In my tenth month of unemployment and looking at open-ended joblessness this coming year, I visited a food bank this week for the first time in my life.
In my Local of the Carpenters Union we petitioned our Executive Board to do more for our 500 unemployed members. It was a key issue in July's Executive Board and union President elections. In response we got a breakfast once a month and now a food bank giveaway once in November and once in December.
After I signed in at the union on Thursday I got my slip and headed down to the "Faithfirst" food bank. The last thing I wanted was religion mixed in with it, but I'm not that picky.
I loaded up my compact trunk and headed home with my bagged groceries. And let me re-iterate. I'm happy to get anything. It's free. My family needs free things. I'm unemployed, my wife is part-time seeking full time work. Anything I can get for free is welcome.
It was somewhat like Christmas is: a combination of hope and eventual disappointment. I was glad for the frozen chicken, but that's all it was, a small sad looking thing. I was glad for some of the beans and the can of organic pumpkin and the brown bread. The pastries and soda I was not so happy about. The diced potatoes in a can provoked questions about capitalist food culture that I could not answer.
But it was the other stuff, the non-food items that made me mad. I opened a box of sundries. Five shaving razor holders. Yes, holders. Somekind of stick to clean shower walls, but you needed to buy the brand-name replacements. Someone was fishing for brand loyalty, while all I could do was question the logic of the product altogether. Cheap mittens for a baby. Mmmm. A bunch of tiny hotel-like soaps.
As I delved my hand deeper into the box I had a (non-religious) epithany. I realized: I'd been dumped on. So I did what we all do when we need a question answered. I called a friend. They were out, so I went on the internet and my paranoid suspicions about capitalism turned out to be real again.
My needs were being mismatched with corporate America's need to dump its waste. I googled "food bank corporate dumping" and instead of finding a really good, insightful article by some left academic, maybe a Canadian or something, I instead found tons of food banks who were appealing to corporations to be DUMPED on. Yes. "Reduce your warehouse storage and dumping" a food bank in San Antonio offered. The corporations get their fat tax break by giving the crap that they can't sell to food banks and the poor, suprising, get stuck with the crap they wouldn't buy if they had the money in the first place.
So, I do not want anyone to say I looked a gift horse in the mouth. But then if someone walked a horse up onto my porch, and I looked it over, and if it had no teeth, should I still take it i?
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