BY JAMES NIMMO

Most Saturday mornings since last June I’ve been going to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma, a huge warehouse that collects from food wholesalers and distributors enormous quantities of food and then disburses it to smaller food banks and other public outlets; I look at it as a river flowing backward into tributaries with food instead of water.

There are two shifts on Saturdays and shifts on weekday afternoons and evenings. The work is broken down into simple steps, assembly-line style, with no specialized knowledge needed. There is something for everyone, adult to child, able-bodied to physically challenged. Hundreds of volunteers show up and there’s always a short info-pep talk for the rookies as well as a reminder for the veterans.

Here’s the skinny: Oklahoma is among the Top 10 states with food insecurity. Food insecurity means people not knowing where their next meal is coming from.

Seventeen percent of adults and 25% of children in Oklahoma fall into this food abyss.

I started going to the Food Bank to do my part because there is no politics, no religion, no shaming allowed on the premises. They don’t say that, that’s what I say. The only thing promoted is helping other Oklahomans [I prefer to say fellow humans as I detest the promotion of accidents of birth as virtues] get decent reliable food.

Our governments – local, state and national – are failing all of us. Working at the Food Bank is my way of helping as well as sticking my finger in the eye of politicians.

Yes, we have progressive politicians but they fail to break the intentional logjams and invented obstacles knowingly created by the enemies of human happiness: corporations selling the human spirit to improve market share and racism masked as religious fervor, untouchable and immune to reason.

These are my thoughts made with no support or knowledge from the Regional Food Bank.

– Oklahoma City resident James Nimmo is a frequent contributor to The Oklahoma Observer