By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
For East Lansing attorney M.B. Farrell, a member of the State Bar of Michigan since 1975, the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday figures to be cast in an altogether different light this year in the wake of the pandemic.
Which is why Farrell and other supporters of the Greater Lansing Food Bank are urging area residents to open up their hearts — and their wallets — to those caught in the crosshairs of COVID-19.
“Thanksgiving is on the horizon — at least it is on the calendar,” said Farrell. “However, for too many of our neighbors in the Greater Lansing area, food scarcity is too often on their calendar and an omnipresent fact of life.
“While parts of the economy are inching toward reopening, many sectors are either lagging behind or yet to experience that reopening,” Farrell noted. “Who has been impacted? Our unemployment rate is hovering between 8 to 9 percent. Pretty substantial. Hundreds and thousands are either out-of-work or have been relegated to part-time employment when they otherwise have relied on full-time employment to cover food costs – and mortgage, rent, insurance, car and prescription payments.
“Many of those who have lost their jobs or who have had their hours or shifts reduced have been hourly workers,” Farrell said. “More often than not, they are single parents with children at home. They are placed in the unenviable position of having to prioritize whether to put food on the table, maintain a roof over their head, purchase necessary prescriptions and/or make an insurance or car payment in order to get to work.”
Thousands of area residents, “the clerks, waitresses, janitors and cooks,” Farrell indicated, do not have the option or “the luxury of logging in for a Zoom session,” in order to earn a paycheck.
“Showing up, reporting for work and ‘punching in are bedrocks of their employment,” he said. “Consequently, when the ‘under-employment rate’ is combined with the unemployment rate, the figure is well into double digits. Clearly, not good.”
As a consequence, “for these neighbors, accessing the food pantries of the Greater Lansing Food Bank is a lifeline,” according to Farrell.
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