It's the holiday season -- a time for gathering with loved ones to exchange gifts, create memories or reminisce about past ones, and eat lots and lots of good food.
That is, unless you are a resident of Texas who needs help buying groceries.The US government has a program to help people get the food they need. It's called the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program (SNAP).
But in Texas, local policymakers have left hungry families out in the cold,
allowing wait times for SNAP to go for six months or longer! Do you think you could go six months or longer without buying groceries? Us either.
Sign the petition to demand that Governor Greg Abbott get his act together and stop letting families in Texas go hungry!At the end of November 2023,
"138,000 SNAP applications" had already gone unprocessed for 30 days. Look at that number again.
138,000 thousand applications. Hungry people. Parents trying to feed their kids. This is heartbreaking.One reason for the dangerously long delays is that, at the same time people are applying for SNAP benefits, the policy allowing people nationwide to remain on Medicaid during the pandemic has ended --
meaning the state is going through every single person to determine whether or not they can have health insurance anymore. Not only is this a time-consuming process for staff that should also be processing SNAP applications -- it has meant that
nearly 1.7 million people have lost their health insurance. So not only are people losing health coverage during a particularly vulnerable season for sickness, they also can't get enough food to eat. What is Texas doing?This is an utter disgrace. In a letter written by brave
whistleblowers alleging to be Texas Health and Human Services Commission employees,
Texas is "sailing the Titanic filled with [its] most vulnerable citizens into certain disaster."The health, happiness, and literal survival of Texas' citizens hangs in the balance.
We must let Greg Abbott and his administration know that the world is watching, and we demand support and justice for the tens of thousands of vulnerable people being affected by this gross negligence.Sign the petition to demand the governor end the unbearably long SNAP delays in Texas and feed the hungry!