This just makes me sick:
Stuck without power, many thousands of New York residents don’t just struggle to cook and preserve food — they can’t even buy it.
New Yorkers on the state’s food stamp program receive money for food necessities electronically, through Electronic Benefit Cards (EBTs). However, with Manhattan from 39th Street southward in power blackout along with parts of Brooklyn, most stores are only able to sell goods for cash. Power is expected to return by Saturday.
In a WNYC report (listen below) a resident of a Lower East Side public-housing complex in Manhattan explained, “The supermarkets don’t even really want to sell anything. They’re open but if you don’t have cash, you messed up. And everybody in these projects, they take EBT … food stamps.” [h/t Colorlines]
David Rhode wrote Thursday in the Atlantic that Sandy had further exposed the “hideous” inequality gap in New York City — which is currently the most economically divided it has been for 10 years. He noted, “Sandy humbled every one of the 19 million people in the New York City metropolitan area. But it humbled some more than others in an increasingly economically divided city … Those with a car could flee. Those with wealth could move into a hotel. Those with steady jobs could decline to come into work. But the city’s cooks, doormen, maintenance men, taxi drivers and maids left their loved ones at home.”
3 thoughts on “Class divide”
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“We the people” allowed this to happen. Keep on supporting Capitalism and the Capitalists who are demanding that their shorelines be returned to normal by pumping in sand and their million dollar homes be rebuilt before the summer season begins.
Early Monday afternoon, before things began to get bad, I was standing in a checkout line with a couple of young Columbia women. When I asked them if they had extra cash — because if the power went out, there would be neither ATMs nor credit card services — they suddenly realized it was something they had never thought of.
There are good reasons why food “stamps” no longer exist, but those reasons suck in times like these.
In addition, it’s going to get COLD, very soon…
Nothing new here. Katrina exposed the racial/ethnic/financial divide that exists in most major cities all over the country. We’ll see more of these divisions with the next climate disasters, which are sure to come. And so long as the wealthy deniers are taken care of, the lesser
of us will always be screwed.