This Thanksgiving, millions of Americans are going hungry in the midst of Covid
This Thanksgiving, millions of Americans face homelessness and hundreds of thousands live on the street. By Ali Velshi
There are two lines that will tell you the story of the American economy right now. The first is the one President Donald Trump talks about — a lot: the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It’s an index that measures the stock prices of 30 of America’s largest and most representative companies. It tracks the value of Apple, Caterpillar, Coca Cola, Goldman Sachs, and companies like that.
The other line isn’t on a graph. It’s an image of thousands of cars lined up to get food for Thanksgiving at the North Texas Food bank in Dallas. In one week, the food bank distributed 6,000 pounds of food, including 7,280 turkeys — enough to feed 25,000 people this Thanksgiving. That’s just one food bank, in one American city.
Those two lines tell the story of the "K-shaped" recovery in America. The top line of the “K” is up and to the right, for the investor class. The bottom line is down and to the right, for the working class, the working poor and the unemployed.
The number of people filing for first time unemployment benefits has risen to 778,000 people last week — more than three times the rate a year ago. Unemployment has run out for many Americans. A man named Evan wrote to me from Georgia recently, explaining how he was “a single baby step away from homelessness.” Evan was an out-of-work comedian with an immune disorder who lives with and cares for his mom. His extended unemployment has run out. He gets $150 a week. He can’t make his rent and has cut his grocery bill in half to pay his other bills. And last week, the $150 came to an end. He had nowhere to turn.
I read his letter to my viewers on my live show. He didn’t ask for anything, but viewers started contacting me asking where they could send him funds, so he set up a GoFundMe account. By the end of the day, hundreds of generous strangers — some with hardly enough to spare themselves — had donated over $7,500. Evan gets to breathe.
READ MORE: This Thanksgiving, millions of Americans are going hungry in the midst of Covid
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/thanksgiving...
Posted By: Dea. Ron Gray Sr.
Friday, November 27th 2020 at 10:19AM
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