Food insecurity in Cook County

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pi?id=36940

Article: Hunger Study Shows Jump in Demand at Cook County Food Pantries
by: Monee Fields-White Feb 2, 2010

"A study showed 678,000 cook county residents visited food banks, soup kitchens and shelters in 2009." (White) Almost half of the people had to decide either if they were going to get fed or if their electric bill would be paid. Recession had hit really hard with working families. And many believe that this is not the worst. The need is still growing. There is a food pantry in cook county that says that there has been an 85% increase with their visitors this year. The county does a study every four years on emergency food assistance and found 1 in 8 families receive this help. This is a 46% increase over those four years.


The article is just as important as everything that we have covered in class and on our own. Whether it is food people are in need of or shelter, the point is that the jobs that people have are just not enough to do justice and maintain. And for the people that need jobs, there needs to be a way to help the people in more ways than what we have now so they can make it. Streetwise are kids that struggle and leave their homes at an early age and get themselves into more trouble because that's all they know is to get by on the streets. This movie correlates to this article because again like I said, they are both struggling to get by; some to eat, sleep, pay their bills, maintain a house over their head, and try to keep a job if they have one. Seccombe writes about the women on welfare and how they continue to not being able to make it and Ehrenreich writes a book on almost the same thing. "On not getting by" is a perfect quote to both these books since real people are portrayed in there and how they struggle. Like I mentioned earlier everything that we have covered is about being hungry and why society allows families to do so. I see more homeless people on the streets than ever before and in every neighborhood. This class showed the facts of life and really enhanced my view on hunger and homelessness.