To the editors:
Most Saturday mornings since last June, I’ve been going to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, a huge warehouse that collects enormous quantities of food from food wholesalers and distributors and then disburses them to smaller food banks and other public outlets. I look at it as a river flowing backward into tributaries, with food instead of water.
There are two shifts on Saturdays and shifts on weekday afternoons and evenings. The work is broken down into simple steps, assembly-line style, with no specialized knowledge needed. There is something for everyone to do — from adults to children, able-bodied to physically challenged. Hundreds of volunteers show up, and there’s always a short info-pep talk for the rookies as well as a reminder for the veterans.
Here’s the skinny: As of Oct. 4, 2017, Oklahoma ranked among the top-10 states with food insecurity, according to the USDA. Food insecurity means people not knowing where their next meal is coming from. Seventeen percent of adults and 25 percent of children in Oklahoma fall into this food abyss.
I started going to the Food Bank to do my part because there is no politics, no religion and no shaming allowed on the premises. They don’t say that, that’s what I say. The only thing promoted is helping other Oklahomans (although I prefer to say fellow humans, as I detest the promotion of accidents of birth as virtues) get decent reliable food.
Our governments – local, state and national – are failing all of us. Working at the Food Bank is my way of helping as well as sticking my finger in the eye of politicians.
Yes, we have progressive politicians, but they fail to break the intentional logjams and invented obstacles knowingly created by the enemies of human happiness: corporations selling the human spirit to improve market share; and racism masked as religious fervor, untouchable and immune to reason.
These are my thoughts made, with no support or knowledge from the Regional Food Bank.
James Nimmo
Oklahoma City
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