Inside the typical CCA food pantry grocery bag.
Rabe, picking up groceries at CCA.
Cheryl Rabe showed up to Christian Community Action on Monday to pick up a bag of groceries to help make up for the $169 per month in federal aid that she did not receive on Saturday thanks to a government-shutdown-induced pause on food stamps.
Rabe, 49, stopped by the Davenport Avenue homelessness services nonprofit at roughly the same time that U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Mayor Justin Elicker, and local food pantry leaders like Loaves and Fishes’ Lorrice Grant,Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen’s Steve Werlin, and Witnesses to Hunger’s Kim Hart were holding a press conference.
That group had gathered to call on the Trump administration to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides food aid for tens of millions of Americans, including more than 30,000 New Haveners. A few hours later, President Trump announced that his administration would partially fund November’s food-stamps aid.
Click here to watch Monday’s full press conference
Rabe is a weekly volunteer at several of New Haven’s food pantries. She’s also rallied at the state to support a variety of social services for low-income New Haveners and people across Connecticut. Though the Trump administration’s pause of SNAP during the federal government shutdown caused Rabe to be sad, angry, disturbed, and confused, she said she’s grateful that in two weeks she’ll be hired for part-time seasonal employment with Salvation Army to temporarily make minimum wage starting around Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve.
Rabe said she is proud that city and state leaders like Elicker and DeLauro are standing up for residents like herself to get SNAP funding back flowing.
Inside Rabe’s bag on Monday.
Charmain Yun, who leads CCA, reported Monday that her organization has been scrambling and saw four times the amount of residents it typically does in need of food supports before the Nov. 1 SNAP funding pause.
During the presser, DeLauro called on the Trump administration to “abide by the law” and immediately release the billions in federal nutrition assistance funding that she said has been unlawfully withheld — leaving millions of Americans panicking and unable to feed their families.
U.S. Rep. DeLauro (right) at Monday’s presser.
She said Trump is taking food out of the mouths of children, veterans, those with disabilities, and families, which is “unacceptable.”
DeLauro provided an update that last week a Rhode Island federal judge ordered the Trump administration to continue funding SNAP. Over the weekend, DeLauro said, the federal judge issued an order directing the administration to release the funds no later than Wednesday.
She added that $5-6 billion in contingency funds for food stamp benefits are available but “the administration refuses to use it.” She called the delay a direct result of the administration’s “illegal” actions and as an effort to instill fear in the working class.
“Congress appropriated contingency funds for food stamp benefits into law in March,” DeLauro said, noting that the bill was signed by Trump himself. She said that the funds were meant to ensure the continuation of SNAP during times of uncertainty or government shutdown.
“We do not need to reopen the government for these funds to flow,” DeLauro concluded. “We cannot let them off the hook, they have the money.”
Elicker agreed and further emphasized during Monday’s presser that the Trump administration is actively deciding to not fund SNAP, which is why the city jumped on another lawsuit against the Trump administration along with Rhode Island and other municipalities. “No child in our city should be hungry,” he said.
Elicker and DeLauro thanked the city’s partners like United Way and the 30 food partners with the Coordinated Food Assistance Network (CFAN) who are on the ground keeping New Haveners fed. He also said that the new emergency food fund support by the city and United Way has $215,000 so far.
Werlin emphasized Monday that the city’s many food partners do supplemental work to the government’s food assistance. For every CFAN meal provided, SNAP provides nine, he reported. He encouraged neighbors to donate money and/or food and time to volunteer with the organizations that have been ramping up food-aid efforts over the past week.
The lineup of speakers said that residents shouldn’t have to worry about food while already struggling to decide daily whether to spend money on rent, utilities, or medication. He said CFAN partners are expecting more food inventory over the next few days thanks to a purchase by CT Food Share.
Myra Smith, CCA’s neighborhood services advocate who also oversees the organization’s food pantry, called on the community to take care of neighbors. She called the Trump administration’s actions “inhumane” while noting she’s seen more people at a food pantry in one day than she has over the past month.
“When your household is in financial hardship, you do not sit your family down and say, ‘That’s it, nobody eats.’ That is the thing you would never do. You find ways to budget, you find ways to agree, but you do not starve your family,” she said.
While CCA doesn’t have fresh produce to provide residents, Rabe said she looks forward to using the heavy bag full of groceries she picked up Monday. She added that she’ll likely enjoy the strawberry ice cream sandwich Smith gave her as soon as she got home.
After Monday’s presser DeLauro joined Smith for a tour of the CCA pantry. CCA typically distributed food by appointment to 30-40 people once a month. However, it’s recently shifted to providing pre-made bags to any New Haven resident that stops in and registers. Residents don’t need ID’s to pick up food.
DeLauro heads to CCA food pantry.