Hungry people generally don't announce themselves.
They form silent lines at food pantries. They pay quietly with Bridge cards. They do not like to tell their stories in public, which is why you have read so few of them.
Anna Calhoun, though, has gotten to the point where disbelief outweighs any sense of embarrassment. And as "Unity 2012" — a national summit of food banks — converges on Detroit today, she finds herself grappling with the latest in a sequence of setbacks she and her husband have faced since losing their jobs during Michigan's decade-long economic winter.
Last month, in one of the deaths from a thousand cuts she's experienced, Calhoun received a brief letter from the state, informing her that the $94 a month in food assistance the state had been providing was no more. Three months before that, the food assistance for her, her husband, her son and stepdaughter had been cut from $232 a month.
The caseworker couldn't explain the basis, but Calhoun got on a computer and looked up the code: As full-time students, the Calhouns no longer qualified for food assistance.
From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120417/OPINION03/204170371#ixzz1sJjgJU4C
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