At the end of his regular pregame press conference on Nov. 1, Milwaukee Bucks head coach Glenn “Doc” Rivers took a moment to make a call for action for government leaders and members of the community to address the freezing of funding of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) due to the government shutdown.
On Oct. 31, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers declared a State of Emergency to direct the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to police against price gouging, among other things.
Despite federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruling on Oct. 31 that the federal government must continue to fund SNAP, Wisconsin’s Department of Health said that November FoodShare benefits will be delayed throughout the state.
Nearly 700,000 people in Wisconsin will be affected, and around 270,000 of those are children.
“This one is not political — the SNAP programs across the country, especially Wisconsin ‘cause that’s where I’m at right now — are gonna get delayed,” Rivers began. “And this is for Republicans and Democrats: We’re talking about kids not getting food. And that should never happen.
“I don’t want to hear about ‘people are cheating the program’ and all that crap. A 6-year-old, 7-year-old kid is cheating nothing. And we are going to cheat the kids if we don’t take care of this. Our Republican and Democratic Senators and the government have not done their jobs. And so, the problem is the kids have to pay? And that’s ridiculous, right?”
Rivers also encouraged the public to donate donate money to food banks, saying that he is, and he’s telling his players to, as well.
“And finally on that, truancy and hunger are the two biggest issues for kids learning in school. Literally. They have proven that a kid can be in the worst area in the world, literally the worst area, but if he can just get to school and eat, he can learn,” Rivers said. “And so, we have to make sure that we feed our kids. We can drop all the other stuff, figure it out all later. But we gotta feed our kids.”
