Truck after truck pulled up to the back door of Gethsemane Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis Wednesday afternoon, dropping off pallets of food wrapped in red plastic and packed with love.

“I wanted a miracle,” recounted parish minister Roxi Mork, who helps run the Camden Promise Food Shelf, while standing amongst a throng of volunteers carrying bags and boxes of donated food.

This is the home of the Waverly Food Stamp Center, one of eighteen such centers in New York City. On a recent Monday morning, it was choked with visitors—men, women and kids in strollers—heading to appointments, picking up applications and pressing to get cases reopened.

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays.

George McGovern’s impact on food policy could have been greater, but not through more effort on his part. The 1972 presidential candidate, now 89, was a bomber pilot at the end of World War II when the decision was made to distribute remaining medicine and food to Europeans before heading home.

Across the noisy lunchrooms of Minnesota schools, there’s a quiet but growing sign that the economy is taking a toll on families that have never needed help before.

More Minnesota students are signing on for free or reduced-price meals, as middle-class families coping with cutbacks and foreclosures are becoming first-time users of the subsidized National School Lunch Program.

Reflecting a su

Millions of American schoolchildren are receiving free or low-cost meals for the first time as their parents, many once solidly middle class, have lost jobs or homes during the economic crisis, qualifying their families for the decades-old safety-net program.

New York Times

At the stroke of midnight, a growing number of Americans are lining up at Walmart not to cash in on a holiday sale, but because they’re hungry.

The increasing number of Americans relying on food stamps to survive the sluggish economic recovery has changed the way the largest retailer in the United States does business.

Carol Johnston, Walmart’s senior vice president of store development,

Senator Tom Bakk to host 5th annual hunger relief fund drive with special guests Governor Mark Dayton and Vikings’ Jared Allen

Hunger Solutions Minnesota and Senator Tom Bakk will host the 5th Annual Stock the Shelves event. This event raises proceeds dedicated to Arrowhead regional food shelves.

Lavern Hoglund says nearly 40 new people walk through the doors of the Quad City Food Shelf in Gilbert each and every month looking for a little help.

And she doesn’t expect that to change anytime soon, especially with the holiday season upon us.

“We’ve seen more and more (middle age individuals) and young families. A lot of them are looking for work and can’t find it.

Woodbury resident John Ethridge made his living working in construction as a large home builder. But four years ago he found himself unable to go to work because his multiple sclerosis had become too severe.

“I got sicker where I couldn’t work anymore,” he said.