By Carla Thomas
The Truth Contributor
When the federal government slashes SNAP benefits, the story gets told like it’s just policy, numbers on a spreadsheet or a fiscal adjustment. But for Black communities, it’s something far more personal. It’s another reminder that the same government claiming to “help” us is also the one deciding who gets to eat and who doesn’t. These cuts, beginning November 1, don’t just change a budget, they expose the fragility of a system that was never designed for our survival, let alone our liberation.
The government likes to call aid compassion, but history tells a different truth. Welfare, food stamps and social programs have always been double-edged, relief on one side, control on the other. They teach us to confuse help with control, to equate survival with submission. And when that help disappears, the message is loud and clear: survive on their terms or not at all.
When I think about that, I think about the Black Panther Party. I think about those mornings in 1969 at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, where the Panthers launched their Free Breakfast for Children Program, the first 11 children sitting down to eat, the quiet power of care turning into a national movement. By the end of that first week, they were feeding 135 children. Within a year, over twenty thousand kids were eating every single day across twenty-three cities. The Panthers didn’t wait for permission, didn’t apply for grants, didn’t beg for validation. They looked around, saw hunger and built what was needed, together.
That kind of self-determination terrified the government. J. Edgar Hoover called the Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Not because of their guns, but because of their audacity to feed, educate and protect their own. That was the real threat: a Black community that didn’t need to ask permission to live. Those programs didn’t end because they failed. They ended because they worked.
And here we are, decades later, still being taught to depend on systems designed to keep us dependent. Colonization doesn’t always come waving flags, sometimes it comes wrapped in paperwork and policy, teaching us to look outward for rescue instead of inward for renewal. It’s not just political; it’s psychological.
To decolonize our communities, we have to remember who we are and where we come from. We descend from people who built whole ecosystems of care long before anyone invented the word “welfare.” And even when federal welfare and food stamp programs did exist, the Panthers showed us another way — care without conditions, rooted in dignity, cooperation, and self-determination. People who knew how to farm, share, teach, protect and heal collectively. People who understood that liberation isn’t something the government gives, it’s something we build, meal by meal, brick by brick, lesson by lesson, hand in hand.
In cities and counties across the country, even right here at home, people are already asking what comes next. Community organizations and some churches are gathering, and local politicians recently met to discuss how to respond, even calling on the state government for aid to soften the blow. That kind of concern matters because it shows people are paying attention. But it also reminds us of something deeper: while government assistance can offer relief, it’s our own creativity and care that sustain us when systems fall short.
Reclaiming our power means reviving that lineage of collective care. It means shifting from a politics of dependency to politics of creation, feeding each other, teaching each other, protecting each other, not as a rejection of government, but as a declaration that liberation cannot be outsourced.
So when we talk about SNAP cuts, we’re not just talking about hunger. We’re talking about power, who has it, who’s supposed to keep it, and how we take it back.
True empowerment doesn’t mean rejecting help; it means redefining it. It means shifting from dependency to solidarity, from being “helped” to helping each other. It means remembering that survival, for us, has always been a collective act of imagination.
When we organize, when we care for one another beyond the boundaries of the government, we’re not just surviving, we’re practicing liberation.
But that’s the question before us now, isn’t it? How do we come together, not just in reaction, but in intention? With so many nonprofits, churches, and grassroots groups already doing the work, how do we move beyond working in silos and begin building something collective, something that lasts? How do we build networks of mutual aid that feed not only our bodies, but our sense of belonging and safety? How do we educate, mobilize, and sustain one another when systems fail?
These aren’t rhetorical questions, they’re invitations. Because the truth is, liberation has always started this way: with people asking what we can do together.