Ammo & Asswipe

Necessities for the Apocalypse

by  the editorial board

Yes, as news of the emerging global pestilence spread, by early March, the people made it clear what they consider urgent items to stock up on.   Ammunition and toilet paper were the first items that started to be emptied from store shelves.   Stores even began to put limits on how much each customer could buy.

Three days after several San Francisco Bay Area counties announced on Monday, the day before St. Patrick’s Day, that their residents must shelter in place, California became the first to impose a statewide lockdown.   The people were not to be allowed to leave home except for essential purposes.   And the very next day, California’s ABC (Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control) took the unprecedented step of allowing bars and restaurants throughout the state to sell mixed drinks to go.   It seems clear that they realized cocktails are an essential commodity to be provided access to.

But would these, will these, priorities remain the same if we were to notice, if we do notice, the fragility and inflexibility in our vast food production and delivery systems that this plague and the official responses to it have so far revealed?   Before it ever began, many tens of millions of Americans were dependent on food banks and food pantries for their basic sustenance.   With more people having lost their jobs this month than in any other month in our country’s entire history, tens of millions more suddenly have need of the same help.

It is only now coming to light how big the food supply network for commercial entities (restaurants, cruise ships, institutions, schools, etc.) was prior to the economic shutdown.   And that supply chain is completely separate from the one that produces and delivers food for the retail market.

For at least a month and a half, the agricultural producers serving the commercial market have been begging the federal government to help them get their food to those who need it.   At the same time, the food banks have been pleading with the federal government to help get them the food for the enormously increased demand they now are faced with meeting.

Instead we have for weeks been seeing and hearing of the tragedy of so many millions of pounds of fresh, healthy, nutritious food having to be destroyed.   Plowing food into the ground instead of getting it to the vast numbers of Americans who need it, this is the fragility of the system. [*2]

    THE READER IS INVITED TO TAKE NOTE OF THIS MESSAGE

	Food Not Bombs "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."   —Martin Luther King, Jr.
With over a billion people going hungry each day, how can we spend another dollar on war?                                  Food Not Bombs is active around the world.   Find out what you can do in your community.
	http://foodnotbombs.net                                                                                                                                                           1-800-884-1136

With all of the huge investments put into producing that wasted food, vast numbers of farms, ranches, and other food production and distribution companies are threatened with going out of business.   And will this imperil the availability of food for the entire nation in the near future? [*1]

Well, at least we might be able to find a positive and hopeful sign in the country’s craving for having a sufficient supply of toilet paper.   Perhaps it shows a growing awareness of our long-denied need for better personal hygiene.   We have, after all, for so long been:
A Nation that Has Just Never Believed in Washing Hands

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