Thanksgiving has long been one of America’s favorite days of the year.
It’s perhaps the least commercialized holiday on the calendar, and it appeals to the values we consider closest to our hearts — gratitude, generosity, kindness, family and friends. It stirs soft memories of warm rooms filled with familiar faces and, of course, food.
But this year, that last ingredient is harder to come by than usual. Especially in the Yakima Valley, where roughly 55,000 people — half of them children — rely on federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to keep food on their tables. That’s about 21% of our local population.
SNAP funding got caught in the middle of a federal budget battle that led to an unprecedented 43-day government shutdown this fall, leaving food stamps in limbo for weeks. Politicians who somehow found the money to pay for tearing down the White House’s East Wing and sending billions of dollars to Argentina balked at helping pay for food and health insurance for low-income Americans.
Whoever you want to blame, uncertainty over SNAP benefits means many of our neighbors are facing a bleak Thanksgiving that puts those cherished values we just mentioned to the test. How grateful can you feel if the main dish at your feast is a packet of top ramen?
Despite all the gloomy news, however, we see our community’s response to the food crisis as a genuine reason to be thankful. The herculean efforts of local food banks, service groups, faith centers, businesses and individuals are nothing short of inspiring.
As the YH-R’s Olivia Palmer and Questen Inghram reported recently, Northwest Harvest has stepped up by taking $1 million from its endowment fund this month to buy extra food for its 375 statewide pantries — well beyond its usual $300,000 expenditure.
The Yakima Association of Faith Communities met via Zoom to discuss what local churches could do to help put food on local tables. And individual churches are distributing meals and opening or expanding their own pantries.
As the scale of the problem becomes clear to the community, donations are up, food-delivery coordinators say. Folks like the Rev. Dave Hanson, executive director of Sunrise Outreach, have seen it firsthand.
“I think in this crisis there is a fairly substantial awareness in the community and there have been people donating both food and money to the bank that have never done it before, and in talking to other food banks, they’re seeing the same thing,” Hanson told the YH-R. “I really want to applaud our community in being engaged.”
We’d like to add our applause, too.
As the nation works through this time of political division, it’s reassuring to see that so many hearts around the Yakima Valley are still filled with kindness and compassion — those very same qualities we continue to celebrate each Thanksgiving.
Despite everything going on around us, we have much to be thankful for. Even this year.
Yakima Herald-Republic editorials reflect the collective opinions of the newspaper’s local editorial board.
