Why we do it:

Being poor takes skill. Cooking with what the food bank offered, planning bus travel, or signing the kids up for free school lunch involve skills many Americans haven’t practiced. Add the shame many feel to needing aid, and it can be overwhelming.

This is a chance to help build empathy and community with folks who might not have seemed like natural allies a year ago. If you already know your way around the local scene, offer to help someone new to it. “Adopt” an individual person or family and show them, soup to nuts, how to navigate their new condition. Treat them the way you want to be treated, even if they weren’t gracious before. This is an opportunity to build our collective power.

If you’re new to economic insecurity but still have a reliable car, engage in mutual aid: transportation is a major obstacle for people struggling with long-term poverty. Offer a ride to the food bank and you won’t have to go alone. Break through the shame to talk about your new conditions publicly. We need to stop pretending poverty is our own fault, and not an inevitable outcome of our national priorities. If you have looked down on those who needed aid in the past, make public amends. Poverty in America has always been largely a matter of circumstance.

Note: a word on helping MAGA faithful. We are all victims of the oligarchs, whether or not we see it. While you help them, be unabashedly yourself. Be gracious, but Out and Proud about your progressive values.

This post illustrated with an image from UnSplash (https://unsplash.com/license) or Wikimedia Commons (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)