Excerpts from an editorial in the Minnesota Star Tribune:
Imagine being a hungry child at school, only to have your hot lunch tray taken away and replaced with a cold sandwich in front of your classmates. This is the reality for thousands of children across the U.S. — all because their parents couldn’t afford lunch fees. Debt collectors are literally chasing down families over school meal debt. For children unable to pay for meals, not only have school districts served them separate food from their peers, but some students are forced to wear wristbands or stamps.A few years ago, Valerie Castile put this issue at the top of mind for legislators. She is the mother of Philando Castile, the 32-year-old cafeteria worker who was fatally shot during a police traffic stop in 2016. In his honor, Valerie used her son’s foundation to pay off student lunch debts, ensuring no child would be denied the chance to graduate because of existing debt. Philando’s compassion sparked a movement — and helped shift the conversation in Minnesota and across the country around school meal debt and universal school meals.Back in 2019, more than 40 students at Richfield High who had lunch account debts of $15 or more had their hot lunches removed from their trays, thrown in the trash and replaced with a cold lunch. This was an unacceptable form of humiliation that generated outrage and helped pave the way for real action in our state. Examples like this have been all too common in schools across the country...In Minnesota, I am grateful that the universal school meals bill was signed into law by Gov. Tim Walz. Because of this crucial legislation, not only are children receiving free meals at school, but this legislation has effectively canceled all future school meal debt. It has transformed the lives of so many children across our state. If you can’t feed the bellies, you can’t feed the brains...
More at the link, written by Representative Ilhan Omar.
that they’d take away an already prepared hot meal, throw it away, and replace it with a cold meal that otherwise wouldn’t have to be given out, tells you all you need to know – this isn’t about funding or unpaid dues, but the grotesque desire to punish those deemed ‘deserving’.
ReplyDeleteand then you look at the comments to that op-ed and see droves of people subscribe to the idea that such programmes should be left at the discretion of local communities. if i shook my head hard enough to do this nonsense justice, i’d give myself a concussion.
raphael
Cruelty is the point.
DeleteAmerican leaders thrive and gloat about how immensely cruel they can be.
plain prosperity gospel – if economic success is a mark of divine grace, its absence marks those lacking in god’s eyes. which makes a very convenient justification to treat them badly. hell, look at how many non-leader USians object to health insurance on the grounds that it makes them (deserving, good, upright, high moral integrity, WoRk EtHiC) pay for the ills of others (who will always have it reframed as a moral failing and them, consequently, as fundamentally undeserving).
Deletethe obsession to deny a greater overall good because it would also benefit those deemed not deserving it runs deep.
raphael
https://www.thesun.ie/news/4772409/heartless-school-workers-filmed-throwing-away-students-hot-meals-because-they-had-15-lunch-debt/
ReplyDeleteThank you for finding that link.
Delete"that link" is from 2019. Surely there are newer ones?
DeleteNone from Minnesota, AFAIK, because the governor and the legislature addressed the problem.
DeleteDon't forget that State Senator Steve Drazkowski is still serving in spite of saying he'd never met a hungry Minnesotan and then mocking even the idea of people going hungry as his justification for denying lunches to school children.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.kaaltv.com/news/state-senator-denies-food-insecurity-concerns/
So billions to Argentina, millions for the morons ballroom all the while they loot the country and children get punished and traumatized. This country makes me want to vomit. I am beyond sorry for the good people but sadly I think we may deserve this for the millions of deaths we have caused since the Vietnam War. I believe that was the beginning of our downfall. I'd leave if it could.
ReplyDeleteI'm always amazed at the amount of energy the human brain uses, just thinking. IIRC it's something like 25% of the body's total energy budget (excepting the school board members who let debt collectors get involved in lunch).
ReplyDeleteThe fact remains: wages have not kept pace with cost of living, much less inflation. Increasing taxes that fund the schools is the usual routine, but if the taxpayer's income doesn't increase at the same rates as the expenses, poverty rates increase quicker than revenues. Ahem, overpaid executives: your worker bees deserve a larger piece of the pie that your gluttony is consuming or hoarding.
ReplyDeleteSo frustrating to read this. Doesn't happen in Canada. The benefits of school breakfasts/lunches are huge: improved academics, nutritional habits, community-building, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn my California city of about 100,000 we had one soup kitchen. It was literally knocked down with a wrecking ball--an old concrete building--after it was closed. Not for lack of funding: the non-profit went on to build a high-barrier, reform oriented shelter at great expense. So any guess as to how many people, out of 100,000, publicly objected to the elimination of this only soup kitchen? Three. So, this is not just a Red and Blue thing. Seems to be a human thing, where the powerless are concerned. Anyway, any way you slice it, making a hierarchical/punishing statement through a school lunch program is plain evil.
ReplyDeleteBTW: Free school food is nothing more than a band aid on the general problem of poverty. It's an effective band aid, but not a solution.
ReplyDeleteYES!!!! No form of charity is a substitute for economic justice. Here are some other examples: Democrats are in love with themselves for subsidizing private sector rent. Instead we ought to be focused on a massive social housing program with ownership in the mix. Democrats are all in on funding daycare. What about addressing the "two-income trap" that barely existed 50 years ago? Student loan forgiveness? What the hell is going on when anyone has to go into debt to become a teacher? As I remember the Trump-Harris debate, the words "poverty" and "homelessness" were nowhere to be found. I think this article is germane: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/opinion/democrats-rich-poor.html
DeleteI'll give you that America doesn't really have a left-wing party.
DeleteIt's election season in the Netherlands - watch nobody paying attention to the results on Tuesday/Wednesday because it doesn't matter (to anyone outside NL). And while the Overton window is also being pulled to the right by rank racism (and social media), there is still quite a number of parties that would make Bernie and AOC look like average centrists, including the Party for Animals - i.e. PETA as a political party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_the_Animals
But don't look to Holland for political inspiration. The current generation of politicians is a sad uninspiring lot of visionless self-centered mediocrity.
Also (sorry for the double post) free school lunches are not charity. They're just a government service. Very much like roads and the library. If the public thinks that's important, then great.
DeleteRe elections, the As It Happens podcast reported on a Dutch analyst who is advising the public not to rely on AI for advice re which candidates to vote for.
Deletehttps://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/chatbot-voting-advice-9.6950930
When lunches are provided to poor kids because they're poor, this strikes me as a form of charity. Eliminate poverty instead.
DeleteJust a note: I've used roads and libraries, but in 17 years of schooling, I never once ate lunch in a school cafeteria. Bag lunches all the way.
When lunches are provided to poor kids because they're poor, this strikes me as a form of charity. Eliminate poverty instead.
DeleteCorrect me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that this is why Minnesota provides free lunches for everyone.
not to rely on AI for advice re which candidates to vote for.
DeleteWhile I'm sure this is true, it is also true that the "regular" voting advisor website I used also pushed me to an extreme party. There's a few polisci programs that provide "neutral" questionnaires to help you determine what party comes closest to your political beliefs. They ask 30 questions based on positions from the party programs and out comes something.
https://stemwijzer.nl/
https://www.kieskompas.nl/
Sadly not available in English.
@Nepkarel - have you explored the Political Compass website, cited here -
Deletehttps://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2007/12/where-i-fit-in-political-spectrum.html
@Nepkarel: Providing free lunches to students at all income levels is certainly a way to avoid making it about only feeding the poor. But we still have an embedded Band-Aid on the poverty problem (wealth distribution problem)--and that's about all we seem to be capable of here in the US, as the wealth gap keeps getting wider. In other words, if malnourished kids are showing up at schools, the superficial (or emergency) solution is to feed them. That's all well and good, except that these programs tend to become an end in themselves, leading to decade after decade of what amounts to complacency--or superficiality culture. Our approach to homelessness is similar. We don't solve the housing crisis problem and the lack of social services problem (which need to be solved simultaneously in the case of the homeless population), instead we build shelters (and throw people in county jails). I'm not against school lunch programs, per se, I'm against charity covering for injustice.
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