Let me say this plainly before we go anywhere else:
There is nothing accidental about hunger in America.Hunger is a policy decision.A design choice.A tool of control.
And the people most impacted are the same people this country has tried to control since its inception:Black folks, Indigenous folks, poor folks, disabled folks, caregivers, elders, and every worker whose labor is treated as disposable.
When we talk about SNAP being “delayed,” “frozen,” or “under review,” we are not talking about a glitch in the system.We are talking about the system working exactly as intended.
Because a population struggling to eat cannot resist.A hungry person cannot organize.A desperate community cannot rebel.
This is about obedience.Not care.Not support.Not help.
The Lie of the Welfare State
We have been told for decades that welfare “helps the needy.”No.Welfare helps corporations avoid paying living wages.
Like I said in this live:
The government is not actually supplementing the people; it’s subsidizing corporations that refuse to pay you what you’re worth.So the government is not helping you; it is subsidizing corporations that are underpaying you and stealing your wages.
Read that again.
If corporations paid living wages,SNAP would not need to exist.
So instead of forcing corporations to pay fairly, the government gives you just enough to survive — but never enough to rest, breathe, heal, or fight.
And then?They shame you for needing the help they made necessary.
This is economic abuse on a national scale.
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The Welfare Queen Was Propaganda — and It Worked
The reason people tolerate cuts to food programs is because they believe it harms “someone else” — specifically Black women.
The Welfare Queen myth did its job.
It told America:
* Black people are stealing from the government
* Poor mothers are lazy
* Needing help is failure
* Feeding children is optional
* and your survival is suspicious
So when assistance gets cut, people don’t see starvation — they see punishment.
Not because the story was true.But because the story was useful.
Racism keeps people from recognizing that their liberation is tied up with ours.
Like I always say:
“Racism and Anti-Blackness will stop your liberation every single time.”
The Real Violence: Stealing Wages, Stealing Time, Stealing Breath
Let’s call this what it is:
* Your wages are being stolen.
* Your rest is being stolen.
* Your ability to dream is being stolen.
Because inflation isn’t just happening, it is being engineered.Because poverty isn’t accidental, it is inherited, enforced, and profitable.Because your debt is not mismanagement, it is survival.Because credit is the new plantation.
Remind YOURSELF…
“I am not a capitalist. I am surviving capitalism.”
Now let’s get historical….
The Long Arc: From Plantation to Paycheck to “Public Assistance”
Here’s what we need to understand, and I need you to hear me in your body, not just in your mind:
The United States has always been a plantation.
The scale changed.The crops changed.The masters changed their language.But the logic has never shifted.
The logic is:
Extract maximum labor while providing minimum sustenance.
Survival is conditional.
Hunger is compliance.
When enslavement was law, the plantation didn’t feed enslaved people out of care.It fed them just enough to work another day, no more.
When slavery became “illegal,” that logic shifted to:
* Sharecropping
* Convict leasing
* Migrant labor
* Company towns
* Welfare oversight
* Wage labor tied to employer-defined “value”
And when the public began to question it?
The state changed the narrative, not the system.
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Reaganomics Was Not an Economic Plan — It Was a Reassertion of Hierarchy
In the 80s, Reagan told America that if the wealthy were “unleashed,” their prosperity would “trickle down.”It never did.It was never meant to.
What actually trickled down was:
* poverty
* surveillance
* criminalization
* wage stagnation
* and the belief that if you’re struggling, it’s your fault
Reagan didn’t create exploitation.He made exploitation sound moral.
The Economic Recovery Act of 1981
Welfare Reform in the 1990s Was Not Reform — It Was Discipline
Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform (The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193) did one thing extremely well:
It made assistance conditional on obedience.
“Work for your food.”“Prove your suffering.”“Earn your right to breathe.”
This was not policy.It was indoctrination.
This was the state saying:
If you are poor, something is wrong with you.Not with the economy.Not with wages.Not with corporations.With you.And if you want to eat, you must perform worthiness.
And millions internalized it.
And Now We Are Watching the Final Phase: The Attempted Eradication of the Safety Net Entirely
Because once you convince a population that hunger is their own fault?You can starve them without protest.
Once you convince them that Black mothers are “draining the system”?You can gut the system and call it “responsibility.”
Once you convince people that survival should be earned?You can turn the whole nation into a labor camp disguised as a democracy.
When Food Becomes Control: 3 Talking Points
1. SNAP Cuts Are Not Administrative — They Are Strategic
This country has always needed a class of people who can be exploited in order for wealth to concentrate at the top. That is the structure of a plantation economy — and whether we like the language or not, that economy has simply been modernized, not replaced.
When the state controls your ability to eat, it controls:
* Your time
* Your nervous system
* Your energy
* Your ability to organize
* Your ability to resist
“A hungry population is easier to discipline.”
Hunger is not an unfortunate side effect, it is a tactic.
If you are in survival mode, you cannot imagine something better.If you are trying to feed your kids, you do not have time to build a new world.
2. The Welfare Queen Lie Was Not a Mistake — It Was a Weapon
The reason this country gets away with cutting food programs is because the public has been trained to believe that Black families are the ones benefiting most — and therefore deserve the harm.
This is where the Welfare Queen myth matters.It was not about accuracy — it was about permission.
It gave this country permission to:
* Criminalize Black motherhood
* Shame poverty as a personal failure
* Paint survival as laziness
* Disguise exploitation as “responsibility”
People are comfortable watching systems collapse because they believe the collapse will not touch them, that the suffering will belong to someone else.
But hunger is not loyal.Poverty is not loyal.Collapse is not loyal.
And the same system that starved us is coming for everyone else next.
3. Community Has Always Been the Real Safety Net
This part is where the shift happens, not in despair, but in remembering.
We have always fed one another.We have always survived through shared meals, gardens, auntie fridges, bulk cooking, passing plates, knocking on doors, “did you eat yet?”
Gentle reminder:
“Mutual aid is not charity — it is redistribution of care.”
The state is not the provider.We are the providers.
And we do not have to do this alone.We were never meant to.
Reflection Prompts (for your body and your lineage)
* Where did you first learn that needing help was shameful?And who benefits from you believing that?
* What would shift in your life if you allowed receiving to be a part of your humanity?
* Whose names come to mind when you think “we survive together” … write them down.
So What Do We Do Now?
Not panic.Not collapse.Not self-blame.
We prepare in community:
* Start neighborhood text threads
* Cook in bulk and freeze meals
* Share grocery runs
* Grow one thing — basil, green onions, rosemary in a jar
* Check on your single parents, elders, disabled folks, and teens raising themselves
* Support mutual aid funds that redistribute directly, not through systems of shame
We are not waiting for rescue.We are remembering who has always rescued us.
We feed each other.We hold each other.We survive together — and then we build something better.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
We do not negotiate with systems that require our starvation to function.We do not beg power to recognize our humanity.We do not wait for a government that has already shown us who it serves.
We return to what has always saved us:We feed each other.
This is not metaphor.This is doctrine.This is strategy.This is lineage.
The Black Panthers understood it:Free Breakfast was not charity — it was rebellion.
Because a fed child cannot be controlled.A nourished community becomes dangerous.
We build:
* Neighborhood meal trains
* Shared grocery runs
* Co-op buying groups
* Backyard gardens and windowsill herbs
* Community food texting networks
* Mutual aid pods
Small, local, intimate, real. Because care is the exit strategy.
In Conclusion…This Is Serfdom.
This Is Indentured Servitude.This Is Enslavement — Evolved.
The plantation didn’t end.It scaled.
Instead of one plantation owner, we have corporations.Instead of overseers, we have HR departments.Instead of slave patrols, we have police.Instead of slave cabins, we have housing insecurity.Instead of chains, we have credit scores and debt.
The language changed.The power structure did not.
And So — We Return to the Only Thing That Has Ever Saved Us
Not the state.Not policy.Not market “recovery.”
We return to each other.We feed each other.We refuse to starve.We refuse to be isolated.
We replant the gardens.We rebuild the kitchens.We remember the drumbeat of communal care.
Because the plantation model only works if we are kept apart.
Once we are in community?
The plantation collapses.
Ways to Journey Deeper
There are paths for those ready to continue beyond awareness, into practice, accountability, and community care.
📚 Radical Self-Love Meditations for White-Bodied People
A small, deep, somatic liberation container — designed with care, slowness, and capacity at the center.
How we steward access + sustainability:
* 10% of every enrollment is automatically redistributed to the Feed the Familycommunity food fund.
* For every 5 paid seats, one equity seat opens — because liberation work cannot replicate the same scarcity logics we are undoing.
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This is not about volume.This is about depth.
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👕 Benefit Merch (Care You Can Hold)
If you want to support AND receive something beautiful, joyful, and rooted in meaning:
The “We Are Who We Have Been Waiting For” collection is a benefit line.100% of proceeds go directly to the Feed the Familycampaign.→https://seleniteandsage.com/store
💛 Direct Nourishment
If you want to skip all the steps and just make sure people eat:
→ Feed a Family (Tax-Deductible): https://seleniteandsage.com/feed-the-family
There are ways to navigate capitalism and still choose care.We practice them here, in real time.With intention.With community.With conscience.
In solidarity and liberation,Desireé B. Stephens, CPS-PEducator | Counselor | Community BuilderFounder, Make Shi(f)t HappenWriter of Liberation EducationSteward of Selenite & Sage Healing Homestead Co.Where Reflection Meets Transformation
Thank you Pax Shirley, Jennifer Tinker, Deidre Keller, Tiffany Donnelly, and many others for tuning into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.
