Food Banks—No Answer to SNAP Cutoff

Nov 10, 2025

In the face of all the legal and political wrangling over SNAP benefits, 42 million human beings in the U.S. have had to figure out how to get food.

And it is food bank and food pantries all over the country that were already hard-pressed to address food insecurity, that have the primary burden of trying desperately to fill the gap left by this government shutdown.

These food distribution non-profits have raised the alarm: Donate—especially money. Volunteer. Check in on neighbors. Consider joining a mutual aid group.

And national news commentators urge people to “Think of your fellow man and lend him a helping hand.”

And so, yes, as always, ordinary people have “lent a helping hand”—often people who may be one paycheck away from needing to depend on food donations themselves. And it’s a tribute to all of these people who are unwilling to just sit back and watch children and elders and the disabled go without food.

But even the very existence of food pantries and food banks implicitly means poverty is a given in this society.

And it doesn’t have to be. Not in the richest country in the world. Not even anywhere in the world.

But this capitalist class society we live in underpays workers for their labor. It throws people out of work.

It causes the conditions whereby people need food aid, and places the costs on family, friends and neighbors to take up the slack through food pantries and Salvation Army buckets.

All so that billionaires can become trillionaires.

The long term answer to food insecurity is nothing short of a working class revolution to replace this system with one where everything that human beings need to lead a full existence, like food, housing, health care, is a right. To a system where there is no such thing as poverty or hunger.