Three years ago, I cried over an egg.

It was the only egg in the mostly bare fridge, and it was my greatest treasure. All that remained in our kitchen cupboards was a giant bag of rice - purchased months beforehand, thankfully still going strong - oatmeal, and expired packages of dried chickpeas and black beans. We did not have money to buy another carton of eggs or bus fare for the closest food bank, 45 minutes away. This last egg was the most precious thing in the world to me then, the last until my first paycheck came in after months unemployed, and I cried because I should have boiled it. I cried because I mourned the egg residue burned in the pan, and I cried more because there was only a little flavor. I cried harder at my ingratitude; how spoiled I was to wish for something fresh and green. I cried the hardest at my situation - the hell that is poverty.

This was not the last time I experienced food insecurity.

Balancing daily nutrition paycheck to paycheck has been an ongoing, terrifying struggle. When I go to the grocery store, I stare at the card reader and hold my breath until it says, “Approved.” I spend $60 and carry just one bag back home. There have been points where I walk past grocery stores still lit at night and think to myself, There is just glass between me and food.

You’ve experienced this, too, haven’t you? It is an insult to our intelligence to call surging food prices inflation. It is blatant price gouging.

In his famous quote, Dr. Ernesto Guevara said, “I envy you. You North Americans are very lucky. You are fighting the most important fight of them - you live in the belly of the beast.”

I wonder if Che knew that meant being digested alive.

In the United States, we are digested in the empire’s belly and used as calories to fuel the war machine. Ironically, as empire consumes us, it poisons our food and pollutes our waters. To add insult to injury, it is starving us.

While we go into debt to feed ourselves, Christofascist entities like the Heritage Foundation prey on working peoples’ struggles to advance their political agendas. People are starving, and the oligarchy’s puppets work to cut $30 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next 10 years.

Republicans have a long history of resenting food programs and voting to slash billions from SNAP. But make no mistake: four Democrats - Don Davis (D-NC), Bishop (D-GA), Sorensen (D-IL), and Caraveo (D-CO) - voted to approve food insecure Farm Bill 2024.

What is the Democratic Party’s solution? A strongly worded letter to the Commander-in-Chief, pointing out all the things they could do to address food costs. Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, suggestions included creating a joint task force to investigate what we already know.

Mind you, this is the same politician who was eating well herself at a swanky Cambridge restaurant and could not be bothered to get up from the table when a constituent approached her. A refugee from Gaza, the constituent had already lost 68 family members to Zionist terror attacks and wanted to know how many more had to die before Warren would call for a ceasefire.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Warren said. “I’m having dinner.”

Everywhere, working bodies struggle to feed themselves and their families. In Kenya, nutritionists worry about public health because of protein’s heightening costs. In New Zealand, common food prices soar past 50% and force double-income families to rely on food banks. In Argentina, food prices rose up to 70% in three months and - thanks to President Javier Milei’s maddening libertarian “reforms” - many have to scavenge for food. In Bangladesh, a game was made out of food insecurity. In Egypt, the price of historically subsidized bread has been increased to further federal revenue - all at the expense of 65 million Egyptians who rely on bread as a main staple.

Twelve years ago, the 25 January Revolution in Egypt erupted after decades under the Mubarak regime. It was sparked by police brutality, abusive state-of-emergency laws, political censorship, electoral fraud, high unemployment rates, food price inflation, and criminally low wages. The rallying cry was “Bread, Freedom, and Dignity.”

I ask you, beloved reader: What becomes of the circus when there is no bread?

I ask you this before the next act of American political theater ensues tonight. While the clowns dance across the stage, honking their horns and arguing who is most loyal to Israel, we will be hungry. The clowns will promise change, security, and prosperity - and we will still be hungry. After tonight’s presidential debate, the clowns will sip donor-gifted champagne and eat PAC-sponsored gourmet meals while they send us emails and ask us for our money. In the halls of Congress, the clowns will debate and filibuster and argue and showboat and starve us with their weaponized incompetence but they will stand together and applaud a genocidal monster.

The clowns promise us things that are already inherently ours by right: they promise us freedom and dignity. They make their promises while signing deals with the oligarchy because that is the circus’s true ringmaster.

We deserve more than this. We are owed safety from state violence, and we deserve to be held and cared for during life’s difficulties. In a country with over 15 million vacant houses, no one should be without shelter. Food without poison should not come at a higher cost, and one should be able to drink water from any tap without fear of lead. We deserve more than decent, more than the bare minimum; abundance has been gifted to us by this planet and stewarded by our hard labor.

We deserve our bread - and roses, too. And they are ours for the receiving if we just take care of each other.