Source: WENN

Former Victoria’s Secret model Selita Ebanks’ life is the epitome of a rags to riches story. The 30-year-old Cayman Islands native isn’t ashamed to tell her story either. During the Food Banks’ Can Do Awards, Ebanks chatted it up with the NY Post, revealing that when she was a child, her mother heavily relied on charity and government assistance to ensure that she and her seven brothers were fed.

“My mother relied on food stamps and the food pantry so we never went hungry. There’s no shame when you have children and you want to provide for them,” the 5’9 beauty revealed.

She went on to marvel at her mother’s ability to put her pride aside for the sake of her children.

“It says something about a woman that has no ego when it comes to her children. She did anything possible.”

“She was working the system to make sure we had everything. Sometimes we had two or three turkeys at Thanksgiving, and she would give them to our neighbors that weren’t qualified for the program.”

Selita’s mom is now able to enjoy the finer things in life. She’s retired and lives in Georgia.

“Now she is living with her feet up on the couch, living every day,” Selita expressed.

It’s sometimes easy to look at a successful person and think that they’ve always had it good, without considering that they probably had to struggle to get where they are. It’s great that Selita hasn’t forgotten where she came from and continues to give back.

Mayor Booker with Sandy relief recipients in Newark. AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Well, it’s here. This week, Newark, NJ Major Cory Booker is living on food stamps. Booker went grocery shopping over the weekend and spent $29.78 on food, including apples, corn, and beans.

The challenge came about after a conversation with a follower on Twitter, when Booker challenged @MWadeNC and himself to live on $33 for a week’s worth of food. In New Jersey, the average monthly food stamp allocation was $133.26 per person, or about $33 a week. It all started yesterday following a weekend shopping trip with Newark’s Food Policy Director Elizabeth Reynoso. It ends on the 11th.

Tagged the #SNAPChallenge (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), people can weigh on the Mayor’s experience online and via social media. @FeedAmerica, the Twitter account for the nonprofit organization has tweeted: “Thks @CoryBooker for raising #SNAP (food stamp) awareness thru your #SNAPchallenge! Looking forward to following along!”

Booker is documenting the challenge on his social media accounts, including tweeting his Pathmark receipt, blogging about the challenge on LinkedIn, and posting a picture of his breakfast on Instagram. He also posted this video with his thoughts after day one. It will be interesting to see and hear his experience for the week, and hopefully it will make an impact.

Eugene Parciasepe / Shutterstock.com

Newark Mayor Cory Booker is joining the ranks of the millions of people who use food stamps to pay for their groceries — at least for a week. This past Sunday, Booker challenged one of his Twitter followers, a 39-year-old mother from North Carolina, to join him on a seven-day food stamp experiment. The challenge came after a back-and-forth discussion following a tweet by Booker that said: ‘An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics’ Plutarch ancient Greek historian (c. 46 – 120 CE),” reports UPI. The follower, who is a self-described “Daughter of the American Revolution (DAR), fighting against any and all forms of socialism/communism,” took issue with the tweet.

The University of Bridgeport, which is holding the “UB SNAP Food Challenge” next month, offered to referee the Booker challenge, which will happen December 4 through 11.  Booker plans to document his efforts on various social media platforms.  According to the rules, reports BET,  it has been stipulated that each person has a total budget of $35 to spend on food and beverages, which is $5 per day or $1.66 per meal. They also can’t accept food from outside sources, such as family, friends and work, and cannot use food that’s already in the home, excluding condiments and spices.

It has been estimated that there is a likelihood that half of all adult Americans between the ages of 20 and 65 will use food assistance at some point.  Today a record number of people — nearly 50 million – will use food stamps to pay for their Thanksgiving dinners. According to United States Department of Agriculture data, 36 percent of participants in the food stamp program are white, 22 percent are African American, 10 percent are Hispanic, two percent are Asian, four percent are Native American, and 19 percent are of unknown race or ethnicity.

Typically, food stamp recipients get $133 a month per person. Besides holiday meals, many recipients are using their stamps typically to purchase foods with poor nutritional value. The federal food assistance program SNAP pays $1.7 billion to $2.1 billion for purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages every year, reports The Los Angeles Times.  But the government doesn’t reveal details on what people spend their food stamps, notes the Washington Post.  Food stamps can be spent on goods ranging from candy to steak, says the newspaper.

While we don’t know what Booker will buy with his stamps, we do know this seems to be another move by Booker to take a hands-on approach to governing. You may recall that during Hurricane Sandy the Mayor invited  people without power over to his house. Mayor Booker’s hands-on approach was actually greeted with boos and a near pepper spraying last night when he stepped in to cast a vote to fill a city council spot with someone that other members and people in attendance didn’t agree with. You can watch the mayhem below (h/t Slate).

Source: Playerswives.com

I know you all are already shaking your heads, but hear Allison out. As you know, the mother of Miami Heat player Chris Bosh’s 3-year-old daughter has applied for food stamps, saying that since she’s lost her job, they can’t survive on the $2,600/month that he pays in child support. A lot of people were confused about that and suggested Allison just go get another job and in an interview with Gossip Extra, Allison revealed that she actually did have a different job opportunity—as a member of the ‘Basketball Wives’ cast—but Chris blocked her from joining. She told the site:

“I was offered a job on ‘Basketball Wives’ and I filmed a couple episodes and it leaked that I landed the job and Chris of course did not want me to go on it so he sued me to keep me from going on it. I would have made a hell of a lot of money than with other job offers that I’ve had.

“My thing is, if you didn’t want me to speak about you, then maybe you should have reached out to me or my attorney and said, ‘look, it’s OK for her to go on this show because it’s a way for her to provide income for her daughter but don’t mention Chris’s name.’ That would have been a better approach than to just get me completely fired from the show.”

According to Gossip Extra, Allison would have taken in $12,000/week for appearing on the VH1 show which would have definitely kept her out of the assistance line, but it appears Chris had more legal muscle.

In her exclusive interview, Allison also talks about how Chris changed after she got pregnant, and I have to admit it was kind of sad seeing the clip of the happy couple finding out she was pregnant to looking at how things turned out in the end. Allison says Chris hasn’t reached out to her at all offer her and his daughter any type of help since the media reported that she applied for food stamps, saying the most she’s heard is a quote from him saying he was “saddened” by the news. She said instead of being sad he should be glad to help.

“I’m not the only one and I don’t expect people to just to feel sorry for me and have pity on me, but I do think that the father of my child, given that he is able to help his child out, should be willing to.”

Check out the quick two-part interview here. Do you think Chris should have let Allison go on “Basketball Wives” if he wasn’t going to help her financially?

Brande Victorian is the news and operations editor for madamenoire.com. Follow her on twitter @Be_Vic.

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pegasusnews.com

You may think that there are too many people on food stamps, but the government doesn’t. According to CNNMoney, about 46.4 million people are on the food stamps program also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Although that number is only a bit below January’s record high level, the report states that one in four Americans who are eligible for the program don’t participate, and the government is running an extensive campaign to change that.

“Research has shown that many people — particularly underserved seniors, working poor, and legal immigrants — do not understand the requirements of the program,” said Kevin Concannon, a USDA under secretary.

About two-thirds of the elderly and people just below the poverty line don’t participate in the food stamps program.

To encourage participation, the US Department of Agriculture has spent about $2.5-3 million has been spent on paid radio spots in California, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, New York metro area and Ohio. The ads have run for the past four months.

The recruitment campaign started during the Bush presidency, which raised participation by 63 percent in his eight years. President Obama’s stimulus act made qualifying for the program easier for unemployed adults with no children and increased monthly benefits by nearly 15 percent through 2013.

In 2011, the federal government spent over $75 billion on food stamps, which is about $34.6 billion more than in 2008. The increase has drawn strong criticism from fiscal conservatives and is a subject of contention between Democrats and Republicans.

But proponents view the increase as a necessity, especially for the country’s elderly citizens.

“Millions of low-income seniors struggle to afford life’s necessities like food and medicine,” Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said to CNN Money. “Enrolling in SNAP can help ease that struggle.”

Source: playerwives.com

While Chris Bosh is in Miami playing in the NBA Finals, it looks like his baby mama, Allison Mathis, is at the Orlando Department of Child and Family Services applying for food stamps.

The Miami Herald reports that Jose Lambiet from Gossip Extra talked to Allison’s lawyer Jane Carey about the situation:

In her first interview about the legal battle that Bosh and former live-in galpal Allison Mathis have been waging in three states, Mathis’ lawyer tells me, Orlando resident Mathis was laid off from her gig as a secretary in a construction company and this week applied for federal food assistance.

Mathis is also expecting to see her home go into foreclosure because the child support Bosh is paying doesn’t cover her mortgage!

What’s more, the tall-head’s request to take his and Mathis’ three-year-old daughter to London this summer to watch him play in the Olympics has been denied by an Orlando judge.

Carey talked publicly about the case for the first time today because, she says, she’s tired of the 28-year-old Bosh — who got married last year to Adrienne Bosh and recently celebrated the birth of their son.

For two years, the ball player has been battling Mathis in courts in Orange County (Florida), California and Texas on anything from child support to banning her appearance from VH-1’s Basketball Wives to how much time he spends with the child.

Things, however, have changed since Mathis lost her job.

Believe it or not, says Carey, Bosh pays her a mere $2,600-a-month in child support!

According to state guidelines, someone like Bosh whose yearly salary is in the $18 million-range should be paying about $30,000-a-month. So Carey asked a judge to adjust the child support.

Two thousands dollars a month seems dangerously low for child support from a NBA player who is raking in millions. When will these men understand that if you lay up with a woman and have a child with her then you need to be prepared to pay up to support that child? Nobody is saying he has to split fifty-fifty with a woman he never made a true commitment to, but allowing his daughter to live in the poor house while he is swamped with cash is suspect.

However, Allison seems to believe that Bosh’s child support should cover her lifestyle as well. Since when does child support cover mortgage payments and serve as financial insurance against layoffs? She already tried to sue Bosh for not allowing her to monetize her former relationship with him by being on “Basketball Wives.” Now, she is making headlines for applying for food stamps? Somebody stop this girl.

If Allison can’t afford to take care of her daughter, then she should send her to live with her father. But, considering Bosh had to take Allison to court back in February in order to get “meaningful time” with his daughter, it doesn’t seem that Allison has the best interest of their child at heart anyway. Instead, she’s clearly using her daughter as a pawn for tax-free cash flow. She is getting child support checks every month that put her way above the eligibility line for food stamps, yet because her relationship with Bosh didn’t result in the payday she was hoping for she thinks she is entitled to help from the government?  This woman has no shame at all.

There are people in Orlando who truly need food stamps and Allison Mathis just isn’t one of them.

What do you think? Should Allison get food stamps or a child support increase?

Alissa Henry is a freelance writer living in Columbus, OH. Follow her on Twitter @AlissaInPink. 

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From EurWeb.com

indianapublicmedia.org

For the folks that are abusing the system … STOP IT!

There are so many people starving and homeless in America that really need the help from social programs funded by the federal and state governments and even more Republicans ready to cut all programs for the actions of a few.

All they need is excuses like folks using the money on their EBT cards to buy drugs and cigarettes. But, one dude takes it even further than that.

For the complete story, visit EurWeb.com.

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Source: nomblog.com

Probably, like most of you, I’ve been watching the republican primaries with the peripheral interest of a circus sideshow. As Gingrich, Santorum and Romney duke it out, I’ve heard such alienating phrases as, “I want African American people to demand paychecks, not food stamps,” (Gingrich),  ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money,” (Santorum), and Romney’s flub about not caring about the unemployed–never mind that blacks make up 12 percent of that group. And to put icing on the cake, a recent report indicated that 29 percent of republicans from the Deep South think interracial marriage should be illegal, and it appears none of the presidential hopefuls have chosen to disabuse them of this notion. Surprise, surprise.

All this pandering to the extreme right wing of the party has backfired because the ignorant comments, Freudian slips, and allusions to swipe at women’s hard-won reproductive rights impacts not only blacks, but other minorities and white soccer moms. Rick Santorum’s recent comments about how Puerto Ricans should speak better English is just another on a long list of buffoonish remarks aimed at minorities. Santorum single-handedly managed to offend both Hispanics and black people part of the African diaspora.

But it looks like republicans don’t too much like it when “off color” remarks are thrown in the other direction. At a recent fundraiser for President Obama, Robert DeNiro joked about America not being “ready for a white First Lady.” Newt Gingrinch was outraged, OUTRAGED!! He said DeNiro’s comments were inexcusable, and wanted the president to apologize for DeNiro; I guess because an apology from the mega-star wasn’t sufficient for Mr. Gingrinch.

Republicans have essentially given up trying to win “the black vote,” so there seems to be little self-editing happening. Lenny McAllister, senior contributor at Politic365.com and radio host of “Get Right with Lenny McAllister” (www.LMGILIVE.com), and frequent guest on CNN, says that the recent antics in the republican party aree less about alienation, and more about a failure to connect. “There hasn’t been a concerted effort to reach minorities [in the republican party] for 40 years.”

McAllister, who is a member of the group, Hip Hop Republicans, worries that this continued failure to connect will prevent republicans from leading a more diverse America, and the country continues to “brown.”

But there’s good news for Obama fans: Although McAllister thinks the president should get a “C-” for his first term, he still predicts a narrow win against Mitt Romney, whom he believes will be the single man standing after the republican primary. Who do you think will win the republican primary?

Christelyn D. Karazin is the co-author of “Swirling: How to Date, Mate and Relate Mixing Race, Culture and Creed” (to be released May 2012), and runs a blog, www.beyondblackwhite.com, dedicated to women of color who are interested and or involved in interracial and intercultural relationships. She is also the founder and organizer of “No Wedding, No Womb,” an initiative to find solutions to the 72 percent out-of-wedlock rate in the black community.

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From theGrio.com

With recent light shed on “food deserts” — or neighborhoods without access to quality healthy foods — a new initiative shows that partnering with local farmers can help both sides of the deal.

By making it easier for farmer’s market vendors to accept payments from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — formerly known as the food stamp program — fresh produce sales increased by over one-third among SNAP customers.

This counters some critics’ opinions that even if fresh fruits and vegetables are made available in underserved communities, people won’t purchase them because of poor eating habits.

“I’ve heard that, but I really think that people want good food and will eat it,” says Dr. Allison E. Karpyn, director of research and evaluation at The Food Trust, and co-investigator of the study that uncovered these findings.

Read the rest of the story at theGrio.com.

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Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson isn’t a friend of many and he’s probably racked up quite a few more enemies with his latest comments in which he says he agrees with Newt Gingrich’s statements about black people demanding paychecks instead of food stamps. But Peterson took think a few steps further, as he usually does, saying what black people need to get back on the employment track is hard work—in the form of slavery.

“One of the things that I would do is take all black people back to the South and put them on the plantation so they would understand the ethic of working,” Peterson told The Huffington Post’s Black Voices. “I’m going to put them all on the plantation. They need a good hard education on what it is to work.”

Education, maybe. Plantation, no.

“People don’t want to hear the truth,” Peterson added. “Newt was 100 percent correct. Newt said that he would have black children, minority children work as janitors at school. Working as a janitor would build character, more so than the handouts so many of them like.

“I know some people take it personally because a whole lot of folks don’t like hearing the truth; they like to be in denial,” he said. “Not all black people, but most black people know, and white people know, and black people say it more in private than they would in public, but for the last 50 years or so, generations and generations of black people have relied on the government or someone else to take care of them.”

He goes on to paint all black women with the same generational welfare queen brush, while expressing hope that black people will turn away from the Democratic party and it’s “godless leaders.” It’s too bad he doesn’t understand that he’s feeding into all of the sterotypes every time he opens his mouth, and that he’s doing black people no favors when he puts forth such ridiculous suggestions. There are more ways to build character than by working as a slave or janitor, maybe the rev should give it a try so he can build some himself.

What do you think about Rev. Peterson’s comments? Is he doing the black community harm or good by speaking out like this?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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