Another issue-oriented protest at Faso’s Kingston office
KINGSTON – Concerned with provisions of the farm bill before congress, members of advocacy groups conducted a pray-in outside Congressman John Faso’s Kingston office on Thursday.
Members of Citizen Action of New York, Hunger Action Network of New York and the New York State Council of Churches maintain that Faso and fellow Republican lawmakers want to take food out of the mouths of the hungry.
Hunger Action Network Executive Director Susan Zimet, a former New Paltz town supervisor, presented her organization’s case against the GOP House members.
“What they are saying is they really just want to get people to work to give them the dignity to lift them out of poverty is completely duplicitous because they are already work requirements,” Zimet said. “Seventy-five percent of the people who can work are working; the other people mostly have some kind of disability, some kind of mental illness.”
Advocacy group officials says SNAP – food stamps – is the country’s most effective anti-hunger program, helping one in eight Americans afford a basic diet, with most of the SNAP participants being children, seniors or people with disabilities.
