Friend,

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 1 in 6 U.S. children experienced food insecurity, regularly going hungry because their families had to make trade-offs between food and other basic needs.

Sign the petition to support the Universal School Meals Program Act—ensure our children do not go hungry, especially during the pandemic.

Inadequate nutrition can increase children’s risk of chronic health problems and permanently alter their brains, impeding their physical, psychological, emotional, and academic growth. In the short-term, missed meals lower people’s immune response, which increases the risk of contracting contagious diseases like COVID-19.

Injustices amplify one another: Because of systemic inequities, children of color are more likely to be in low-income families—also known as the racial wealth gap.

In Michigan’s majority-Black 13th congressional district, the third poorest in the country, nearly a quarter of all children are food-insecure. And it’s getting worse, with rising unemployment and public schools shut down until at least the end of the school year.

Sign now to support the Universal School Meals Program Act, which would provide free breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for every public and nonprofit private school student—including over the summer and when school is out, like right now during the pandemic.

The coronavirus has exposed and exacerbated the crisis millions of families deal with every day. And Congress’ COVID-19 response has not gone far enough.

Many food-insecure children—including undocumented children—are not eligible for federal food assistance programs like SNAP. To make matters worse, February marked the start of the awful new “public charge” rule, denying a path to citizenship even for documented immigrants if they use public benefit programs like SNAP. And despite paying millions of dollars in taxes each year, undocumented families are also ineligible for unemployment insurance.

That’s why we need universal policies to cover everyone. Every child deserves access to healthy food every day, all year long. No family should have to choose between going hungry and paying essential bills like rent, especially not in the richest country in the history of the world.

By providing food for every child, rather than forcing some to prove they are poor enough to deserve it, the Universal School Meals Program Act would also end the horrific practice of lunch shaming. In about half of all school districts, administrators publicly shame and stigmatize students who can’t afford to pay for their lunch, including through wristbands and hand stamps, harassing parents by threatening to take away their kids if they can’t pay lunch debt, and preventing students from graduating if they have unpaid lunch fees.

Food insecurity is a disease, but it’s human-made. Clearly, our status quo isn’t working. Even recent federal legislation to supply food to students who had been eligible to receive it at school isn’t enough. We need to do better.

Before the pandemic, Trump was trying to cut SNAP benefits for nearly a million Americans. Those efforts were only blocked temporarily, by a federal judge in mid-March, due to the pandemic.

Please sign if you agree: Now is the time for us to fix disparities and ensure people have access to food and water, a human right—not just during the pandemic, but for the long-term.

In solidarity,

Rashida