700,000 Hungry/At Risk of Hunger In Nation’s Capital

Wince of the Week, August 26- Sept 1, 2012

The EHRP team winced hard when we heard this, from a story on NPR, “How America’s Losing the War on Poverty”:

At the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C., forklifts move huge pallets of food around this giant warehouse. This year, they expect to give out 33 million pounds of food — a record. Close to 700,000 people in the region are now at risk of going hungry.

“In my lifetime, I’ve never seen anything as bad as now,” says Lynn Brantley, who runs the facility. She’s been working with food pantries for four decades and describes what’s happening today as a hunger crisis. “It’s growing into the middle class.”