Decision was cruel, needlessly harsh

Thank you, Sally Ann O’Neill, for your Nov. 2 letter of support on the recent Clothes Closet dispute (“Charitable donations: What’s location got to do with need?”) Those of us who staffed it wondered if anyone else thought the board made a needlessly harsh and cruel decision in cutting off the supply of clothing to “out of Snohomish” people. These customers were so desperate to help their families that they came by bus or carpool because there are no other places that distribute free clothing. At our last meeting with the board we repeatedly asked where these needy families were to go in this time of economic crisis. The only answer given was that their mission statement covered only those in the Snohomish School District and that other places should take care of their people. Well, they don’t! We had so much surplus, even after the “outsiders” shopped, that hundreds of boxes were given to World Concern each month and they shipped it all around the world. How this board could coldly exclude the disadvantaged people in our area, I will never understand. This was supposed to be a charitable organization, but there was no charity in their hearts when they took this action.

Now the deed is done, and our director was put in a position where she had to resign. When you are told the locks are being changed and you will no longer have a key, you have little choice. Twenty-two volunteers who worked with her quit also in protest of the board decision. More than half of these ladies were from “out of town,” including myself, and I had been there five years. The really sad part of this is that the losers in this struggle are the people we had served for so many years. They depended on us to keep their children fit to attend school and themselves appropriately clad for employment. Most of them were working people struggling to make ends meet and now they have nowhere to go.

Obviously the board of the Snohomish Food Bank wants no part of being included in the one nation, one community movement that is sweeping our country. They say that small towns breed small minds and I think this board is a perfect example of that.

Monroe