Thanksgiving Blessings and Prayers for Those Without

After reading this morning’s headlines (“Dow Cracks 30,000 for First Time“), I went for a run. I had heard the 1 minute press conference yesterday where President Trump referred to this milestone as a “sacred number”.

In a contrast that has defined this year, I listened to the NYT The Daily podcast: A Day at the Food Pantry during my run. A Times journalist described her visit to a food pantry in Brooklyn a few weeks ago. In pre-Covid days, this pantry served 60 people a week and is now dealing with a line of over a thousand. The journalist interviewed people in line, most of which had never visited a pantry before the pandemic hit. “This is my worst nightmare.” The journalist even shared a bit of her own past, growing up on food stamps and sharing a frozen burrito with her sister. Although painful to listen to, I highly recommend you take the 36 minutes to listen to it. 

The pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity that already existed in the U.S. The crisis has revealed the dysfunction of our food system and how structural inequalities contribute to the growing number of food insecure and hungry across the nation. Job losses from the pandemic overwhelmingly affected women, low-wage earners, and minority workers the most. As a result, one in six adults were food insecure two months into the COVID-19 recession. Feeding America reports that, among children, the projected food insecurity rates for 2020 range from 15% (North Dakota) to 32% (Louisiana and Nevada). You heard that right: one third of the children in the richest country of the world go to bed hungry!

So as I sit down to our Thanksgiving turkey tomorrow, perhaps feeling a little sorry for myself for not being surrounded by our typical family gathering, I will count my blessings and pray for those without.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you…