It’s no secret that we live in, for the average American, one of the darkest periods we’ve seen in our lifetimes. It can feel overwhelming to be awash in a sea of reports of the state carrying out its cynical fascism against students and everyday citizens without due process and extrajudicially. It can feel like every institution has failed, and that there is nothing left to combat the death of the U.S., both as an ideal and as the place where we all happen to live. In uncertain times like these, it can be important to re-trace our steps to some problems that are not as widely covered, but just as critical to our survival. In this current moment it is politically, morally and socially necessary to pay attention to food banks and meal programs in this country.
The most effective political violence is not always blatant murder, kidnappings or torture, but murder by degrees. It is the destruction of the things children need to grow, parents need to nurture and communities need to survive. Food is our literal source of energy and deprivation of energy often creates less resistance than deprivation of life. You protest the state less when it takes food out of your mouth instead of shooting at you, even though the two amount to similar outcomes. The current administration has already cut hundreds of millions in aid to food banks and to school lunches. It is a cruel sort of administration that would wantonly promote hunger and child starvation as policies both at home and abroad.
This is not an isolated incident of a particular party or era of government. Federal school programs themselves emerged out of the public pressure put on educators by the overwhelming success of the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for School Children Program. Here you had an organization that understood the value of feeding people, especially children who needed that energy for growth and for school. The Panthers’ program was so successful that the state targeted it as the largest threat posed by the party, and the FBI systematically dismantled it between 1969 and 1970. This account reminds us of two important things. The first is that you have no guaranteed governmental right to food in this country, even if you are a child and even if you are in need. But secondly, food freely given is often one of the most radical political actions one can make, and it represents a commitment to life and human empathy that serves as the backbone of any proper movement.
So, what is there to actually be done? First and foremost, if you are able, please donate to a local food bank. Moreover, donate nutritious food or donate food in low supply. One of the most brilliant pieces of the Black Panthers’ program was that it was designed not just to feed students whatever was lying around, but to feed them nutritionally balanced meals that energized them. Most food banks will list on their website what items they most need or the staples they prefer. Local pantries can make use of surprising kinds of foods, so try to lean into that usefulness whenever you can. Most of the time, if you’re unsure of what to donate, a cash donation can be used more effectively to feed more people by a food bank than even the most careful individual shopping.
It’s no secret that not everyone can donate. We’re college students, and to pretend that money isn’t tight would be disingenuous. Best estimates from the UTD Basic Needs Survey conducted in 2022 — no longer active, thanks to SB 17 — show that over 31% of students indicate they worried about food running out before being able to obtain the money needed to purchase more. One in five students reported they went hungry at some point in the year because they couldn’t pay for or find food.
Which is why, in addition to donating when you can, it is also imperative that the students who need a food bank use it. UTD undergrads are underserved by food banks and pantries. Part of this is caused by students not knowing where to go for food, part of this is caused by the limited transportation options on campus, and a significant portion of this problem is a perception problem. It’s quite common in the U.S. to feel shame or embarrassment about the usage of food banks. This history is an engrained one, that comes both from the history of stigma surrounding food stamps and a more generalized political stigma against any and all assistance programs. It also doesn’t help that college students are inundated with messaging about how to be proper adults, even though we are still effectively wards of the state, and what sort of adult can’t feed themself without help? In the U.S., it is more socially acceptable to go into Door Dash buy-now-pay-later debt with Klarna than to find cheap and effective ways to stay alive and feed yourself. Overcoming this shame, so deeply rooted in American capitalism and in the ascetic deprivation demanded of students, workers and everyone who isn’t supremely privileged, is itself overcoming the shackles of the fascism we currently live in.
Donating is amazing, and if you can, you should donate to the North Texas Food Bank, Food Not Bombs and to our own Comet Cupboard. However, sometimes it can be a political act to simply feed yourself. To use a resource made for you, your enrichment and your survival without guilt and without shame. You do yourself and your allies a service either way, and you practice a self-love that is necessary to further imagine and to fight for a better world for yourself and others.