Event Date
Mar 14, 2025
Event Location
This will be an online event via Zoom.
Event Details
Friday, March 14, 10-11 AM, via Zoom
Access to nutrition is a human right — or it should be.
The four members of the Rhode Island Congressional Delegation — Senator Jack Reed, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Congressman Seth Magaziner, and Congressman Gabe Amo — will join the Rhode Island Community Food Bank and Economic Progress Institute (EPI) to discuss destructive federal budget cuts that threaten crucial services like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which many Rhode Islanders rely on, while providing huge tax breaks for the wealthy few.
The cruel and chaotic cuts coming out of Washington also are targeting and punishing America's indispensable food providers: farmers. It's not just the drastic cutting of foreign food aid that's cancelling farmers' longstanding contracts with the government, causing them huge financial losses, and imperiling tens of thousands of malnourished people around the world. It's the unexplained cancellation of the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program (LFPA), through which the United States Department of Agriculture — in prior presidential administrations — used federal funds to buy food from statewide food systems and then distribute it to communities in need at no cost.
This online conversation will focus on hunger and poverty in Rhode Island, and how proposed cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, farm aid, and more would harm Rhode Islanders already struggling with food insecurity.
The reality of the situation is grim. Nearly 145,000 Rhode Islanders are enrolled in SNAP while almost 40% of RI households are food insecure. Low-income Rhode Islanders missed 42 million meals in 2024. And with the poverty level for a family of four at just $31,2000 a year, rapid increases in the cost of rent, utilities, transportation, childcare, and healthcare have left many low-income and even moderate-income households unable to afford adequate food: basic annual household expenses for a single-parent family with two children in Rhode Island reached $83,239 in 2024.
In coalition, EPI's and the Food Bank's leaders, Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies and Andrew Schiff, will spotlight what's at stake for Rhode Island.