Brooklyn food bank and pantry operators, along with civic leaders, on Monday stressed the urgent need for Washington lawmakers to avoid policies that push Americans into hunger amid an ongoing affordability crisis.
Speaking at St. John's Bread & Life, a food pantry in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Leslie Gordon, president and chief executive officer of Food Bank for New York City, said residents are "frightened."
She said New York parents are choosing to first pay their rent, then feed their children, and often do not have food left over for themselves.
"What we know and what we hear from them on a regular basis is that they're frightened," Gordon said. "They're frustrated, they're challenged, they're struggling. And here in one of the richest cities in the world, that just shouldn't be."
U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries said no one in the wealthiest nation in the world should be food insecure.
"We know in the midst of this affordability crisis, people are struggling with housing, people are struggling with healthcare and people are struggling with food, and having to make decisions about whether to put food on the table, pay the rent, get access to the medicine that they need to live a dignified life," he said. "That's unacceptable in this great country."
St. John's Bread & Life, which fed about 474,000 people last year, also runs various health and tax prep services for central Brooklyn residents.
State Assemblymember Stefani Zinerman thanked Jeffries for funding various food aid operations throughout the district.
"It is hard going to work every day to have to fight for people to have a moral code, or the decency to just have resources for people to have food on the table, a good job, and health care to take care of their family," she said.
