#calfresh

[digiknow]

[itssosandiego]

CALFRESH DISASTER RELIEF DEADLINE EXTENDED #calfresh #sandiego #disaster #relief #itssosandiego

[lostinyv]

See you tomorrow at #29PalmsFarmersMarket, located at Freedom Plaza, 73551 Twentynine Palms Hwy operates every Saturday, 8 am – 1 pm. When you spend $15 of your #CalFresh #EBT benefits, you will receive an extra $15 to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables at the market with #MarketMatch

[sarcoptid]

can californians all coordinate and get our representatives to sue the grocery chains like that one state did and get us some money because all this fake inflation is getting ROUGH

[nearmissclosecall]

adam from jawbreaker posting a picture of his and blake’s food stamps fuck yeah dude

[oreganocactus]

extremely california dependent but here is your reminder to apply for calfresh it’s a program that’s like foodstamps but better. i say better bc it allows you to legit buy any food item you want including like all the good shit as long as its in a store that takes calfresh.....i personally dont qualify for it bc i attend my school on scholarship but my roommate does and it basically saves us like morbillion dollars because we get like 280$ per month to spend on groceries and it feeds our four person household very well......it’s easy to qualify and there is a high chance that u will.........GO SIGN UP FOR IT !!!!!

[amatulhaqq]

When my food stamps card is peeking out of my wallet in the check out, that's flagging to the proletariat  🫡

[bluebayard]

I'm two seconds from throwing bricks why do we have to choose between having power, a house, or starving

[gayassdog]

guess who wasted 12 hours of their life on phonecalls just to be told i dont qualify for ebt bc im majoring in digital media

[montereybayaquarium]

 If you receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits — known as CalFresh in California — you can visit the Aquarium for free! 

Simply present your valid SNAP EBT card at the Main Entrance (tickets only available in person) along with a matching photo ID, for free admission for the SNAP EBT cardholder and up to three additional people.

Learn more about Museums for All at the Aquarium: https://mbayaq.co/4aBr1B0

ES- Si recibes beneficios federales de asistencia alimentaria a través del Programa de Asistencia Nutricional Suplementaria (SNAP, por sus siglas en inglés/ CalFresh en California) – puedes visitar el Acuario gratis! 

Simplemente presenta tu tarjeta válida SNAP EBT en la Entrada Principal del Acuario (boletos solo disponible en persona) y una identificación con fotografía que coincida para entrada gratuita por cada titular de tarjeta EBT y tres personas adicionales. 

Aprenda más sobre Museums for All: https://mbayaq.co/3R3eCin

[fans4wga]

August 4 - Hollywood Food Insecurity Spikes Amid Strikes

The entertainment industry’s most vulnerable workers are increasingly unable to feed themselves amid a historic double strike with no clear end in sight, according to non-profits tasked with addressing the food insecurity crisis. They describe Hollywood’s ongoing work stoppage — prompted by the contractual impasse between the writing and acting guilds on one side and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on the other — as a humanitarian emergency broadly affecting the community, not just striking union members.

The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which runs pantries for those in need throughout the county, attributes a meaningful portion of its nine percent uptick in year-over-year distribution to the strikes’ impact. “When income stops immediately, the demand rises very rapidly,” explains chief development officer Roger Castle.

“This is happening right after the pandemic, which drained a lot of people’s savings,” observes Keith McNutt, executive director at the Entertainment Community Fund, which has distributed $3 million to more than 1,500 workers as of Aug. 1. “So, you have the financial burden on people who’ve already been depleted.” As a result, his organization — whose donors include Seth McFarlane, Steven Spielberg, and Greg Berlanti — has seen an unprecedented wave of immediate requests for basic living expenses, including groceries. “Before this started, we would do about 50 grants out of the L.A. office a week. Now we’re getting 50 applications a day.”

On July 28, below-the-line unions IATSE and the Teamsters Local 399 held a drive-through food drive for industry members affected by the strikes at IATSE’s West Coast headquarters in Burbank. It drew about a thousand vehicles throughout the day.

According to the relief nonprofit Labor Community Services, which helped to organize the event and is planning another in August, the organization distributed 1,740 food boxes, feeding an estimated 8,700 people, that day.

In California, striking workers are ineligible to receive unemployment assistance, while nationally, they cannot receive SNAP food benefits unless they qualified pre-strike — something Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is aiming to change with a new bill, introduced July 27. One place that striking actors in particular can turn to for help during the work stoppage is the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, which offers emergency financial assistance and other resources, including grocery store gift cards, to union members. SAG-AFTRA made a seven-figure donation to the Foundation early in its strike to assist these efforts. (The WGA West does provide its own members with emergency financial loans from its strike fund and Good and Welfare fund.)

Cyd Wilson, its executive director, has seen an explosion in demand for the organization’s help. “People are making these decisions: Should pay my rent, or should I put food on the table? Should I put food on the table, or should I pay my utilities?” she explains. “There’s a great deal of suffering that’s happening.” By Wilson’s estimate, the foundation is now handling 40 times its typical number of applications per week, and it has already distributed as much in grants since the beginning of the WGA’s strike three months ago as it typically would in the span of a given year.

Meanwhile, Groceries for Writers, a direct aid project administered by Humanitas, a non-profit focused on film and television writers, has distributed more than 1,100 gift cards to WGA members since the onset of its work stoppage in early May. Humanitas executive director Michelle Franke says that “many of these writers have left notes indicating they’re in very urgent financial situations. Writers describe struggling with student debt, falling into eligibility gaps with CalFresh and EDD [state unemployment assistance], eviction notices, writing teams splitting low pay, having only just moved to Los Angeles and not having a large local support network as a consequence, dwindling savings.”

Groceries for Writers is hardly alone in addressing the growing need. In July, L.A.’s World Harvest Food Bank founder and CEO Glen Curado estimated to The Hollywood Reporter that his organization, which is offering free food to striking writers and actors, was serving an average of 150-200 members of this group per day. That effort was inspired by The Price Is Right host Drew Carey’s gesture of paying for all striking writers dining at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank and L.A.’s Swingers Diner for the duration of the work stoppage.

THR asked both the AMPTP and the talent unions whether they bear any responsibility for the worsening situation. In a statement, a spokesperson for the AMPTP said: “Like those negotiating on behalf of the guilds, representatives from the AMPTP and its member companies came to the table in good faith, wanting to reach an agreement that would keep the industry working and prevent the hardships caused by labor strikes.” SAG-AFTRA didn’t respond to a request for comment, while a WGA spokesperson said in a statement: “The public knows that working people are putting everything on the line in order to negotiate a fair deal with the studios who have caused this strike and the resultant suffering by refusing to address the reasonable proposals that writers brought to the table over 90 days ago.” Neither the AMPTP itself nor any of its major studio and streamer members responded when THR asked if the companies or their philanthropic arms had made any contributions specifically to address the industry’s food insecurity crisis since May.

Support staffers — early-career workers who fill roles such as assistants and coordinators and tend to be low-paid — are especially at risk at this time. “So much of the compensation that they receive is, no one’s going to say it, but it’s implied to be food-based,” notes Liz Hsiao Lan Alper, the co-founder of advocacy group Pay Up Hollywood and a WGA West board member. Alper says that support staffers are often paid the “bare minimum” but access complimentary food through writers’ rooms, craft services on sets or in agency kitchens and conference rooms. And so, when the strikes occurred, the need was “overwhelming,” she explains: “It’s invisible compensation that just went away when the work stoppages happened.”

For that reason, on June 7 Pay Up Hollywood relaunched its COVID-19-era Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund. So far, the fund has distributed around $45,000 in one-time financial need grants up to $1,000 apiece, according to organizer and support staffer Alex Rubin, who says she’s encouraged support staffers to obtain free food distributed on picket lines. “I think that there is a little bit of embarrassment and insecurity about not being able to feed yourself,” she says. “It is the reason why we give our grants as just like, ‘Here’s a one-time grant. You don’t have to tell us how you want to use this.’”

Helping people in entertainment with food during work stoppages is a “tangible message,” says James Costello, a Teamsters Local 399 driver and an IATSE Local 44 prop master, who was volunteering at IATSE’s July 28 food drive. A second-generation Teamster, Costello still remembers a union strike in the 1980s that prompted his parents to warn their children that their Christmas holiday would be affected that year, and the Teamsters emergency relief that arrived in the fall, offering groceries and a Christmas tree.

As the strikes drag on and both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have yet to formally reprise negotiations with the AMPTP (although the Writers Guild is set to have a preliminary meeting with the studios’ organization on Aug. 4), the non-profits on the front lines of the industry’s food-insecurity crisis are girding themselves for a long period of need. SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Wilson says it’s pursuing a “very aggressive fundraising strategy” to meet the demand. (Already, it’s netted over $15 million in emergency assistance from stars like George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Matt Damon and Dwayne Johnson, who are donating $1 million or more apiece.)

The Entertainment Community Fund’s McNutt notes that pocketbook pain will outlast the current conflict. “Just because the strike ends, it doesn’t mean the need will end. Everyone doesn’t go back to work the next week. We’re going to be looking at this [elevated] level of need for months afterward.”

Give to the Entertainment Community Fund

Give to Humanitas' Groceries for Writers

Give to the Green Envelope Grocery Aid mutual aid fund

[digiknow]

[posttexasstressdisorder]

An Unexpected Outing

In a complete and pleasant surprise, it looks like I will not be posting tomorrow during the day, since I won't be here.

About an hour ago, kiddo's mom texted and asked if tomorrow would work for us to go down to Monterey and visit the Aquarium, courtesy of my CalFresh SNAP card.

I'd seen the Aquarium's tumblr post about "Museums for All" and wondered whether or not an online reserve was required, but that wasn't really clear, so I called their main number and within a second or two of nav'ing their phone system I got to the "Museums for All" recorded message.

It said that they were participating "for the foreseeable future", and that no online reservation or ticketing was available, just come to the entrance with SNAP EBT and photo ID and you and 3 other people are in.

Sooo....she's gonna round up kiddo and friend early enough for us to get there about when they open, 10am.

I'm taking the Pentax, same camera that was with me when we went eleven years ago, in 2013, still working flawlessly. Expect more photos and videos, of course.

Just had some tears at the memory...it was that trip eleven years ago, when my buddy was still very much alive, and kiddo was only three (my big road trip after my sweetie died, and now HE's gone), that was my first and only trip to the Aquarium, in September 2013.

...something something long strange trip...

So tomorrow will be a VERY WELCOME TREAT in my scramble-to-exist existence. A definite Rite of Passage/Rememberence about it. But I am in definite NEED of a nice, fun day...things have just been too intense and bleak, and I need immersion in something solidly rooted in NATURE and SCIENCE thankyewverymuch.

[pikkori]

important if u are poor like me (CA only sadly)

if you're in california and you're making min wage or below you may very quickly qualify for calfresh which is snap over here. it took 2 weeks to get approved and my $200 grocery trips go down to $25 or less after the EBT card swipe. the application process is also extremely easy!

you just need proof of these things

A copy of your ID

Proof of any income (if you're a paypal artist, paypal statements will do just fine)

Proof of housing expenses

a statement letter, you can just use a template for that, like I did

then you'll get a interview asking for more info which was literally just a 25 minute call for me to verify the shit

then I got my EBT mailed and ive been using it ever since, I haven't worried once about groceries and it took a huge load off.

pleaseeeee pleaseee try it because it was incredibly easy for me and not many ppl take advantage of it. ignore the stigma about it too, its completely reasonable to do it knowing the state of everything right now

message me if u need specific help!

[autogynocrat]

with how much the price of food has gone up Calfresh really need to change the income requirements

[sonic06apologist]

Was on hold for like almost 2 hours with calfresh to confirm info I already confirmed online to get food stamps and god fucking damn why is it so hard to do this shit I mean I know why our country evil but FUCKING WHY