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Stuart G

(38,414 posts)
Wed Dec 21, 2011, 02:59 AM Dec 2011

In Iowa the World's Food Capital, there is hunger.

http://westdesmoines.patch.com/articles/disptaches-iowa-the-world-s-food-capital-is-hungry

The face of hunger increasingly belongs to the working poor, like Kim Olsem, who has trouble feeding herself despite holding two jobs.


By Beth Dalbey
Email the author
December 20, 2011


If hunger is an invisible problem in Iowa, blame it on people like Kim Olsem, a mother and a fighter, whose two jobs — one working with the elderly, the other working with schoolchildren — don't pay enough to feed her properly.

She is an unlikely face of hunger, one of a growing number of formerly middle-class Iowa residents who have dropped to the ranks of the working poor, those who make enough money to pay for rent, maybe transportation, but not much else. And like others in Iowa and around the country, even the charitable food pantry she counts on is running out of food.

“When I run out of money for my other needs, I come here,” said Olsem, 49, who stood in line at a West Des Moines food pantry just days before Christmas. “Food always comes last. My bills have to come first.

“Food,” she said, “is a luxury sometimes
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Two words ...very sad.
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In Iowa the World's Food Capital, there is hunger. (Original Post) Stuart G Dec 2011 OP
Our Iowa community is smaller but has the same problem. Hardrada Dec 2011 #1
the US military & war profiteers are not hungry. Our brutal thug police are not hungry. so all is msongs Dec 2011 #2
K&R. (nt) Kurovski Dec 2011 #3
 

Hardrada

(10,918 posts)
1. Our Iowa community is smaller but has the same problem.
Wed Dec 21, 2011, 03:20 AM
Dec 2011

And we are the county seat. So has a town south of us whose cupboards are also going bare and that town is a county seat also, a town like ours which has a noticeable number of prosperous people and a far greater number of poor. And a splintered and sinking middle class.

msongs

(67,394 posts)
2. the US military & war profiteers are not hungry. Our brutal thug police are not hungry. so all is
Wed Dec 21, 2011, 03:21 AM
Dec 2011

well

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