Blue Ridge Area Food Bank campaign provides 869,723 meals to the hungry

The Trump administration and MAGAs in Congress, like our Sixth District congressman, Ben Cline, are working to make it harder for people who are hungry to get SNAP benefits.

Leaving it up to the rest of us to step up.

Credit here to the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, which coordinated a GivingTuesday campaign that will provide 869,723 meals for families, children and seniors on either side of the Blue Ridge.

“We are humbled by the amazing response from our community,” said Kari Diener, CEO of the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank. “Your donations unlocked matching gifts, raising enough to provide 869,723 meals. You showed what’s possible when we come together with care, ensuring more neighbors have fresh, nutritious food and the comfort of knowing they are not alone. We are deeply grateful for your kindness and compassion.”

One in nine people in the 25-county, eight-city Blue Ridge area faces food insecurity – I hate the euphemisms that we use these days: those folks are going hungry, on a regular basis.

To put that into real numbers, we’re talking about 135,000 people in our area, per numbers from Feeding America, give or take, going hungry at any given time.

And those jerks in DC are cutting SNAP $186 billion over the next 10 years, to do what – oh, yeah, to give bigger tax breaks, i.e. more money, to millionaires and billionaires.

Robbing the poor to further enrich the elites.

Kudos to the Food Bank, and to those of you reading who contributed to the Giving Tuesday campaign.

If I sufficiently guilted the others of you who haven’t yet helped out, you need to go to www.brafb.org.