| No Images? Click here  Hello from the Lone Star State!Our adventure on the road took us to Houston, Texas, today — just in time for the World Series! Taryn Finley spoke with Barbara Bronstein, 62. Barbara founded Second Servings, the only prepared-food rescue organization in Houston, in 2014. Barbara and her team of volunteers pick up surplus unserved food from restaurants and caterers around the city and do a same-day delivery to 39 different charity sites. The organization serves about 11,000 hungry residents each week. “It’s extremely rewarding because people need food, and these charities are starved for funding and don’t always have the type of food that we’re able to bring them: really upscale, healthy, gourmet foods,” Barbara said.  Even in the midst of Hurricane Harvey, Second Servings was hard at work to make sure flood victims had food to eat. The volunteers took action as soon as the roads were passable, setting up shop at FEMA motels. They’re still serving people in low-income housing, who were hit particularly hard. During the rescue efforts, Second Servings picked up 32 new food donors and seven new recipient sites. “With 1 in 6 people struggling to find food and recognizing that 40 percent of the food that’s available for consumers and businesses is thrown away, we see it as a perfectly compatible connection," Barbara said. "We can take the food that’s ordinarily going to waste that’s perfectly edible and connect it to the people who really need it. It’s a win-win.”   Elizabeth Conley/Houston ChronicleThe aftermath of Hurricane Harvey shows how the region’s more than 500,000 immigrants without legal status are often the most vulnerable. They qualify for little in the way of state and federal aid, and many are afraid to seek help at all, fearing deportation. Instead, they largely fend for themselves and become even more susceptible to abuse.
 Richard Carson/ReutersAnd experts say it’s time to start preparing.  Michael Caswell PhotographyLane Ross and Eric Sheffield live in northeast Texas, but they consider New Orleans their second home.“Within a few weeks of meeting, we took a trip together to the city and that’s where we fell in love,” Sheffield told HuffPost. “Two and half years after meeting, we sealed our commitment to each other with a marriage ceremony in the city we first realized our love for each other in.” We’ll be in New Orleans on Sunday and Monday, and we’d love to see you! The Listen To America bus will be in Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park. On Monday, you can find us parked on McAlister Way on Tulane’s Uptown Campus.
 Join us virtually on the bus! Ride along with our editor-in-chief, Lydia Polgreen, as she dispatches news from the road via Facebook Messenger.  Learn more about what it really means to be an American by signing up for our morning news brief.Did a friend send you this? Subscribe here. For more politics news, check out our HuffPost Politics email.©2017 HuffPost | 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 |
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