Just Harvest

There's been a lot of talk about the "record-breaking turnout" in the recent election. Getting scant mention is that only around 2/3 of the adults who could have voted actually did. PA's voting rate of 71.6% implies that around 2.6 million Pennsylvanians could have voted in the general election but didn't. Why not? Some portion of that 2.6 million can't be changed: People who are too infirm to cast a vote, or those with religious objections to political participation. 2.6 mi...llion might also include the roughly 80k incarcerated in PA -- some of whom (convicted felons) aren't eligible to vote, while the rest are (by absentee ballot) but often don't know it. Definitely in that 2.6 million are those who thought seriously about voting but decided that no candidates on the ballot represented their interests. Non-voters are more likely to be homeless and transient. They're more likely to feel utterly disconnected from politics than voters. A good number of non-voters, if not most, live in low-income or low-wealth households. That 2.6 million is about 56 times the number of votes that (currently) separate Biden and Trump. What might our democracy, our commonwealth, and our country be like if non-voters started voting?

GOOD AND BAD NEWS on SNAP/Food Stamps during the pandemic: GOOD: November extra benefits have been approved for PA for households not already getting the maximum! Get the disbursement schedule here: www.justharvest.org/pa-food-stamp-recipients-may-get-a-sec/ BAD: The Trump administration is now fighting in court to block extra SNAP for the households already getting the maximum for their household size. Community Legal Services of Philadelphia won a lawsuit in early October ...that would have forced the administration to provide extra benefits to *all* SNAP recipients during this crisis. The Trump administration is appealing that court ruling. It is therefore not known if or when those extra SNAP benefits for Pennsylvania's 700,000 lowest-income households already getting the max will be available. We will share any news on this as soon as we learn it.

Amidst the uncertainty of the ballot counting and even of the potential legal challenges to the validity of various ballots, some things are clear: 1. President Trump's authoritarian public statements in the past few days are an indelible moral stain on the nation. 2. The silence of many Republican leaders in the face of this attack on constitutional democracy is a disgrace. (Sen. Pat Toomey, to his credit, called the president's speech "very hard to watch" and described the ...claims of voter fraud "just not substantiated." A real profile in courage, that guy. But at least his words show some integrity, unlike those of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who called elections in Philadelphia "crooked as a snake.") 3. More than 69,000,000 people in this country voted for Trump. Biden may win the election, but it is pretty clear he did not win "the battle for the soul of the nation." No matter the election result, this remains a deeply troubled and wounded nation in which justice still does not prevail. This has been true since long before the pandemic and before Trump took office. The hard work remains ahead of achieving economic justice, racial justice, and a democracy in which ALL Americans can take part. Let's keep our eyes on the prize and keep at it.