Without paperwork, school lunch free in Boston

[jtuck004]

16. It's not goddamn free. That is a lie. Over half of their parents work to subsidize it

from crappy low-wage jobs while the corporations that provide the food are getting large subsidies to keep it cheap, subsidies that come from government money that might otherwise go to training for their parents to put together a better life or a job, or make their homes safer, or provide a better subsidy so every single penny they get doesn't go for corporate profits.

It's not free to them when they come home to an empty house because mom has to put in 10 hours for a 7 hour job because she has to ride the damn bus back and forth between their home and the greedy employer - think that's not a cost to the kids?

It's not even free when their parents aren't working at all (tanf is limited to 5 years now) - think there isn't a cost when the kid knows damn good and well that when he or she eats on Friday that will be the last meal until Monday at school, because there is not enough food in the house? That we talk about taking care of people but dad has no hope, mom has no hope, and the kid - where the hell is the kid supposed to learn hope?

The stigma is in the little brains of the adults that won't tell them the truth, much less acknowledge it to each other.

Why in the world would it be stigmatizing to tell the kid that we think they are so valuable that we gladly invest in them, pay the bill that SOMEONE has to pay for their food, that we think they are worth something? Instead we treat them like dirt, like they don't deserve to know what everyone is doing. That won't be "stigmatizing" unless the people around them, the teachers, the aides, and the parents look down on them, and that has NOTHING to do with the kid or the reason people feel like they have to lie to them, at all.

We start lying to them the minute they walk in the door, and continue lying to them as we keep the details of our bloody history from them, we lie to the older ones in class so we can teach them to be little flag wavers that can then be used as cannon fodder for the oil companies in their pursuit of profit. We tell them to work hard so they can go to college where a full half or more are going to graduate with enough debt to buy two brand new cars and not a chance in hell of getting a job that will pay them back for the next decade at a minimum, more than likely two, by which point their knowledge will be almost ancient.

WE are stigmatizing them by the very actions we are taking now...treating them as if they are simpletons that are not smart enough to deal with the truth. And doing them,and our future, a hell of a disservice in the process. And one day, when administrations change, we will be in the same sinking boat we are in now, like the holes previous administrations put in it, but slightly bigger.

We may just have to disagree about this one.