America needs a bigger table

I came from a home without a lot of money. But we had the biggest table I've ever known. My parents greeted everyone with hospitality. You couldn't step through the door without a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea thrust in your hand, a plate of food in the other. I once went for a walk and came home to find my childhood friend sitting in the living room with my mom, watching sitcoms and eating chicken salad like they were old friends. "What do you put in here, pecans? This is refreshing," he said, while they swapped recipes. And every friend that came left with a "goodie bag," sometimes homemade soup or roast, tucked in along with six pounds of frozen kielbasa and some canned foods. "Times are hard, you never know when you'll need some stuff to get by," they'd say and give you a hug on the way out. "Come back and see us." "The times" they were talking about were never different: My parents did this whether it was the 1970s or the 2010s. To them, two children who grew up in the Great Depression, "times" were always just a breath away from despair, and any time you had a little to spare for your neighbor, you gave it, gladly. No matter how comfortable they were in later years, their hardscrabble childhoods in the coal camps of the Eastern Kentucky mountains never really left them. They knew what real hunger was, and they were determined to never let anyone else know what that was like. If only Americans were wise enough to know the value between choosing people who are generous over those who are pompous. I wonder what it would be like, if America started paying attention to how many people were invited to the table by its leaders — and how many were pushed away to go hungry. That is what is facing 42 million people across the country who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. The program has been around since the Great Depression, mostly benefiting seniors, families and kids and people with disabilities and has become a political football in the federal shutdown, with the Trump administration arguing it would have run out of money Saturday. However, others have taken issue with that. Half the nation's governors, all Democrats, filed suit against the Trump administration, arguing that there are contingency funds to make November SNAP payments, even if in reduced amounts, in the event of a shutdown and that it was being done for political gain. A judge on Friday issued an order requiring the federal government to use the contingency funds. In the meantime, 12 percent of Americans were figuring out how to survive. "SNAP is the first line of defense against hunger," said Julie Chase-Morefield, executive director of Second Harvest Food Bank of North Central Ohio. "Or it was supposed to be." Locally, food banks are seeing lots of new faces, many for the first time. Between the SNAP cutoff and the federal worker pay freeze, there has been a big increase of people seeking assistance at food pantries in the area. "We had this lady come to us during an outreach, her husband is a federal worker," Chase-Morefield said. "The first missed paycheck for federal workers was Oct. 24. She works, too, but she doesn't make enough to cover all the bills and they have several kids, and it's hard. And people are scared. She said 'I don't know where to go.' This is not the normal crowd." The agency, which serves Crawford, Huron, Erie and Lorain counties, has fortified itself as best it can, spending $750,000 to provide as much food as it can in the meantime, but the scope of what Second Harvest can do can never outweigh what SNAP does. "SNAP benefits average $10.4 million dollars for one month in Lorain County on average," she said. "There is no way in which I have $10 million to make up for those benefits." It's a program that overwhelmingly assists families with young kids, seniors and the disabled. Benefits average about $2 per meal. "One thing people misunderstand about SNAP is that families with kids, they know how to manage these dollars, they are very good with that," she said. "They call and say I've never been to a food pantry before." In Lorain County, 34,122 people rely on SNAP, including 14,983 children. In Medina County, 9,392 people rely on SNAP, including 3,597 children. "They've never halted SNAP before, Chase-Morefield said. "This has never happened." "At the end of the day it only matters if our neighbors get fed," she said. "That is our mission and we are going to fulfill our mission." Wednesdays are always busy at Oberlin Community Services' food pantry. A year ago, serving about 120 households would have been considered a peak day, said Jason Hawk, communications and development coordinator. This week, staff served 176 households, representing a total of 534 people. On their slowest days, when they used to see maybe 70 or 80 people come to the pantry, they're now getting closer to 128. "Families that used to come once a month or every couple months are coming every couple weeks or every week. The price of food is a real barrier," Hawk said. "They're having to make rough decisions: Can I buy food, or do I have to skip a few meals here and there and pay rent? There are a lot of seniors on fixed incomes and obviously the demographics we're seeing the most are families with small kids and they're working full time and they're just not making enough to make ends meet." So far this week, the Oberlin agency has seen 26 families that have never used a food pantry in Ohio before. Sometimes they come in close-lipped, embarrassed. They've never had to come to a food pantry before, Hawk said. Sometimes it's fear. Sometimes it's a death in the family, or surgery, or a loss of insurance or circumstances that leads them there. "You can always tell who they are, because they're sheepish, they're very quiet, they're looking for a little bit of hope," he said. "They're looking for, no matter what's happening in their lives, we're not going to run out of food. That it's OK to come and get food. And they are welcome here." Contact Chronicle-Telegram columnist Rini Jeffers at rinijeffers@gmail.com.