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Lines. Lines at food pantries stretch block after block through urban neighborhoods. In suburban and rural America, lines of cars are miles long, as people suffering from hunger and food insecurity, many for the first time, wait hours for a box of groceries. Lines at COVID-19 testing sites grow, as the contagion spreads exponentially, with over one million infections per week. Nine months into the pandemic, and still we lack enough testing. Despite the risks of travel and large family gatherings, long lines dominate airport security checkpoints and crowded terminal gates. The TSA reports that more than three million people passed through U.S. airports last weekend, the highest number since mid-March. This, amidst an explosion in COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, and deaths — morgues in some cities are overflowing — has public health officials pleading with people to stay home this Thanksgiving.
The pandemic confines us all, together yet apart, laying bare systemic racism, widening inequality, and fundamental flaws in our systems of governance. All of us have to eat, yet, here in the United States, the wealthiest nation in history, many are going hungry.
“We always talk about COVID as being the great unveiling of the inequalities in America,”Professor Raj Patel, who studies the global food system at the University of Texas, said on the Democracy Now! news hour...Read More →
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