This Earth Day Week, Push Back on the Slashing of Our Environmental Programs!

This Earth Day Week, POTUS continues to cut our clean energy programs, eliminating crucial climate change research, and slashing the EPA’s budget by a whopping 31%. What are we going to do about it? Find a grassroots organization that you are aligned with, and donate, volunteer, protest, march and join the movement to unseat this president!!

SNAP

New Yorkers who receive federal food assistance can now order groceries online (USA Today, April 18, 2019)
New Yorkers who receive food assistance from the federal government will be able to order and pay for groceries online for the first time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced. Those taking part in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) who have electronic benefit transfer cards could start buying meats, produce and milk from Walmart and Amazon on April 18, and from ShopRite this week. The two-year pilot will eventually extend to SNAP recipients in Alabama, Nebraska, Iowa, New Jersey, Maryland, Oregon and Washington. The pilot is a way to make sure that those who are lower income or who have difficulty getting to an actual store aren’t left out, federal officials said.

Colleges Grapple with Student Food Insecurity (Spotlight On Poverty, April 17, 2019)
In the United States, nearly 13 percent of people are food insecure, living without reliable access to basic nutrition. But the problem is even more dramatic on college campuses, where a recent study found that 48 percent of students report food insecurity and live without regular access to food. A solution being implemented on many campuses across the country is on-campus emergency food pantries. While emergency food is a necessary piece of a community’s food security infrastructure, many experts are cautious when institutional systems, like public education, look first to a charitable response to a lack of basic needs such as food access. Hunger is not an issue of food scarcity in the United States; rather, it is an issue of income inequality, access to safety net programs, and the effectiveness of safety net policy. SNAP, the country’s most effective safety net program against food insecurity, is often difficult for students to navigate and access due to onerous work requirements and a difficult application process.

Opt out of eating industrial meat, as a way to combat climate change! Reduce your ecological footprint, fight back against animal cruelty, and improve your health, all at the same time! More than 90% of the meat eaten in the U.S. is industrial meat produced on factory farms with inhumane conditions and significant environmental consequences. Use EndIndustrialMeat.org to give your diet an eco-friendly makeover. Check out the Meet the Farmers section to find sources of meat that are raising animals humanely in systems that protect the environment and manage resources effectively. Pledge to opt out of industrial meat by replacing half the industrial meat you’re eating with meat from more sustainable sources and the other half with plant-based proteins like beans, lentils, chickpeas, nuts, seeds, and quinoa.