This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

woke up, woke up, wake you up. Wake that ass up. Program your alarm to power 105.1 on IHartRadio. Morning, everybody. It's DJ NV, Jess Salarious. Sholomaine the guy. We are the breakfast club. Lawn LaRose is here as well. We got some special guests in the building. Yes, indeed. We have Leslie Gordon and Zach Hall.

Welcome.

Thank you.

I'm feeling this morning? What's up? How are we doing? From the Food Bank of New York City? Yes. Nobody does better work, you know, in regards to helping people that are food and secured in the Food Bank of New York City, man. Amen. And you know, y'all have your 50 million meals campaign. Tell us what that is. Yeah. So look, here in New York City, about 20% of our neighbors, almost every street, every borough struggle with knowing when their next meal is coming from, what it's going to be. You know, if you don't have enough food, it becomes like your every minute, every moment. Where's it going to come from? What's it going to be? How am I going to feed my family? And so we're on a role. We're on a mission. We're on a campaign. We want to make sure we raise 50 million meals by the end of this calendar year. Wow. And you've been great, right? Thank you for being in it to win it with us. Thank you for

helping people to understand and appreciate the nature of not having enough looks like in New York City.

What is the biggest misconception? I want both of you all to answer this. What's the biggest

misconception people have about who is food insecure and why? Exactly. Well, I always, you know, I want to tell people that it's not the homeless man on the street, right? Like, these are folks that are, you see every day, these folks that are in your building, working on jobs all across the city that are just trying to make ends meet and the cost of living in New York City is so high that like Leslie

said, it's 20% in New York City. That's a million and 300,000 people, which is a good-sized

American city, right? So these are folks that, you know, are trying to get their kids to school,

trying to make sure mom and dad in retirement aren't struggling to afford the medications that they need, and we just need, you know, a kind of citywide effort to make sure we can feed our neighbors. One thing I saw, especially during the government shutdown, you know, actual federal workers coming to the food bank. These aren't people on SNAP benefits. These aren't people on any type of welfare. They just, you know, couldn't make ends meet because they weren't getting any payche. So they had to go to the food bank. Yeah, you know, here in America, they say most people are about, you know, one paycheck away from finding themselves on standing on a pantry line, going to a community kitchen to get a hot meal. We had this incredible couple, you know, come visit us in Queens. They said, you know, we haven't been on a pantry

line since the last government shut down 2018, 2019. Our daughter has a scholarship at Cornell.

She's coming at home. We need to be able to gather around the table for Thanksgiving,

just like any other family. And so we need the food.

The amazing thing about it is that there's such an incredible spirit of gratitude, right? We're

in that season of gratitude. And so the same couple who stood on the line, they took their groceries

home. The guy comes back about half an hour later, our team's out on the ground like they

normally are, and thought, he forgot something, maybe he needs something else. And he said,

no, I'm going to roll up my sleeves. I'm here to help. Put me to work. What can I do?

Wow. Yeah. It's incredible. How did the government shutdown impact your operations,

like to provide the food? Yeah, yeah i mean we're made for moments

...