For the first time, agencies distributed more than a million emergency food boxes in a year across Oregon and Southwest Washington as unemployment and poverty forced people to soup kitchens. Food-box distribution climbed 12 percent during the year ended June 30, resuming growth after slowing the year before…. “I have never seen the demand for emergency food this high,” said Rachel Bristol, chief executive of Oregon Food Bank, a statewide network of food banks. Behind the demand for food is a faltering economy and high unemployment, especially in rural areas. The statewide jobless rate is stuck at 9.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, and 21 of Oregon’s 36 counties have double-digit unemployment.
It gets lost in the Sturm und Drang over the political games and machinations occurring in Washington these days. Behind all the numbers, the slogans, the talking points, and the propaganda lies the reality that people much like you and me are suffering. F’rinstance, just try wrapping your head around the reality that more than a million emergency food boxes have been distributed within a 12-month period within the Portland metropolitan area. That number is almost three times what was necessary just a couple years ago. How is it that this reality isn’t what’s viewed as the real crisis?
I don’t know about you, but for me, fixing this problem should be Job One. That it isn’t indicates to me just how truly and completely out of whack our priorities are. We have plenty of money to kill people in far-off lands, but when it comes to caring for our own here at home…we’re broke.
Somewhere warm and breezy, Ayn Rand snickers into her Corona….
