Since it’s become so trendy among some Republicans to belittle and degrade low-income families relying on food stamp benefits (that have been cut off amid the government shutdown), I would like to volunteer myself as tribute.
Belittle and vilify me all you want, but my nine-year-old son, Aedrik, deserves to eat. Not just because he’s a child, but also a sick child recovering from a bone marrow transplant.
I’ve been working since I was 15. But after my son’s devastating diagnosis with a rare disease called cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy, I rely on a string of freelance editing gigs for income while overseeing his recovery, and it’s not enough to make ends meet. Especially when his health issues mean he’s been unable to put on any weight, forcing me to feed him a high-protein diet chock full of things that are usually hard to find at local food banks.
We’re exactly the kind of people the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was meant to protect. The several hundred dollars of assistance a month would’ve allowed me to feed my son the meat, fish and fresh produce he needs without me having to forgo paying the phone bill and utilities.
Except we were approved for food stamp benefits on Nov. 1—the day they were cut off for 42 million Americans while President Trump and his administration feigned helplessness, claiming funds were “not legally available.” (Weird that they couldn’t tap into a contingency budget to keep people fed today despite doing just that during another government shutdown in 2019?)
It took a federal judge ordering the administration to pay out to move the needle even partially, and that was only after several days of “maybe we’ll fund it, maybe we won’t” f–kery by White House officials.
It remains to be seen if they will obey the court order; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday only that the payments “could be” made this week. And just this morning, Trump himself said the program will remain on pause until “Radical Left Democrats open up government.”
Families relying on SNAP benefits aren’t cackling maniacally as they run off to Walmart to spend American tax dollars on junk food, as many in MAGAverse would have you believe. (Although even if they were, may I remind you that Trump served McDonald’s at the White House?)
They’re also not all unemployed Democrats living in “inner cities,” as Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville apparently believes, or “smoking crack,” as Louisiana Representative Clay Higgins has claimed.
They’re members of the military, the disabled, or employed but not earning enough to get by. They’re 752,200 residents of Alabama who might be shocked to hear Tuberville’s derisive description of their needs. They’re ordinary people, often struggling due to unforeseen setbacks and circumstances often entirely out of their control.
Safety net programs like SNAP have long set America apart as a country with compassion; one that takes care of its own. You might even say it’s a telltale sign that a country values human life.
I was initially ashamed to even be applying for SNAP. As so many do, I saw needing government help as a personal failure. I had to hide in the bathroom to cry after my son asked, for the umpteenth time, why our fridge was so “sad-looking” and empty, or when we’d get his favorite strawberries again.
To make sure my son doesn’t waste away after his tiny body spent most of this year battered by the side effects of chemo, I’d do anything. We aren’t abusing the system or taking advantage of taxpayers; we’re relying on a program that’s designed to help us pick ourselves up again.
But apparently we’re everything that’s wrong with America today, at least in the eyes of those gleefully bashing low-income families. And to those people, I say: Your fear is showing.
Because underneath all your gloating and those cruel memes, it seems fairly obvious that targeting SNAP beneficiaries is just a way of distancing yourself from the reality that bad things can and do happen all the time, to anybody. That you, too, could find yourself falling on hard times as the result of an unexpected medical diagnosis or tragic accident.
And instead of empathy and understanding, you, too, could find yourself as the punchline of the cruel joke that is “Make America Great Again.”
The post Opinion: A Message to MAGA From One SNAP Family Stealing Your Tax Dollars appeared first on The Daily Beast.
