Last week was an eventful week for my family. The week began for us at a Moral Monday press conference on Sept. 29 outside of GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office in Louisville, Kentucky. We were there as mourners, accompanied by two symbolic caskets, to grieve the Big Beautiful Bill that is projected to kill tens of thousands of poor people annually through its brutal budget cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits. With the support of McConnell, the Senate passed the cuts in July. We were there to call on McConnell and other leaders to restore the health care and nutritional funding people in our communities need to survive.

The next day, as the government prepared to shut down, my family packed our bags to leave town for my daughter Naomi’s spinal surgery. On Oct. 2, with the shutdown in full s

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