By Parker Gilkesson Davis and Teon Hayes

For years, much of CLASP’s food assistance work has centered on protecting and strengthening federal programs like SNAP and WIC. SNAP helps millions of families put food on the table, and WIC supports pregnant people, babies, and young children at some of the most vulnerable points in their lives. These programs save lives, and we will continue to fight for them.

But events in 2025 made something painfully clear: federal programs alone cannot be the only plan.

Since January 2025, we’ve watched a steady stream of political attacks on SNAP—through budget cuts, expanded work requirements, and rhetoric that treats hunger as a personal failure rather than a systemic one. At the same time, our long-standing work with the Community Partnership Group (CPG), and our own lived experiences have been telling us the same thing: people are already struggling to get enough food, even with SNAP.

Then came the government shutdown in late 2025.

Parker: As I sat with the reality of what could happen if SNAP benefits truly weren’t administered, I found myself asking a very simple question: What are people going to do? I began searching for organizations in my hometown of Peoria, IL, that could provide food at scale outside of food banks or small, short-term local efforts. And I kept hitting a wall. The truth is, we do not have many systems in place to feed people outside of federal programs. If SNAP really ended, there was no backup plan.

That moment forced a reckoning for Teon Hayes and me who lead our food assistance work, and honestly, our entire team.

It became clear just how commodified our food systems have become and how dependent we are on institutions and markets that can disappear or fail us overnight. And it made me realize that we have lost touch with something our ancestors understood deeply: food sovereignty. The ability to feed ourselves and one another, no matter what.

I think often about conversations I had as a child with my grandmothers. I asked them what it was like growing up during the Great Depression. Both of them said something similar: they couldn’t really tell the difference. 

Both of my grandmothers were Black, growing up under the Black Codes and Jim Crow, living in poverty long before the Great Depression ever had its name. Hardship was already a reality. But they told me this: no matter what was happening around them, our people knew how to survive. Farming, bartering, cooking, canning, sharing food, and feeding one another. These were not hobbies or trends—they were collective skills passed down, refined, and relied on.

While the rest of the country was learning how to survive the Great Depression, our ancestors already had the code.

That history matters right now.

What this moment is calling us to do is remember. To return to the ways our communities have always cared for one another. To build food systems that are rooted in people, not politics. To recognize that while federal programs like SNAP and WIC must be protected and strengthened, they cannot be the only answer.

Here on CLASP’s Public Benefits Justice Team, we are expanding how we think about food assistance—not because SNAP doesn’t matter, but because people matter more. We are looking beyond federal programs to uplift community-led solutions, local and state initiatives, and the work that community-based organizations have been doing for generations. We see our role as learners and connectors—listening to what’s already working, sharing information, and helping connect community power to policymaking power.

Ensuring that everyone eats feels urgent, but it also feels possible. Our ancestors showed us how. They fed one another through conditions far worse than this. They survived because they had each other.

This is a call to remember. To reconnect. And to build food systems that can carry us through yet another moment—together.

To learn more about why we’re expanding our approach to food assistance, what food resources are available to communities right now, and how this work is playing out on the ground, click here to read our full paper about this new approach, which includes a real-life example from Peoria—because if it plays in Peoria, it can play anywhere.