Foodstamp advocacy

"Good thing I'm not a torpedo." --Michael Corlew

It's funny out of context. In context, perhaps you had to be there. So I'll just leave it at that.

It's been pretty exciting at the pantry lately. Lot of people coming through. Plus, for awhile we've been gathering complaints and grievances from the clients of our local DHS office, in particular regarding this one bastard caseworker who tells his clients he'll only give them foodstamps if they sleep with him. It's sick what he's been doing... and for so long. The first complaint of this type we've found recorded was from 9 years ago. Nine years.

In addition to processes related to this, related to upping the funding for the IDHS offices so they can hire more caseworkers (who tend to manage about 800-1500 cases each-- waaaay to many), and raising the minimum $10 a month allocation to something that would actually help a person to eat, I'm starting this week to gather stories of people who are on public aid... the process of getting it and keeping it, why they need it, if/how it helps, if it's worth it, how much for how many people, etc. I realize as we lobby for all of this that the middle class and higher really doesn't have much of a concept of what it is to need foodstamps. And they don't have much of a concept of how you get them, and all of that stuff. I know I didn't. And I also think it might be too much to expect everyone who is not impoverished to go work in a food pantry and talk to people who do have a concept... so I want to gather a few stories and see what I can do with it. My first interview is tomorrow afternoon. We'll see what comes from this.

We have a couple that comes through sometimes. They just moved into a hotel not too far away. We get a lot of clients from there. They'd been homeless for three years beforehand, and are just so... cheerful. There's no other word for it. The city sanitation crew had thrown away all of their belongings, so they have nothing. But they have a roof over their heads and just couldn't be happier. For months the lady's been telling me she's gonna go apply for foodstamps, but would put it off, put it off. She admitted to me today that she had them already while she was still homeless. But when you're homeless, there's not much you can do with groceries, and she met a family with three little kids and they didn't qualify for foodstamps, so she gave them hers.

This is, of course, not the way people are supposed to use foodstamps. Cases like this can be twisted and used as proof that people are falsifying... whatever. She told me she had so much, and this family had so little. It didn't seem right. My god, I wish there were more people like them in the world.