November 28 - Thanksgiving for the Working Poor; Feeding the Growing Numbers of Hungry Americans; How Corn, the Thanksgiving Gift to the Pilgrims, Distorts U.S. Agriculture

Full Program

Part 1

As Americans sit down for their traditional Thanksgiving meal, we begin with the working poor who comprise most of the people on food stamps and they have just had their meager allotment cut by the Republican Congress. So we will look into the issues of hunger, food policy and the growing ranks of the working poor who do not make a living wage and have to depend on food stamps and food banks. Rebecca Smith, the Deputy Director of the National Employment Law Project joins us to discuss the two biggest employers of the working poor McDonalds and Walmart, who are attracting protest on this Thanksgiving and the following day of frenzied consumption, known as Black Friday.

Part 2

Then we speak with Lucio Guerrero, the Vice President of Communications for Feeding America, the nation’s leading hunger relief organization and fourth largest charity. We discuss the growing demand at food banks since the recent cut, with more to come, in food stamps, and the work that Feeding America does in feeding 37 million Americans each year, including 14 million children and 3 million seniors.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with Josh Sewell, the Senior Policy Analyst at Tax Payers for Common Sense about the nation’s agriculture policy that has Congress increasing subsidies for agribusiness while cutting food stamps for the poor and hungry. Since corn was a gift from the native Americans to the pilgrims on that first Thanksgiving, we look into how much our agriculture has been distorted since then with 60% of crop insurance going to growing corn, making this now largely inedible crop the largest recipient of farm subsidies, at a cost to taxpayers of $85 billion in less than 20 years.