Weekend Hot Takes: The Hunger Games

Alex Andrews
Nov 10
5 min read

Let’s talk about hunger.

Not the metaphorical kind that poets write about, but the real, stomach-gnawing, can’t-sleep kind that’s creeping into more homes every day.

You can feel it when you’re standing in the grocery line doing the math - milk or meds, eggs or gas.

You can see it in the eyes of parents trying to stretch dinner into tomorrow’s breakfast, the quiet panic of caregivers who have mastered the art of making scarcity look like stability.

And this week, it got worse.

When the government shuts down, it’s not just offices that close - it’s the safety nets. Millions of people are sitting in their kitchens, staring at empty cabinets and “temporarily unavailable” messages on benefit portals. SNAP, the program that keeps children fed and families barely afloat, has been frozen in bureaucratic limbo once again - no warning, no contingency plan, just silence and shame. When the government stops, hunger doesn’t. It gets meaner. While systems glitch and offices go dark, families find less in their cabinets than yesterday. School lunch programs tighten rules. Food pantries run out before the line moves. And somewhere, someone still insists the “economy is doing fine.”

It’s not a movie, but it feels cinematic - the tension, the stakes, the unshakable sense that the people at the top are playing a completely different game.

Survival Isn’t a Game

The truth is, the Hunger Games aren’t on TV anymore - they’re happening in grocery aisles and corner bodegas, in living rooms and cars turned into bedrooms. While some people sip champagne in rooms trimmed with gold leaf, others are rationing peanut butter and praying the power bill doesn’t hit before the next deposit does. It’s the quiet scraping of a spoon against an empty bowl, the whispered lie - “It’s okay, baby, I’m not hungry” - from a parent trying to protect their child from shame, the hum of a refrigerator that holds nothing but light.

Bread for Some, Banquets for Others

And across town, laughter spills out of banquet halls. Chandeliers gleam. Tables groan under lobster and caviar. The sin isn’t the celebration - it’s the disconnect. The distance between the ballroom and the breakroom, between the unveiling of a new luxury wing and the hum of a stomach trying to ignore its own emptiness. While one group debates what color drapes to hang for their next gala, another is figuring out how to make one box of pasta last three nights.

The divide isn’t abstract anymore - it’s physical. You can taste it, smell it, see it on every empty shelf. It’s a strange, surreal kind of cruelty to live in a country that can throw million-dollar celebrations while children go to bed with nothing in their stomachs. This isn’t about politics - it’s about priorities.

Hunger has always been a policy choice disguised as an economic inevitability. Every “temporary pause” in benefits leaves a permanent scar. Every “budget cut” means another kid eating ketchup packets for dinner. And it’s not just the poorest who feel it anymore. It’s the teacher skipping meals to cover classroom supplies, the delivery driver maxing out credit cards to buy groceries, the grandmother who worked her whole life but can’t afford her medicine. We keep pretending this system is too complicated to fix when really - it’s just too profitable to change.

Hunger Has a Sound

People aren’t asking for luxury - they’re asking for rice, milk, and a little bit of dignity. They’re asking for the systems built with their taxes to stop treating survival as a privilege. But here’s what they never show you on the evening news: while the powerful play dress-up with public money, the rest of us are already taking care of each other - and we always have.

Food pantries, church basements, community fridges, and neighborhood moms cooking for kids that aren’t theirs - these are the real first responders. Sex worker–led organizations like SWOP Behind Bars have been doing this work for years, quietly filling the cracks the system pretends don’t exist. We buy the groceries. We pay the phone bill. We send commissary funds. Not because it’s charity, but because it’s survival.

We Don’t Wait for Rescue

While government budgets balloon for everything except care, our communities keep showing up with what little they have left - and somehow, it’s still more than the system ever offered. If you want to know what resilience looks like, it’s not in a ballroom; it’s in a borrowed kitchen where someone is cooking for a family that isn’t theirs because they know exactly what that kind of hunger feels like.

Don’t Just Feel Bad - Do Something!

If you’re reading this, you’re already part of the story. The question is what kind of ending you want to write. You can’t stop a shutdown, but you can make sure someone eats tonight.

Don’t just shake your head at the headlines - do something. Support your local food mutual aid network. Drop off canned goods at a community pantry. Donate to sex worker–led organizations like SWOP Behind Bars, who are feeding the families the system forgot.

Because while some people are hosting banquets, we’re out here making sure no one gets left behind at the table - and we could use your help carrying the plates.

Feed the Fight. Fuel the Family.

This week, one of your favorite guest bloggers, Madame Frenchie, who has also been impacted by the SNAP cutoff, is teaming up with community-led organizations to provide stipends for at least ten activists and advocate families who have been devastated by the loss of benefits.

We can’t eat political promises.

We can’t fill a pantry with excuses.

But we can take care of each other.

If you’re tired of watching the same old spectacle - lavish parties while children go hungry - then it’s time to put your resources where they matter most.

Your donation keeps the lights on, the shelves stocked, and the people fed. Every dollar goes directly toward groceries, gift cards, and mutual aid for families who’ve been locked out of their benefits and left behind by bureaucracy.