Yes, Virginia, food stamps do work

Many years ago (this would have been during the Reagan years, when the republican assault on America's poor began in earnest) I worked with a young woman who told me that when she was five her father left her, her mother, and her two younger sisters without so much as a note goodbye.  Her mother didn't work and eventually her family went on both welfare and food stamps.  After a while, once her mother had obtained a good job and got on her feet, they stopped living on government assistance.  The young woman told me that she would never complain about having her taxes pay for welfare or food stamps because, she said, her family would have ceased to exist without the help.  Even though it had been more than ten years since her family's travails, she still sounded as grateful as could be.

I thought about her when I read this piece by Trish Thomas Henley, now a professor of literature at the University of Cincinnati, explaing how food stamps helped her feed her family during trying times, and where she had ended up.

Now I know that not every food stamp recipient ends up with a Phd., but food stamps are an appeal to our better selves for a better America.  For SNAP recipients it is a lifeline to the hope for a better life.  In short, it is the right thing to do.

And one has to wonder, in our so-called Christian nation, if Christian groups didn't spend so much time hating on the gays, and actually following what Jesus taught, how much less we'd need to spend on SNAP to begin with.

Peace,
emaycee