When you picture a food bank, what comes to mind?

For many people, it’s a dimly lit space with long lines and low spirits. It’s a last resort. A place you go when things have gotten really bad. It's where you end up when you’re out of options.

But what if that image is wrong? Or at least incomplete?

At the Port Angeles Food Bank, we’re working to flip that script entirely.

“Charity without justice is just exploitation with a smile.”

It’s a powerful statement. Maybe even a little uncomfortable. That’s on purpose.

At the Port Angeles Food Bank, we believe in doing more than handing out food. We believe in asking deeper questions about why people need food assistance in the first place and what we can all do to change that.

The central question of the book is simple but radical: Why does the richest country on Earth have so much poverty?

Desmond’s answer is equally bold: Because so many of us benefit from it.

Not in obvious ways—not by cheering it on—but through the structures we live in, the tax breaks we receive, the wages we pay, and the policies we support or ignore. Poverty, he argues, is not accidental. It's produced and maintained.

In his book In Search of Respect, anthropologist Philippe Bourgois shares the story of Primo, a young man in East Harlem who wants to do things “the right way.” He wants a steady job. He tries. Again and again. But he hits walls.