like this. Teachers like me who teach in other countries know this and are always so shocked when we read about and see what the US, supposedly a leading and not a developing country, is like in education
I always keep our extra snacks from our programs (usually the ones I did not eat or that other children did not open) just in case. I will never forget the four year old girl my third year in this program who would sneak food or her older siblings in third and fifth grade so they also had something to eat, since they gave so much of their portions to her and her little sister.
I straight up fed a few of my kids…
Tag: poverty
TANF Reaching Few Poor Families
“There is strong evidence that TANF’s work requirements and block grant structure exacerbate deep poverty.”
poor people on SNAP or other benefits do not need “healthy eating” rules imposed on them. restricting their food choices doesn’t make them healthier. when we limit what they can buy we limit their access to sufficient calories. “junk food” is dense with calories and provides efficient energy for the body. fruits and vegetables contribute little to meeting total energy needs and their nutritional content isn’t very beneficial when overall calorie intake is too low.
poor people don’t need food rules imposed from on high, they need ENOUGH food and they need regular access to it. i’m so done with these tepid takes (cc: pbs, npr and other liberal media) on getting poor people to eat “healthier” as though that were some kind of anti-oppressive stance… it’s not! are we willing to do what it takes to make all people food-secure, with regular access to enough food that they want and enjoy? that’s the only thing worth talking about
a girl i know told me how a guy she knows once moved out from his parents, ate nothing but fries and meatballs for HALF A YEAR, and got scurvy. imagine the doctor’s face when this guy shows up with like his gums bleeding and the doc has to fucking say DUDE…. THATS SCURVY…. in this day and age
this is turning into a “how a person i know got scurvy” thread and im so here for this, please share your scurvy stories if you have any
the other day someone posted pics from the reddit page r/zerocarbs where these fools only ate meat and 0 vegetables or fruits and all the posts were about various symptoms of scurvy. i died when one literally read ‘i don’t want to start the vitamin C debate again but’
THE VITAMIN C DEBATE
My mother told me all about scurvy when I was five and trying to resist eating pumpkin and let me tell you it’s been 35 years and I still get nervous if I go for two days without eating a green vegetable.
I told my own little picky eater about scurvy, rickets etc and now one of her most frequently requested lunch items is baby spinach, closely followed by carrots.
I’m not saying everyone should mildly traumatize their children to make them understand that vegetables are vital to ongoing possession of your teeth and organs, but.. no, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Go for it.
Isn’t there a story about a college kid who literally only ate ramen noodles and got scruvy because of it?
One of my partner’s friends did basically that in college, but eating almost exclusively the cheapest sacks of rice he could find for months on end. He was that poor for a while. Sounds like a great setup for all kinds of interesting deficiencies, but scurvy was at least what became obvious first.
The solution in that case? Start washing the rice down with the cheapest orange juice he could find, at least once a day 😑
working class person: I’m forced to beg for money and am at the mercy of other people’s goodwill as I’m facing serious suffering and/or death because my wages don’t cover the expenses I need to literally stay alive
friends of working class person: we will scrape together some of our own funds at the possible detriment of our own families because we have no other choice if we don’t want our friend to, and we can’t believe we have to say this out loud, die
media: This Uplifting Story of Friendship Will Brighten Your Day :)) Look As These Brave People Go On Happy With Their Lives Despite Hardship :)) This Story Proves That Poor People Who Complain About Their Standards Of Living Are Just Not Trying Hard Enough :)))
the-emergency-medical-hologram:
i hate when someone says “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies” and some white 21 year old trying to be ‘woke’ says “haha… go ahead and cry your white tears sweatie (:”
no one thinks it’s a racial issue against white people. that’s not why people say to stop that shit. it’s an issue of classism. because the truth is that the majority of y’all who think you’re amazing activists just REALLY fucking hate appalachian people, and i know that because y’all think it’s funny to say “karma’s a bitch!” when something bad happens to an appalachian state.
you don’t care about the poverty in the appalachia and you don’t care about queer people and/or people of color who live in the appalachia. you don’t care about education in the appalachia and you don’t care that these low rates of education mean higher rates of poverty and child poverty, which persist over the years. rural children are twice as likely to live in areas with persistent poverty. you care that poverty stricken children are statistically less likely to not have timely immunizations, have higher delinquency rates, and have lower academic achievement — but only when we’re talking about urban areas outside of the appalachia.
people in our region die earlier than most. mortality rates are higher in the appalachia, and they’re even higher for people of color that live in the appalachia. suicide rates are higher than anywhere else in the country by 17% — it’s 31% higher in central appalachia, and in rural areas within the appalachia, it’s 27% higher than metro appalachia. cancer morality rate is 10% higher, and it’s 15% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. COPD mortality rate is 27% higher, and 55% higher in rural appalachia than metro appalachia. injury mortality rate is 33% higher, and it’s 47% higher in rural appalachia than in metro appalachia. stroke mortality rate is 14% higher — and you guessed it’s, these rates are higher in rural areas vs metro areas by 8%.
the rate of Years of Potential Life Lost, which measures premmature mortality from all causes of death, is 25% higher in appalachia, and 40% higher in rural vs metro areas.
the appalachia has an opioid epidemic. in 2015, our rate of death with drugs was 65% higher than the national average. 69% of those drug deaths were from opioids. these deaths have a connection to our poverty and education rates. the poorer you are, and the less educated you are, the more likely you are to die from an opioid death.
when i say “don’t make jokes about rednecks and hillbillies”, that doesn’t mean i think you’re being racist against white people (and again — the majority of people who claim this also happen to be white 🙄). i say that because you are perpetuating extremely toxic rhetoric about our region, you are promoting stigma, you are encouraging blatant classism, and you are furthering the idea that we somehow “deserve” it because our elected officials vote republican. it’s not cute. stop acting like none of us have the right to call you out on your classist bullshit. like i’m sorry if this comes off as too aggressive but i am sooooo sick of y’all thinking it’s funny that our region is suffering.
and before anyone asks me for resources and links: google exists. i did my research and you can do it too.
here, since y’all are too fucking obnoxiously incapable of taking 2.3 seconds google and instead want to claim I pulled random numbers from my asshole
also here https://www.arc.gov/assets/research_reports/Health_Disparities_in_Appalachia_August_2017.pdf
a big problem with the people who say stuff like this is they don’t realize just how many “rednecks and hillbillies” are non-white. there are so many appalachian and southern POC that also suffer through these conditions but people like to cling to their idea that the only hicks are white hicks, so they couldnt care less if places like WV or KY just fell off the map, and to hell with who it is that’s actually hurting.
people also act like it’s only appalachian and southern whites that voted for trump and that vote republican and it’s not true – half of all white women voted for trump. the rich ones and the poor ones. it’s not a problem that’s tied specifically to southern and appalachian white people but it’s an easy scapegoat and allows people to not think about what they’re actually saying.
as long as they can say that it’s just them shitty racist white hicks that are suffering, then they don’t have to actually care about them. they can ignore them and not do anything to help them. like another person said in the notes, the teacher strike in WV is a better example of leftist organization than a whole lot of the people saying shit about hillbillies have ever done but they don’t care about that because, well, theyre just white hillbillies so what does it matter?
Too relevant, yet again: THE LEGACY OF SOCIAL DARWINISM IN APPALACHIAN SCHOLARSHIP
I LITERALLY MADE A POST ELSEWHERE ABOUT THIS.
Because I have gotten a lot of anti-rural life jokes thrown at me. Most people don’t know I’m from a rural area, because I currently live in a big ass concrete city, so like… The concept of rural is super obscure. I told someone where I live, and they thought I meant some place with some farms, so they were like “ugh, rednecks, that must be awful.” Fuck off, because I come from a place with real farms & rural land, and just cause you think we work at a super progressive place, and because you think “rural” folks are all Trump-humpin’ far religious right, LGBT-hatin’, POC hatin’ folks, that’s your problem.
So the place I grew up in? Yes, it tends to vote Republican, but in the current primary? There are folks runnin’ for Republican that very specifically want to support things what we need: there’s a major development that the city side of the state wants to produce, which means it would royally fuck over the rural side–it would destroy environmental reserves, especially, which is what we all survive off of in the rural areas. The Democratic side is literally the “bad” guy in the race. Destroying the natural resources of the area would be terrible for everyone–if you only care about POC, yes, it would screw them over too. Because we all live off the land.
A lot of the redneck types require the land, because remember: it’s cheaper to buy a box of bullets than it is to buy meat for the year. That’s how most folks I know who are poor survive… And this is why I struggle in the city. I’m used to thinking “If I need to, I could always trust the forest & river.” If I need food, it’s there. It’s in the land; I can plant it, or I can hunt, fish, and forage. If I need something, I could… Make it. Because materials… They exist. Somewhere, out there. But the city? I have to fucking buy berries? So I don’t eat them too much. I need wood? I have to fucking buy it, what the hell??? I need leather? I have to buy it; I can’t just ask a friend to barter for it (or maybe pay ‘em, but the leather out here is more pricey). Especially as an artist, this astounds & disgusts me in some way. You can barter, too. I helped out a friend on their family cow farm; they gave me meat & a skull. You can weave and whittle. There’s a sort of backup.
But the city is harsh and expensive. We can’t maintain a garden here. I can’t trust the land to provide. Even suburbia suffers that. So the poorer you are, the less you can live in a city. And its not like it’s all happy & fun in the rural areas. Poverty is shit. But to me, I feel a little safer. Sometimes you barter… (At least its pretty; the city isn’t very peaceful or beautiful.)
And yea??? There are queer folks in rural areas. And a lot of the ones I know find it horrifying, the idea of leaving. I went back early this year & chatted to one woman I know, who is a lesbian, and she was… Sort of disgusted at the idea of leaving and of the hatred that city folk have of rural areas, especially through an LGBT lens. There’s a major communicative disconnect, because what works for LGBT rights in the city doesn’t work for the rural areas, and this ends up drowning out the rural folks’ voices. Which is especially dangerous, because they may not be great support for the issues of rural LGBT folks. This stereotyping or hate of rednecks/hillbillies/rurality is damaging the people ya’ll claim to say you’re trying to help.
I’m going to co-sign all this and also go a step further.
Even if someone IS a white, straight, Trump-supporting Republican redneck, you should still care if they’re suffering due to issues facing rural people. No one should suffer needlessly because of the limited resources, lack of access to education and medical care, or structural poverty in their home. We should always care about those issues no matter who is being afflicted.
^Cosigned.
I live and work in a very rural county, which also happens to contain the (small) capital city of the state. Our county court system, I am learning firsthand, is absolute fucking bullshit at dealing with rural, white, Trump-voting people’s extremely real and pressing legal problems, because they refuse to understand that living on the edge of crushing poverty, even on large pieces of land, with half your “income” coming directly from what you plant, hunt, or barter for yourself, is a legitimate and widespread way people live, and it presents a serious access to justice issue. Our bureaucracies and our systems for providing assistance depend so much on someone being able to provide detailed information about their income. In a tight-knit rural community of exclusively very poor people, where people constantly help each other out of simple economic necessity, using systems of barter and payment dictated by a complex and long-standing social structure and informed by what needs the participants have that specific day, asking someone to provide the kind of close documentation needed in a normal court case is idiotic. And judges won’t believe someone from a rural part of the county who tries to explain that – it’s seen as laziness, as an irritating lack of education about how the system works, and, sometimes, as outright lying.
I listen to one of my white, rural-born, Trump-votin’ clients talk about how they feel walking into any kind of government office or courtroom, and I’m not going to sanctimoniously inform them how much worse people in other places have it, if they’d only ~educate themselves~ and ~care about other people.~ They have every reason to believe this system’s not on their side and the people assigned to deal with their affairs don’t understand them, even on this very local level. And holy shit: That’s not even touching the situation of the many, many South American immigrants living in our rural county, often speaking indigenous languages for which interpretation is not available, connecting with the system only as undocumented persons or criminals. I can’t speak to those issues as closely because we can accommodate maybe 1% of their cases. They’re here, on our farms, in our trailer parks, working the land; we simply don’t see them, because the system has not created a space for them to exist.
The survival issues that rural people in poverty struggle with are incredibly different from those that urban people in poverty struggle with – even when they’re not that far removed from our small city. Even when the rural and urban people you picked off the street to make the comparison were the same race, the same age, etc.
Also, goddamn, cosigned about queer people in rural areas. Here’s a hint: Don’t insult someone’s intelligence or tell them you’re sorry for them when they tell you where they live, ever.
These People Say They’re Going Hungry Because Of The Government’s Welfare Reforms
In the last six months, the number of people referred to the Trussell Trust’s food banks in Rugby has gone up by 61% compared with the same period in 2015/16. Issues with benefits were the primary reason for getting help in 42% of all cases in the last year, up from 36%.
This picture is reflected nationally too. Food banks in areas of full universal credit rollout have seen a 16% average increase in referrals for emergency food, more than double the national average of 6%, research published by the Trussell Trust on Tuesday shows…
To get emergency food from the Trussell Trust, people have to be referred by another agency, typically debt advisers, GPs, housing associations, charities, and social workers. This means anyone getting help has already been vetted as in need…
However, Rugby’s food banks are not alone in seeing soaring demand for their services because of universal credit. The Trussell Trust has found the same trend across its food banks in places dealing with the full rollout of the new benefit.
The charity’s research found that the six-week wait is leading to debt, mental health issues, rent arrears, and eviction. It also showed that the effects of the delay often last after people receive their first universal credit payments, as bills and debts pile up.
Also, looking just at food bank access? The need for referrals may well also keep people who really need it away.
He was referred to the food bank by the British Legion a couple of weeks ago but it’s only now that he’s cashing in the voucher. He was too proud to come before, he says.
That’s a common enough thing, unfortunately. How many people are ashamed to seek out a referral to begin with? Besides the added gatekeeping always making it possible for people who do ask for referrals to get turned down. Are they going to be able to seek out referral again? Who knows. I probably couldn’t.
This gatekeeping hurdle setup has bothered me since I found out about it. Better that maybe a few Undeserving people who aren’t literally starving should have access to food banks than to run things that way and no doubt keep more hungry people away. One ugly side of the whole charity model, but I don’t need to get started into that right now.
Reminded of this, with the last reblog
These People Say They’re Going Hungry Because Of The Government’s Welfare Reforms
164. Federal court rules sharing food with the homeless protected under 1st Amendment; 8/28/18
“In a colorful decision that managed to invoke the Boston Tea Party, Lady
Macbeth and Jesus of Nazareth, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
on Wednesday that feeding the homeless is ‘expressive conduct protected
by the First Amendment.’ The decision revives a challenge brought by a
local chapter of Food Not Bombs, which sued Fort Lauderdale, Florida for
requiring a permit to share food in public parks.”
so i know that my body is in starvation mode always because of poverty, to preface. but i always get really intense cravings right before my EBT card re-ups. So, when there is very little food in the house, all i can think about is food. it’s weird. i can’t stop thinking about orange juice right now. is there a science reason for this?
There IS a scientific reason for it! It’s called “starvation syndrome,” which is a constellation of psychological and physical changes that result from consuming less energy than your body needs to thrive.
The syndrome was first described by researchers during the Second World War who studied a group of men who ate a reduced-calorie diet of just 1,600 calorie/day for three months. The researchers wanted to document the effects of starvation due to wartime interruptions in food supplies, and this amount of calories was deemed similar to what many war refugees were eating at the time (a fact that is quite disturbing when you consider that most weight-loss diets direct people to voluntarily consume this same small amount of food).
Researchers carefully documented the outcomes of this restrictive eating and this is what they found [all quotes from Junkfood Science]:
As the men lost weight, their physical endurance dropped by half, their strength about 10%, and their reflexes became sluggish… The men’s resting metabolic rates declined by 40%, their heart volume shrank about 20%, their pulses slowed and their body temperatures dropped. They complained of feeling cold, tired and hungry; having trouble concentrating; of impaired judgment and comprehension; dizzy spells; visual disturbances; ringing in their ears; tingling and numbing of their extremities; stomach aches, body aches and headaches; trouble sleeping; hair thinning; and their skin growing dry and thin. Their sexual function and testes size were reduced and they lost all interest in sex. They had every physical indication of accelerated aging.
The psychological changes were just as disturbing, and included nervousness, anxiety, depression, loss of interest in hobbies, and social withdrawal. Most relevant to your Ask, the men’s relationship with food also changed dramatically:
…they became obsessed with food, thinking, talking and reading about it constantly; developed weird eating rituals; began hoarding things; consumed vast amounts of coffee and tea; and chewed gum incessantly (as many as 40 packages a day). Binge eating episodes also became a problem as some of the men were unable to continue to restrict their eating in their hunger.
I am sure this will all sound very familiar to anyone who has dieted to lose weight or suffered from food insecurity or suffered from an eating disorder! The body needs energy to survive and to thrive, and if it doesn’t get it, you are going to “hear” about it.
I wish people would stop believing US ruling class propaganda nonsense about what the lives of poor people in the US are like.
For every person making a half million a year, there are over ten without clean water (and that’s not even counting the 43 million people whose water systems are considered “private” and are not included in EPA water safety laws).
The wealthy eat gold covered donuts while 40% of the US has vitamin deficiencies.
The bizarre nature of the US economic system means that poor people in the US can have a smartphone (under $30) and a choice between 20 different colors of $1 socks but then have no choice but to die of a tooth infection because that costs hundreds of dollars in order to access treatment.
This shit that “nobody starves, doesn’t have running water, has untreated parasitical diseases, etc. in the US” is flat out nonsense. And I can’t imagine how these beliefs could withstand any actual extended contact with poor communities in the US unless someone was intentionally refusing to acknowledge what was right in front of their eyes.
Because america is so segregated. Not only by race but by class.
I grew up 7 miles from the poorest county in America, in one of the wealthiest, and didn’t even know until I read about it in college.
America is amazingly fucked up.
I grew up where poaching was a big part of the diet, where low tides had the beaches covered with poor families gathering shellfish. Huge home gardens were the difference between survival. And my stepdad was lucky and normally employed. Until he broke his back in a mill, but at that time they had training programs and he got his GED and Assoc. Degree and combined with his experience he got a good job, we could actually buy all we needed in stores. Amazing.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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