Today is Black Friday, the day retailers within the United States mark as the initiation of the holiday gift buying season.  Today, 23 November follows the day of thanks, Thanksgiving, in which we in the United States collectively give thanks for a bountiful year and remembrances of those near and dear to each of us.  Perhaps I am the only one who sees the irony that on 22 November we engorged ourselves with food and on 23 November we accelerate the endorphin level through the purchases of all those ‘necessary’ gifts, while we have 1 in 6 within our population who are food insecure – that is, they are in a situation where there next meal is a maybe.

If we, collectively pulled together don’t you think we can make a dent in the hunger within the United States.  Is it not also quite ironic that one of the most affluent countries in the world has such a large percentage of the population food insecure, hungry, all the time?  The necessity of Black Friday to retailers may be a reality, but those lines that we see on the news today and every Black Friday in the past.  Here is a video of a brawl which broke out at a Wal-Mart today, 23 November.

Wal-Mart video

Do you find this as repugnant as I do?  For one moment, think of the energy expended by these individuals to get a “cell phone.”  What if that energy was channeled in helping distribute food to those who needed the assistance?  Or if the cost of the cell phone was donated to the local/national food banks so that they could use their infrastructure to get food to those in need.  We invest so heavily in the “things” of life, is it not time we invest in each other and turn the United States into a land where every individual has security in the knowledge that they have their next meal in hand, vice being food insecure.

So please reach out to your local food bank (here is a link to Feeding America)

If you are in Washington State, reach out to Northwest Harvest.

If you can’t give monetarily, perhaps you can give time and energy either at the food banks, or their distribution centers.

So on this Black Friday, the Friday where we have 1 in 6 food-insecure, let us get our collective acts together and spend some of that Retail Therapy energy on hunger in America.

Thank you for your time,

Christopher