Food Bank CEO Suggests Welfare Cuts May Spark Riots

‘The CEO of the largest food bank in America has suggested that planned cuts in food stamp benefits set to take effect on Friday could spark riots.
Margarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, told Salon.com that the expiration of stimulus funds, which will see the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program reduced by $5 billion dollars, will have an “immediate impact” and represent a recipe for civil unrest.
“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” said Purvis, adding that families face the “daunting” prospect of losing a whole week’s worth of food every month.’

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Cutting Food Stamps for Over 45 Million Americans: The Ruthlessness of the American Ruling Class

‘Food assistance benefits for over 45 million Americans will be slashed starting this Friday, in the first-ever nationwide reduction in benefits under the US government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), popularly known as food stamps.

The cuts total $11 billion over the next three years and amount on average to a month’s worth of food assistance. They will mean yet more privation for millions of working people, including the poorest and most vulnerable members of society—children, elderly people, the unemployed, the disabled and new mothers.
That this brutal cut takes place under conditions of continuing mass unemployment and economic slump, with record numbers of people living in poverty and homelessness and hunger on the rise, testifies to the ruthlessness of the American ruling class. The callous indifference of the media and the entire political establishment, beginning with the Obama White House, to the suffering of broad layers of the population is reflected in their virtual silence on the imminent cutback in benefits.’

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