Different People Who Come

After working at Community Solidarity this past Thanksgiving weekend, I noticed just how many people seem to be doing fine in their lives, yet they still struggle from food insecurity each and every day. In the car lines, where we carry boxes of food into each person’s car, there are plenty of people who you wouldn’t picture as the type to need food. They may drive a BMW, or they may drive a Mercedes, yet that does not mean that they don’t struggle from food insecurity. It can be anybody. Just like the old saying says, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. Although it may just be a coincidence that a person who drives a nice car is coming to get some extra food, it can also be due to recent job loss, or recent financial mistakes, or poor decisions. During COVID, job loss in the United States, and also in Nassau County in particular, had skyrocketed. People who come to get food may be victim to this recent job loss and that same person who drives a nice BMW to the pantry to collect food may have just lost their job like many others. So we can’t just look at one a person who comes and image them as greedy. Any person can be a victim of food insecurity and we have to handle all of the people who come to the pantry in the same way – with kindness and an accepting heart.