Original image created by Nora Rowser
For decades, the United States has vetoed food as a human right in UN resolutions. Time and time again, our country has voted against the welfare of global citizens surrounding food and hunger policy. But now, since our own access to food has come under threat, Americans are suddenly shocked. The truth is that the evidence has been there all along; we have just been too America-centric to see it. You are allowed to be outraged. That is valid. However, we cannot ignore the fact that the human right to food in America has always been conditional. It has only ever been contingent on your ability (or fellow American taxpayers’ ability) to pay for it.
As the government shutdown rages on, 42 million Americans are losing access to SNAP benefits. For weeks, the rhetoric surrounding this issue has been about whether or not the people are abusing the system. Whether they take too much money, spend it on the wrong things, or whether the money is going to the wrong people. I ask you to consider today, however, whether the system is abusing the people. 42 million people, including elderly, disabled, veterans, children, and single parents, are going hungry in a country that vetoed the Right of Food in the Geneva Convention. This suggests that perhaps we should be focusing less on whether the people are holding up their end of the bargain and more on whether the government is
For weeks, Congress has been arguing back and forth, passing the blame for this issue on one another. Trump blames the democrats (shocker), and democrats and republicans are blaming each other for a multitude of reasons, some of which I agree with, some of which I don’t. While Congress gets to continue arguing, they continue earning a wage on the taxpayers’ dime. I’m fine with this. In fact, I’m ecstatic. I’m ecstatic because I believe it is a human right to be able to eat and to feed your family. I can empathize with the people who are struggling but can still afford to feed themselves. So why, I ask, does Congress not give a shred of the same empathy to the millions of Americans in poverty who cannot?
Another point I would like to make surrounds the rise in rhetoric from SNAP recipients regarding the suspension of funding. Many individuals have turned to blaming illegal immigrants for taking the SNAP funding meant for American citizens. The hard truth here is that these undocumented immigrants cannot legally obtain SNAP funding. That is not a thing, nor has it ever been. If you are, instead, referring to the legal immigrants that make up under 11% of all people receiving SNAP funding, I’d like to remind you that citizenship is not contingent on whether or not you were born in the United States. Simply put, it’s not the immigrants taking your food, it’s the government. You simply cannot claim that you believe that food is a human right and then blame other people for an issue that has clearly been brought on by decades of cuts to social welfare funding. If you only believe that food is a human right for American citizens, you don’t believe food is a human right at all.
No amount of logical reasoning has been enough to convince Congress that poor kids deserve to eat. Everyone deserves to eat. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, the old, the young. People of all races, sexual orientations, people of all nations. I am begging the people in power to get their act together before America, and the world, continues to go hungry. And please, if anyone can contact Donald Trump, please beg him to get some empathetic holiday spirit, get a grip, and stop letting impoverished Americans (that he’d gladly let go hungry, by the way) be his political pawns.
