De Blasio: We’re ‘Close to’ Needing Government to Ensure Food Supply Is ‘Equitably Distributed’

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) called for the nationalization of certain parts of the supply chain, and stated that “we’re getting close to a reality where the government has to ensure that the food supply, that it is not only available, but that it’s equitably distributed.”

De Blasio said, “We’re going to need the supply chain nationalized in some form. Right now, there’s no effort to make sure that ventilators, surgical masks, even down to hand sanitizer, all these products should be put on a 24/7 production cycle. Whatever factories anywhere can make them should be cranking them out. They should be distributed according to federal priority, as you would in a war.”

He later stated, “We’re providing meals all week at the schools, pick-up meals, breakfast and lunch. We’re going to have to create feeding stations of some kind going forward, of different types. We’re doing home deliveries for seniors. We’re closing down senior center programming, but we’re doing — using senior centers as kitchens in effect, dispensaries to get meals out to seniors at their home. There’s a lot of pieces we’re going to have to alter. And look, the Great Depression and the New Deal are very instructive here. I don’t — I’m not saying bread lines, but let’s be clear, we’re getting close to a reality where the government has to ensure that the food supply, that it is not only available, but that it’s equitably distributed. We’re going to have to get into a heavy intervention in people’s economic lives. Because a whole lot of people are losing their livelihood by the hour, and they need a continuity of economic support, or their families are going to start to collapse in other ways.”

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