Toledo church leader requesting churches step in & assist local families without SNAP benefits during government shutdown
In the midst of the federal shutdown, when support from the SNAP is set to lapse for millions of Americans, a Toledo church leader is urging congregations to step in and fill the void. City of Zion Mt. Zion Church’s pastor, Talmadge J. Thomas, is calling on fellow churches to be present now, as the interruption to benefits looms. “Beyond Sunday, we do a lot of serving”, Thomas explained.
Located in the heart of Toledo for more than a century, City of Zion Mt. Zion has been offering no-cost meals to the local community twice a week for decades. Thomas referenced scripture: “When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked, did you clothe me?” He said these passages underscore the responsibility to respond. With the federal shutdown threatening to cut off benefits, Thomas says his church is expanding its outreach: “We’re positioning not just for the holidays but to be able to supplement and to make sure nobody goes hungry.” Although the church’s kitchen is undergoing renovation, they are still collecting items and continuing to feed the community.Thomas emphasised that this moment is a call for every church to act. “Hunger is not Democrat, Republican or Independent — hunger doesn’t know colour, it doesn’t know creed, it doesn’t know a lot of those religious beliefs. Hunger knows stomachs”, he stated.
In Ohio, nearly 1.5 million people are expected to miss out on November SNAP assistance, including roughly 71,000 individuals in Lucas County. Thomas said, “The church has always been a gap-filler, whether it was food, whether it was clothing or what have you… And I believe that’s the best place for the church to be so that we can live up to our Christ-like mandate. I want to remind my pastor friends: this is what we’re called to do.”
With food banks and pantries already under strain, Thomas predicts a ripple effect as more people search for help. “It has an impact from the top down in so many ways, so it’s going to be important that we are able to fill the gap and to be boots on the ground, if I could say, and be ready,” he said.
During the shutdown, financial or food donations may be directed to the church to support those in need.
PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron took PREVIEW LAST WORD.
.
“Politics is war without bloodshed
while war is politics with bloodshed.”
France’s repeat of the 2017 runoff confirms Macron’s and Le Pen’s own political analysis: That the divide between the left and the right is no longer relevant in France and has been replaced by an opposition between a mainstream bloc that is pro-European and open to the outside world on one side, and nationalists on the other. Both candidates scored higher than five years ago, leaving the traditional right and left in an even more shambolic state than before. Macron went from 24 percent in 2017 in the first round to 27.6 percent Sunday and Le Pen went from 21.3 percent to 23.4 percent.
The gap between them is higher than last time around, showing that Macron has managed to drum up the most votes despite controversies in the campaign’s last mile, including over the state’s overuse of consulting firms. But the far-right bloc — Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and nationalist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan combined — garnered than 30 percent of the total vote.
I describe the “fun” parts of Only Yesterday because they’re wonderful, but also to make a point about the origin story we’ve learned about the mood of the ’20s. Looking back at Allen’s work from the vantage point of 1986, historian David M. Kennedy argued that the biggest failing of the book was its lack of historical depth: “Rarely did Allen forge an explanatory chain whose links ran back more deeply into the past than 1917.” And indeed, Allen seemed to blame World War I for every ash-covered carpet and scarred dining table.
Allen is also really good at describing parties—or, at least, the ones the middle class and upper class attended. The historian wrote about how women taking up smoking had “strewed the dinner table with their ashes, snatched a puff between the acts, invaded the masculine sanctity of the club car, and forced department stores to place ornamental ash-trays between the chairs in their women’s shoe departments.” In what I think may be the best passage in the book, Allen described the way 1920s partygoers stepped all over every previous genteel convention:
Anyway, let’s get to that fun. A very joyful book to read about the decade is Frederick Lewis Allen’s Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, which Allen—a blueblood journalist and editor at Harper’s—published in 1931. The book chronicles all of the movement and motion that makes the decade sexy, and doesn’t seem to miss a fad.
The property, complete with a 30-seat screening room, a 100-seat amphitheater and a swimming pond with sandy beach and outdoor shower, was asking about $40 million, but J. Lo managed to make it hers for $28 million. As the Bronx native acquires a new home in California, she is trying to sell a gated compound.
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Perhaps by remembering the twenties merely as an enchanting series of novelties or the crude afterthought of a simpler past, we preserve the illusion of our own simple innocence,” mused historian Paula Fass in the introduction to her book The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s.
Whether that means there will be a longer-term far-right alliance is an open question. Nicolas Bay and Gilbert Collard — two MEPs who left Le Pen’s party to join Zemmour — didn’t endorse a possible alliance with Le Pen, in case she wins the second round.
Zemmour, a 63-year-old TV pundit-turned-politician, was once tipped to come second behind Macron, back in October. But he plummeted spectacularly in the polls after suffering from a perceived lack of credibility as the Ukraine war started and former comments praising Russian President Vladimir Putin resurfaced. He scored a measly 7 percent. Despite their bitter and unrelenting fighting throughout the campaign, he swiftly endorsed Marine Le Pen.
“I have disagreements with Marine Le Pen,” Zemmour said at his concession speech Sunday, “but there is a man facing Marine Le Pen who has let in 2 million immigrants … who would therefore do worse if he were reelected — it is for this reason that I call on my voters to vote for Marine Le Pen.”
