Thread by @rebeccavallas

This, from @JulianCastro, is by far the most ambitious and sweeping anti-hunger plan we’ve seen from a candidate yet.

nytimes.com/2019/11/27/us/…

@JulianCastro The plan includes a wide range of much-needed policies to expand nutrition assistance, declaring “the right to eat is a human right.”

A few highlights (with more to come once the campaign releases the full plan)....

- Increase SNAP benefits by 30 percent.

SNAP currently provides just $1.40 per person, per meal. Imagine that as your food budget. Benefits are so meager, they currently run out just 2 to 3 weeks into the month for most families.

- End cruel and counterproductive work reporting requirements in SNAP.

Says Castro on this piece: "You don’t need to make people jump through hoops to help them. I don’t want children to go hungry because their parents didn’t go through a certain process....+

+ "… if they have food on the table, they are going to be more likely to look for a job, rather than the other way around.”

^ 💯 -- Depriving unemployed and underemployed workers of adequate nutrition isn't just cruel... it only makes it harder to find and keep a job.

- Make free school meals universal, cancel all school lunch debt, & provide kids 3 meals/day via an expanded summer meals program.

It’s past time we brought an end to school lunch shaming -- and took the steps we know we need to take to stop kids going hungry when school’s out.

- Allow the purchase of hot & prepared foods, as well as online food purchases, with SNAP benefits.

These are important, much-needed steps to modernize SNAP & help folx facing barriers to accessing nutritious food—whether b/c they're in a food desert, have mobility issues, etc.

Not just protecting but *expanding* food assistance is the conversation we should be having as a country, when nearly 40 million people—equivalent to the entire population of California—are facing hunger in the richest nation on earth.

And politically: Expanding nutrition assistance is something Dems should all be rallying behind—as a clear, unified rebuke to Trump’s horrific, repeated regulatory attacks on SNAP & the school lunch program (which will strip millions of adults & kids of food if they take effect).

Kudos to @JulianCastro for -- yet again -- raising the bar on an issue that too often gets ignored altogether.

@JulianCastro /As with all of my tweeting at this stage of the race, this thread is not an endorsement of any candidate./

Full plan is now up here: issues.juliancastro.com/end-hunger/

I focused on the expansion of nutrition assistance in this thread—but coming back to note that a big part of what makes this plan so good is that it marries that agenda with:

1) addressing food deserts
2) supporting small farmers
3) farmworker justice &
4) climate justice.