This Isn’t Charity—It’s Justice Work

Let’s start with what’s true: our donors are remarkable.

You show up, again and again, to make sure people have enough to eat. You give your time, your resources, and your heart because you believe in human dignity. You believe no one should be hungry in a nation of abundance. And thanks to you, Open Heart Kitchen is able to serve thousands of meals each week, provide groceries to families who are barely holding on, create transitional shelter, and offer comfort and care in a world that too often looks the other way.

But here's the truth behind the truth: You shouldn’t have to be the safety net. Because what we’re doing here isn’t charity, it’s infrastructure.

Food is not a luxury. Shelter is not a gift. Clean drinking water is not a perk. These are the building blocks of a healthy, stable society, and in any functioning democracy, they should be guaranteed as a matter of basic justice, not dependent on fundraising goals and gala nights.

But that’s not how our country operates. In this system, food insecurity and homelessness are not bugs, they’re features. Predictable outcomes of decades of disinvestment, policy neglect, wage stagnation, and structural racism. They are the direct result of public abandonment. We deny people food and shelter not because we lack the means, but because we’ve swallowed the lie that poverty is a personal failing. It’s not. It’s the direct result of rigged systems and decades of political choices that punish the poor and reward indifference. And as bad as it is, it's almost always worse for people of color.

And if you need proof, just look at the numbers.

Pick nearly any ZIP code in America facing hunger and housing insecurity, and then multiply that crisis by three to five times, that’s the reality for Black Americans. Not by coincidence. Not by chance. But because race exacerbates every broken policy this country has to offer.

Redlining. Mass incarceration. Unequal access to health care. School funding based on property tax. Discriminatory lending. Environmental racism. All these systemic failures compound and concentrate on Black communities, and Native, Latinx, and immigrant communities aren’t far behind.

This is what happens when a country builds its safety net with holes big enough for entire generations to fall through, and then asks nonprofits to hold it all together with bake sales, goodwill, and a few grant writers running on fumes.

Let me be clear: the generosity of our donors is not the problem. You're filling in where systems have failed. You're giving what should already be guaranteed. You're offering care where institutions offer indifference.

But we cannot confuse generosity with justice.

You deserve a system where your giving builds on solid ground, not where it has to fill every gap left by policy failure. Our clients deserve a country that sees their needs not as burdens, but as obligations. And our staff and volunteers deserve to know that their work is respected not just with applause, but with structural change.

We need public policy that treats food and shelter like the infrastructure they are. We need universal programs that lift people up, not paperwork mazes that shut them out. We need to stop treating hunger as a symptom of laziness, and start naming it for what it is: a policy choice.

At Open Heart Kitchen, we are proud of the work we do. But feeding people should not be a nonprofit miracle. It should be a public guarantee.

We’re not simply running a charity. We’re running a vital community service. And if it disappears, real people go without, not because society lacks the resources, but because it lacks the political will.

To our donors: you are the reason we can keep going but you shouldn't have to be. Let’s build a world where we’re not always playing catch-up or where we're only able to extend vital services to those who need them most because someone liked a pitch deck over coffee. Let’s build a world where basic needs are never up for debate. Let’s build a world where generosity can be what it was always meant to be: a beautiful extra, not the last lifeline.

This isn’t charity. This is justice work. This is infrastructure. This is the common good.

Let’s fund it like we believe in it.

P.S. The 30% proposed cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as "food stamps" and what is called CalFresh in California, will devastate families. To put the proposed cuts into perspective, just a 10% reduction in funding would be the equivalent of shuttering every food bank in America.