Thanksgiving for most of us means a time for gathering with family and friends, for getting together around the dinner table to enjoy turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, and for relaxing in front of the flat screen to watch your favorite football teams and TV shows. It is a special time—a time to give thanks for all the good fortune we have enjoyed.
But for the many who are homeless and hungry in our country, Thanksgiving is just another day. Poverty in America is still at all-time highs. Many who were on the cusp of reaching that middle-class dream in 2007 and 2008 were dragged back down into poverty, and many who had reached the dream were devastated when 8 million jobs vanished as a result of the Great Recession.
Many say this Great Recession has ended. Today the stock market stands above 16,000 — nearly 2,000 points higher than when it crashed in 2008. That’s good news for your 401k and IRA, and better news for the folks on Wall Street, for whom 2008 now seems like just a bad dream.
But the stock market recovery has passed over more than 46 million Americans, including the more than 16 million children and nearly 4 million people age 65 years and older who live in poverty. Meanwhile, some in Congress are determined to cut benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), housing assistance, workforce programs, and disability and retirement benefits, at a time when those benefits are more needed than ever before
Goodwill is working to stop those cuts, fighting to keep programs intact and letting Congress know of the hard work we do every day to improve lives by helping people find good jobs.
But in our nation’s capital we need your help too. So this Thanksgiving, maybe in between the turkey and pumpkin pie, or at halftime, go to /get-involved/advocate/action-center/ and take just a minute to contact Congress. It only takes a minute to take action, and we promise that you won’t miss any of the pumpkin pie or the start of the second half.
Thank you.
