Kids taking food home from school (this is in america folks)

[donsu]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/Midwest/04/14/survival.bags.ap/index.html

On a recent Friday, about two dozen children went to the Noyes Elementary School office in what has become a weekly ritual at a growing number of schools: picking up backpacks of food so they won't go hungry over the weekend.

-snip-

For poor students who eat most of their meals at school through government-subsidized breakfast and lunch programs, weekends and holidays can mean going hungry.

So the St. Joseph School District, with the help of the local arm of America's Second Harvest, has started sending home backpacks filled with canned fruit, cereal bars and other single-serving foods. Similar programs serving thousands of children have started in more than a dozen other cities in the last few years.

-snip-

The St. Joseph food bank learned that lesson when one youngster moved to a new school and waited patiently for a backpack during his first Friday. He burst into tears when a school employee told him the school didn't hand out backpacks, said Nicholas Saccaro, executive direction of America's Second Harvest of Greater St. Joseph.

"It's just so tough," Saccaro said. The food bank began delivering a lone backpack to the child's school.
------------------------------------------

america, home of the brave but hungrey children

are we proud yet?

[KissMyAsscroft]

1. Fucking ridiculous.

Richest country in history, yet our children are starving. And these aren't homeless children..these kids are borderline. They are in school.

Just more of Bush's glorious treasury robbing in action.

[Van Helsing]

2. This is sad.

Kids in school needing to take food from school just to survive the weekend. It makes me sick what we live in the richest country in the world, yet children are starving. :(

[Q3JR4]

3. The bad

thing about it is that eventually most schools in the nation will have to go towards adopting this same strategy, with the repugs cutting social programs on the state level left and right for the nations poorest families.

[Reciprocity]

4. This is so sad.

I have often though that all elected officials should be required to substitute teach at lest two weeks a year in the district they serve. By this I mean in the classroom a whole day teaching lessons. This would put the schools on notice to do a better job and the politician would have first had knowledge of what students and teachers are up against.

[comsymp]

5. Good to see CNN picked this up

Same AP article was posted here a couple days ago, linked from... SFGate??? It was so disturbing (still preying on my mind) that I emailed it to everybody I know. This story DEFINITELY needs to go mainstream!

[cosmicdot]

6. Bu$h's America

enough said

The Democratic Ticket should consider campaigning in other than corporate landscaped suburbs ... perhaps going to communities like Portlock/South Norfolk in Chesapeake, Virginia, at a local grocery mart, or the local high school where people struggle for a living, as well as work, but where community pride and spirit exist ... non-corporate communities ... blue-collar neighborhoods ... perhaps kick the Labor Day campaign off in one of these communities ...

The network/cable news used to bring other-than-the-latest-stock-news to the airwaves ... so, take the campaign where the cameras will follow ... otherwise, I don't expect to see a Faux expose on
"How the Other Half Live" ...

Tap into the angst that's out {t}here.

[redqueen]

7. So sad... so much needless suffering... and why?

Because the greedy like to be greedy, and MANY of us back them up on it, hoping to cash in ourselves one day.

I pray so much these days...

[Bozita]

8. Thursday's Nightline was "On The Edge: America's Working Poor"

On The Edge: America's Working Poor
 
Nightline Daily E-Mail
April 15, 2004

TONIGHT'S FOCUS: When we say "poor" or "poverty-stricken Americans" what image comes to your head? The homeless man sleeping on the grate? The out-of-work jobseeker standing in line at the unemployment or welfare office? What about someone who has a full-time job making $9 an hour? That sounds sounds like a decent wage, right? Well, that actually comes out to just above $18,000 a year, and for a family with one adult and three children, that means poverty. Today -- which marks the hardest deadline of the year for most Americans: the day we pay taxes to the IRS -- we've decided to launch a new, occasional series that looks at the working poor: the millions of Americans who live on the edge of poverty.

more...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1417844

[Kanary]

9. We can all agree that this is sad

But, the question is, what action needs to be taken?

What can we citizens do when we hear of situations like this?

Because sure as the sun will come up in the East tomorrow morning, there will be more and more stories like this if we do nothing.

Kanary

[Ilsa]

10. Pickles didn't mention this in her Ad for America's Second Harvest.

That ad runs locally every morning on my local NBC.

There needs to be a couterpoint ad run to remind people how poor and hungry many are under this administration.

[stevedeshazer]

11. My cousin volunteers for the Oregon Food Bank

In Oregon and southwest Washington alone, 780,000 emergency food boxes were given out. Oregon's entire population is just over 3 million.

Demand has gone up for seven straight years.

How long have the Republicans held Congress?

[catmandu57]

12. St. Joseph is ten miles away

They have been making up backpacks for the last three years, so it's taken this long for the story to get out.
St. Joseph is in a very bad situation right now, they are hemorrhaging jobs right now. In just the last week there has been a loss of 450, the factory that make Stetson hats, good paying manufacturing jobs will be gone in June.
It's mostly a working class town that's being overwhelmed, it used to be quite livable there, I don't know anymore, but at least people still care.