They’re called the Peanut Butter and Jelly Squad.
A couple of years back, Ciera Elledge and some friends set the group up to feed hungry kids during the summer months, when so many children struggle to find consistent meals with schools on break.
A little more than a week ago, though, Elledge got the gang back together with an idea to help out during the ongoing government shutdown. She figured some people out there – even in one of Alabama’s more affluent counties – were likely struggling, as government paychecks stopped rolling in and folks dealt with the already-too-high prices of pretty much everything.
The floodgates opened.
In less than a week, they had just under 600 requests. All coming from people in the area who saw one of Elledge’s posts on social media. They clicked the link, filled out the form for temporary assistance and hoped.
They did so, Elledge said in a video, because many of them found that their local food banks were out of food. Turns out, many of them also receive federal funding, and with the federal government shut down, that funding, too, is gone.
Elledge and her small team of volunteers – many of them coming from a Facebook group known as the Bad Moms of Madison County – went to work. Using a Google Doc and Walmart deliveries, they set about helping their friends and neighbors keep their heads above water, even if just barely.
They’ve had to pause requests a couple of times, in order to give themselves a chance to catch up, but by late Wednesday evening, they had fulfilled more than 700 requests. There are now more than 800. And they’re still rolling in. (If you’d like to help, follow this link to my Facebook page, where you can find details on how to do so.)
The Peanut Butter and Jelly Squad have done a remarkable job, and they’re not alone. On pretty much every Facebook page devoted to what’s happening in various towns around Alabama, there are posts offering help to those in need. And there are thousands upon thousands of people asking for help.
Local food banks and other volunteer organizations, along with several churches, have organized food drives. Some have offered to deliver groceries and other goods. There are other drives aimed at providing necessities for small children, toddlers and infants.
Seriously, just search through social media sites for any of these in various cities and read the comments and interactions.
As I did throughout the last couple of days, one scene kept playing in my head: Bernie Sanders standing at a mic last week, his Bernie Sanders crazy hair going every direction imaginable, and stating emphatically that the overwhelming majority of Americans are on the precipice of financial ruin.
Look around you.
After less than a month, the food banks are out of food and pop-up volunteer efforts are overwhelmed. In one of the supposed wealthier counties in Alabama.
And that’s why Zohran Mamdani won.
That’s the grassroots effort that elected a Democratic Socialist as mayor in America’s largest city. Because while most people have no idea what democratic socialism is, they know two things: it’s different from what we have now, and what we have now isn’t working for them.
Right now, one person has accumulated more wealth than more than 50 percent of the rest of the country – combined. That person could lose – and really think about this – more than $400 billion tomorrow and still have more wealth than 99 percent of the American population.
And the folks currently running this country just gave that guy – and others like him – a big, fat tax break.
The working folks who keep this country running are begging volunteer moms for PB&Js while the president is renovating the White House bathrooms, building golden ballrooms and hosting lavish Gatsby parties.
At a point, even with the current state of identity politics in this country, enough has to be enough. And a whole bunch of Americans, and even Alabamians, have had enough of this nonsense.
Alabama is a poster child for the problem. We’ve got billions for prisons and pet projects, hundreds of millions for private school kids and millions more for a tax break for the wealthiest earners, but what did we have to repeal?
The overtime tax break.
The tax break that allowed hard working Alabamians to get a little extra bump – by not paying taxes on their overtime – if they were willing to put in more hours. It was just too much.
I mean, come on.
You can only push people so far before they start pushing back. And this is the push back. A whole bunch of people have started to wake up and ask some pretty simple questions – questions that we should have been asking for a long time now.
Like how is it evil socialism if poor people get free bus rides and cheaper rent and food, but it’s just good ol’ acceptable capitalism when billionaires and their companies get flooded with tax breaks and incentives that cost taxpayers way more?
Or how is it evil socialism if we all pay in for a single-payer healthcare system, but it’s acceptable capitalism if I’m priced out of the insurance market, forced to get emergency care I can’t pay for, drive up the costs for everyone else, leaving more people uninsured and unable to receive preventative care, and cause more deaths?
The bottom line here is that America is filled with decent, hard working, caring people. They’ve been turned against each other for a long, long time by the greedy elites who have manipulated the system to drive wealth inequality to its highest levels in American history.
And a whole bunch of people are waking up.
