Down in the dungeon, where hunger resides 🩸

I wanted to make a dungeon meshi fanart for a while, and man, I love Falin, so here we go

Source

Willem van Schaik (1874–1938), “Hunger”

pen and ink on paper, 1917

Alex Dimitrov, from Love and Other Poems; “The Weather of Our Lives”

The Trump administration’s decision to allow the end of SNAP benefits and other food aid programs is a political choice meant to create pressure on the president’s opponents in Congress. But it will have devastating effects on the 1 in 8 Americans who benefit from the program. Half of the nation’s 50 states are now suing the White House in a bid to force the administration to use the emergency funds. The SNAP program is something of a modern miracle: it feeds tens of millions of people, reduces poverty and inequality, prevents crime, and improves health (thus lowering health care costs). Because people spend SNAP benefits at local grocery stores and other retail outlets, SNAP also boosts economic growth and helps to stabilize the economy during recessions. When low-income people receive SNAP benefits, the stability makes it easier for them to both keep their jobs and to start new businesses. When poor families have access to SNAP benefits, their children do better in school and are more successful later in life. Based solely on the merits of these programs, the United States should dramatically increase spending on SNAP, WIC, and other related food aid programs. Yet recent policies have only enacted cuts. The massive reconciliation bill passed by Congress earlier this year will reduce funding for nutrition programs by $187 billion over the next decade. The Trump administration also cut funding for food banks and farm-to-school programs and eliminated the survey collecting data on food insecurity, meaning that we will be unable to measure just how bad hunger gets in the coming years. The “right to food is a universal human right,” one that been recognized by the United Nations. Both within the U.S. and around the world, there is more than enough food available to completely eradicate hunger; it’s just matter of distributing it properly. Allowing food aid to expire for 1 in 8 people in this country represents a moral failing that is made all the more contemptible by how easily it could be avoided by those in power. It is within our power to rectify this injustice and ensure that everyone has their basic needs met.