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From its earliest beginnings in Chicago, the AFT has been known for stepping in and lifting up our students, patients and the wider community when they are in need. So, when word came that the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would run out of money late last year, the AFT sprang into action.
First, a little background: Through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Trump administration is required by law to provide SNAP funding for food assistance to 42 million Americans. The money is available. However, Trump officials instead decided to abandon these people, including 16 million children, 8 million seniors and 4 million people with disabilities who rely on SNAP to survive. This leaves working families struggling to access basic groceries.
Our members jumped in to help through the AFT Disaster Relief Fund, donating more than $11,400 in both shelf-stable food and cash to a food pantry, So Others Might Eat (SOME), which operates out of Washington, D.C. The nonprofit group provides nonperishable items such as high-protein canned food and vegetables, along with pasta, rice, peanut butter, cereal and baby formula. These necessities help SOME’s neighbors break the cycle of poverty and homelessness through programs that save the lives of individuals and families, their communities and social systems.
“This is what unions do,” says AFT Executive Vice President Evelyn DeJesus. “When we see a need, we fill it. If there’s a tear in the fabric of our community, we patch it. Students can’t learn if they don’t have enough to eat, and our impulse is to make sure that children and their families have what they need to thrive.”
At the same time, the AFT is calling on members and affiliates to launch their own food drives, offering helpful ideas on how to get started from Feeding America.
The drive to stock food pantries against the Trump administration’s cruel cuts to nutrition programs came around the same time a late-season hurricane hit the western side of Jamaica last fall. The AFT Disaster Relief Fund simultaneously put out calls for help to alleviate both crises, one natural and one man-made.
State and local AFT affiliates rushed in to help. In just one example of many, Texas AFT contributed $5,000 toward the effort, instructing the AFT Disaster Relief Fund to use the funds wherever they were needed most.
Support is still needed to alleviate current and future disasters. If you or your local AFT affiliates want to contribute, visit the AFT Disaster Relief Fund. Food pantries around the country are still in desperate need of food.
No one should be going hungry in the wealthiest country in the world. We know that the money is there to feed our friends, our neighbors, our students, our patients and our communities. But since Trump is choosing to let working Americans go hungry, we’re stepping up to help.
[Annette Licitra]