Every year SNAP helps 40 million people buy the food they need to feed themselves and their family. It is one of the country’s most important safety nets. We have been fed the lie that those who participate in SNAP are undeserving because it’s the only way to justify the morally reprehensible fact that in the richest nation in history there are people who are starving.

It is our national shame that in this wealthy country children go to bed hungry every night and our government wants to take food out of the mouths of even more.

It is our national shame that we revere our military out of one side of our mouths and condemn the nearly 1.2 million veterans and 23,000 active service members and families who rely on SNAP out of the other.

It is our national shame that our elders, who raised, taught, and sacrificed for us wake to empty cupboards and sleep with aching bellies, and that in this nation that purports to honor life, those living with disabilities that prevent them from working are deemed undeserving of food.

The vast majority of SNAP participants are not failing themselves. We as a nation are failing them. We have the resources we need to feed our people. What we lack is the governmental will to do so. Those who have been elected to represent us must use their power to ensure that no person in their care ever needlessly goes hungry.

Rev. Dr. Jodi Cohen Hayashida, Auburn

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