Rally to Protect our Services

On Tuesday, February 22, St. Anthony’s joined more than 500 low-income seniors, people with disabilities, Medi-Cal recipients, people who provide in-home care and day services for the elderly and disabled, and CalWORKs families from across the state to ask our lawmakers to pass a budget that protects our health and our safety net.

We gathered at the State Capitol in Sacramento for a lively rally.  Participants included a mother whose CalWORKs child care subsidies allow her to make her way through college, a blind woman who receives SSI/SSP income and faces a $15 per month reduction in benefits, and a woman who faces having to quit her job to take care of her mother if her mother’s Adult Day Health program benefits are cut.

St. Anthony’s Free Dining Room serves an average of 2,600 meals a day to our community. Some of our dining room guests have no incomes. Others live on fixed incomes like SSI/SSP, which is a federal-and state- funded income support program for poor seniors and people with disabilities. In California, SSI/SSP recipients are ineligible for Cal Fresh (the new name for California’s Food Stamp program). The maximum SSI/SSP benefit is only 93% of the poverty level, and many people face difficulties affording rent, medical care, and food.

At St. Anthony’s, we believe that our federal, state, and local budgets are not just economic documents: they’re moral documents that prioritize what our society values.  The people who receive food, services, and medical care from St. Anthony’s are valuable members of our community, but they can often feel that their voices go unheard.  Something awesome happens, however, when a group of people who may not feel powerful on their own come together to ask for justice: they combine their voices, and by supporting each other, they speak out with a united voice and empower each other.