On Friday morning, the day expected to be the last day of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for 42 million Americans for who knows how long, June O'Neal was busy sorting groceries.
The food was donated to O'Neal because she's a longtime advocate for homeless and economically disadvantaged youth in Macon, so people who have heard about the threat to SNAP and who want to try and do something about it know and trust her.
The same is true for people here who expect to need the help.
"People are getting in touch with us, but we're asking for them to present an EBT card, otherwise we're not going to have enough stuff for the people that really need it,” O'Neal said over boxes of pasta and breakfast cereal. A few other items, like a jug labeled “banana sauce,” were perhaps not destined for distribution.
"We just want there to be enough to go around, and we know we're not going to have enough for everybody, but we want it to go to the people that need it the most," she said. "You know, we're just doing whatever we can.”
In what may be a temporary reprieve, a pair of federal judges ruled separately on Friday that the Trump administration must use $5 billion in emergency contingency funds to help SNAP beneficiaries.
O'Neal said she was going to continue to organize.
"Just because they said he has to do it, do you think he will?" she asked.
Even if administration officials comply, it could still be weeks before the money flows to SNAP debit cards.
About 1 in 8 Georgians rely on SNAP benefits. Something like 1 in 3 people in Macon rely in the program, according to analyis of government data by the New York Times. That same analysis puts Georgia's 2nd US House District, which includes most of Macon, in the top 50 House districts for SNAP enrollment in the country.
That’s the sort of thing that Elizabeth Bacon said brought her to tears in the bread aisle at the grocery store where she was stocking up, spending some of the monetary donations that had come into the grassroots effort led by June O'Neal.
"Some lady stopped me and she said, ’Oh, are you having a party?' And I started tearing up,” Bacon said. “It's just devastating what is happening throughout the nation. And it's also sad that it takes something this big for a community to really, truly come together. You know, it's just human decency.”
Even with the $5 billion in contingency funds in play, the government is likely to be billions short of the full month of SNAP benefits paused by the shutdown.
In a press conference Thursday, Georgia state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes called on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to dip into the state’s $14.6 billion budget surplus to help put cash in the hands of people in danger of going hungry. Parkes brought Rachel Kent, a single mother, to help plead the case.
"Too many of our leaders don't know what it's like to check the pantry before payday, to stretch $10 across the week, or to send a child to bed after another long day of trying,” Kent told reporters. "We're tired."
So far, Kemp has said he will not release any funds and called on Georgia's two Democratic senators to vote to reopen the government.
"In the latest example of D.C. Democrats putting bad politics over the people they claim to care about, Senators Ossoff and Warnock and others in their party are denying hundreds of thousands of Georgians the SNAP benefits they need to feed their families,” Kemp said in a press release.
Elsewhere in the South, Louisiana and South Carolina are working on ways to use state money to shore up the SNAP gap.
Meanwhile, food banks are dealing with shortages on their shelves that began with $1 billion in U.S. Department of Agriculture cuts in March to programs steering food to food banks.
Working mom Ashley Stephenson of Macon felt the consequences of that when neither of the two food pantries she visited Thursday had any food.
"We're looking at feeding three kids with barely anything after bills and everything else,” Stephenson said. “Unfortunately, the government is not doing its job and the people are being screwed because of it.”
Stephenson said she didn’t know what her next move would be.
Back sorting food donations before packing them up for families, June O'Neal compared this economic emergency to the others she has weathered in the past over her career of social work.
"Each one has their own personality — you know, each one has incredible amounts of sadness and angst built in,” O'Neal said. “But with everything so expensive today, if you and I are feeling the pinch at the grocery store, I can't even imagine a single parent, a senior citizen, on a fixed income — And now they have no food money coming in?”
O'Neal said in what she calls the greatest country in the world, that’s just tragic.
