Recently, the Trump Administration passed a proposed rule change to SNAP (formerly known as “food stamps”), and now nearly 700,000 Americans will have their food assistance taken away due to work requirements.
Here’s the deal … every time “we” lose safety assistance, I take it personally, and I feel as if I personally failed to do what I set out to do as an organizer. My goals are to help make this state and country more equitable, and to help our state and country allow poor folks to maintain their dignity while having access to meet their basic needs.
Let me start by saying that these are my personal opinions and do not in any way, shape, or form represent the views of my mom, my kids, my friends, and/or my employer, but please hear me out. I believe that a person should work if they are able to work, but I also know that there are an infinite number of reasons why some people can’t, and not all of those reasons are visible and most are, to be honest, none of our business.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs demonstrates what is necessary for a person to achieve their best self. It’s most often demonstrated as a triangle with progression toward the peak. The base of the triangle represents the most basic of needs required for survival: food, sleep, shelter, water, and air.
When these needs are not met, we humans struggle to survive. Read that again. Without our basic needs being met, we struggle to survive.
I am constantly pushing back against the thought that safety net programs motivate people to not work. I cringe every time I am met with the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality because it’s an elitist point of view. We all don’t operate from a point of privilege that allows us to just wake up in the morning and live our best life. There are too many factors involved, and too many layers and traumas associated with poverty for anyone who has never walked through it will never be able to fully understand.
But believe me when I say that taking food away isn’t going to force people to work.
Have you ever been hungry? I’m not talking about the, “Oh, my belly’s growling and I still have 20 minutes until my lunch break” hunger either. I’m talking about hunger. Gut-wrenching, headache-that-won’t-go-away, crippling hunger. Let me tell you that you’re not going to work in that physical state.
There are too many reasons why SNAP recipients who are able bodied without dependents don’t work. Let’s think about a few groups who are going to suffer because of this new rule:
- People with disabilities who are stuck in the loop of receiving disability and/or people who have been denied disability but can’t work. I met a 23-year-old woman in Monongalia County who fit this description. Despite an autism diagnosis, Social Security said she was too high functioning for disability benefits, but the mania associated with her diagnosis prevents her from being able to function in rooms with a lot of people and around loud noises. This young woman won’t receive SNAP benefits now because of this rule change.
- I met a woman who is the caregiver for her sick mother. The family doesn’t have the means to hire in-home care and that situation has left this woman to care for her loved one, preventing her from working. This woman will no longer qualify for SNAP benefits.
- Young adults who are aging out of the foster care system, relying on themselves, will no longer be able to receive SNAP benefits under this new rule.
- That man who has known nothing but working in a coal mine and suddenly finds himself without a job in a failing industry will now not have access to food assistance.
- Those folks living in a holler, 45 minutes away from the nearest grocery store and without a car, will now not be eligible for SNAP benefits because they don’t have access to jobs.
- That cashier whose hours flip back and forth from 30 hours one week and 15 hours the next … she won’t qualify for SNAP benefits.
- Homeless community members won’t be eligible for SNAP benefits under this rule.
There’s this image that was created by Ronald Reagan of the Welfare Queen. What they want you to believe is that poor people are laying around their homes, playing video games, and watching Netflix on their 54-inch flatscreen tvs, but that’s just stereotypical propaganda. No one is getting rich from SNAP benefits. Hell, one meal allowance on SNAP is less than $1.50 or $4.50 per week, and most people I have met without children receive around $116 a
If we’re going to continue to push this narrative that poor people need to work and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then we need to provide the base of support. Again, think about Maslow’s Hierarchy. One’s basic needs have to be met before there is even a remote chance of moving upward.
I want to see the welfare system changed, too, but I want the system to be a hand up and not a hand out, but it’s not designed that way.
Instead of working to support and promote financial mobility, the system is designed to feed on inequities and make it impossible to get ahead. Punishing people – bullying them and starving them – is NOT going to promote employment, but making sure that wages are livable, child care is accessible, housing is affordable, and employment opportunities are varied and doable, and health care (including mental health) is accessible and affordable, will help.
I don’t care which political party you identify with because I want to talk about your values. I value hard work (I’m working two jobs now). I value independence and self-reliance, but I also have had my worldview expanded and am blessed to realize that not everyone has the same opportunities or circumstances as I.
Want to see a system that people only have to rely on for a temporary time? Then work with us to push for the changes to facilitate that kind of system. We aren’t working for band-aid solutions and empty promises, but we are striving for systemic change that will allow all West Virginians to live a life with their dignity and quality of life intact.
But that is going to take consideration, compassion, and a view that stretches further than the end of our own noses.
