There is a moment, quiet and almost invisible, when a person stands in a grocery store and begins to put things back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know this moment because I have lived it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was a little girl, I would go to the grocery store with my mother, and I remember how my face burned as she handed items back one by one at the register so that we could afford what remained. I didn\u2019t fully understand the numbers, but I understood the feeling: the heat of embarrassment, the silence, the careful calculation of what we could live without.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A carton of eggs. Fresh fruit. Meat.
Not all at once: One item at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are no sirens in this moment. No headlines. No spectacle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet, this is what policy looks like when it reaches a body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2025, changes to federal policy reduced access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), leaving roughly 3 million people without the support they once relied on to feed themselves and their families. As Congress debates the next Farm Bill, these cuts remain in place\u2014quietly shaping daily life for millions across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is often framed as budget discipline. Fiscal responsibility. A necessary adjustment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But we should be clear about what these words obscure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When access to food is reduced at this scale, the outcome is not abstract. It is hunger. It is parents skipping meals so their children can eat. It is older adults stretching what little they have across days. It is working families\u2014already navigating rising grocery prices\u2014forced into impossible tradeoffs between food, rent, and medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is not an unintended consequence. It is a predictable result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We tend to think of violence as something immediate and visible: a weapon, a conflict, an act that leaves a mark we can see. But there is another kind of harm that operates differently, slowly, bureaucratically, and often without recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is written into budgets.
It is justified through policy language.
It is absorbed quietly, in kitchens and at checkout counters across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the quiet violence of deprivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it raises a deeper question about national priorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time that access to basic food assistance is being reduced, the United States continues to invest hundreds of billions of dollars annually in military spending and security infrastructure. These investments are often framed as essential to national safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what does safety mean if people cannot afford to eat?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What kind of security is being protected when the systems designed to sustain life are weakened, while the systems designed to respond to crisis continue to expand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Programs like SNAP are not luxuries. They are preventative infrastructure. They stabilize households, reduce long-term health costs, support children\u2019s development, and help communities weather economic shocks. They are among the most direct and effective tools we have for reducing hardship before it escalates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cutting them does not eliminate need. It redistributes it\u2014onto families, onto communities, and eventually into other systems that are far more costly and far less humane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no emergency broadcast when someone skips a meal.
No breaking news when a child goes without fresh food.
No public accounting of the cumulative toll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the impact is real, and it compounds over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the wealthiest country in the world, hunger is not inevitable. It is the result of choices\u2014about what we fund, what we prioritize, and whose well-being we treat as essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Budgets are often described as technical documents. In reality, they are moral ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They tell us, in the clearest possible terms, what we are willing to protect\u2014and what we are willing to let erode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Congress considers the future of SNAP in the upcoming Farm Bill, the question is not simply whether funding will be restored. It is whether we are willing to recognize food access as foundational to any meaningful definition of security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A nation cannot claim to be safe while its people are hungry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And harm does not need to be loud to be real.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a moment, quiet and almost invisible, when a person stands in a grocery store and begins to put things back. I know this moment because I have lived it. When I was a little girl, I would go to the grocery store with my mother, and I remember how my face burned as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[435,564,421,232,563],"class_list":["post-9021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-budget","tag-farm-bill","tag-federal-budget","tag-military-spending","tag-snap"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/franki-chamaki-ivfp_yxZuYQ-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9023,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions\/9023"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}