Momentum

The national electoral vibe shift is already changing state + local politics. Can it change our lives?

I pulled this photo when Tim Walz was still a nascient thought for the VP race.

The school meals debate has a lot of meaning here in Nevada. I still cannot wrap my mind around our governor (Joe Lombardo - R) who, as nearly his first act as Governor for our state, vetoed a bipartisan bill to use leftover federal pandemic funds to extend universal free lunches and breakfasts for all our school age kids.

I’ll be honest, it’s the first time I realized feeding kids is a radical leftist position.

Of course we know that Rebublicans support food banks and pantries, but only because they create a place for food companies to sell their food products and dump excess product they can’t sell onto the plates of poor people.

But there is no business win for school meals. It is a pure cost.

Add to this the perceived complications of meal programs in general - waste that needs to managed, affluent kids getting to eat free food on the government’s dime, the bizarro idea that providing meals makes families who are struggling more dependent on government aid, the "it doesn’t concern me, so I don’t want to fund it” mentality.

Still, feeding kids seems like an easy one. A feel-good opportunity to make sure all kids have meals. It would put the Governor in a place to say he is pro-education, pro-families, pro-communities, pro-kids.

It would be great PR: “Lombardo cares about family and community." He could plaster it around on billboards.

Right now in Nevada, we do have programs for kids to eat free meals in low income school districts, but isn’t is possible that families who are not struggling financially also benefit from universal school lunch?

This really goes back to what Matthew Desmond wrote in Poverty, By America, that everyone wants entitlements for the rich and middle classes (Homeowners subsidies, government supported retirement plans through employers, student loans, 529 educational accounts, child tax credits, all help from a government programs) but conservatives want to decrease entitlements for the people who need them most, the poor.  

I thought universal school meals was a goner for Nevada. There was some journalist and policy push back around the veto, but the issue was dead. Done. Even parents - many of whom do not closely follow politics - are shocked to find out the the program they depended on to cut their grocery bills in significant ways has been disbanded. (This one is from a popular Vegas parent group.)

Until Tim Walz.

And then the momentum gave way to this:

Relief from the grocery store. This is really critical.

As a parent who has shopped for and provided all kinds of meals for my kids at school, I can tell you that it is costly even in good economic periods. It costs money, time, requires you to be heavily organized and really, sometimes you just don’t get it done.

What’s so wrong with having schools be a safeguard against a child’s hunger? Even if all it does is help parents from all economic backgrounds have an easier time of it?

And an important point:

This is what we, organizers and helpers, have been trying to do here and in every state in the country: Take care of our neighbors.

Eradicate poverty, not just hunger. Provide for families. Provide for communities. Create a vibe where kids and all people are cared for and feel it. Where there is a kind of kinship mentality, that we are all in it together. A focus on neighborliness, kindness, empathy.

Call it woke or not. I don’t care. But empathy is good. Being a helper is good. Caring for each other is good. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. Because this is what will save us.

If that is the momentum we have right now, I am here for it.

Thank you, as always, for reading. xo