12/30/2025
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"...the author says food banks have been 'working to make themselves more exploitable.'
It is an odd burden to place on food banks, asking them to become better gatekeepers. Less generous. More suspicious. As if the crisis of food insecurity were the result of our openness rather than the predictable outcome of policy decisions made far from our rickety shelves of canned beans.
But to claim we have made ourselves 'exploitable' is a convenient deflection. It allows those who might actually have the power to influence resource allocation to appear concerned about those who are both hungry and 'deserving' while leaving the underlying structural failures untouched. This kind of thinking shifts responsibility from systems to volunteers and from collective obligation to moral judgement.
Food banks were never meant to fix the issues that created the crisis of food insecurity. We certainly should not be asked to apologize for refusing to make shame the price of survival."