The free food is handed out at nine, but the queue starts forming hours earlier. By dawn, there is a line of cars stretching half a mile back. In Logan, it is what passes for rush hour - a traffic jam driven by poverty and hunger.
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Fresh vegetables, cans of meat and tuna, and boxes of cereal are stacked in the car park and as the line of cars breaks into two queues to edge past the pallets, volunteers inspect identity cards (customers have to show they live in the county and are in need) before loading rations of food into the backs of the vehicles. It is an efficient and peculiarly American solution to hunger - a drive-through soup kitchen.
Those without cars hitch rides with neighbours. Mothers come with their children in the back of trucks. Karin Chriss brought one of her three children in a 10-year-old Chevrolet van. "If they stopped this I'd be hurt food-wise. I'm cutting down the amount we eat as it is," Mrs Chriss said. Her husband is a truck driver but does not earn enough to pay the bills. The people in Washington, she says, "need to come down and see how many people are in these lines".
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Democrats, meanwhile, are anxious not to appear as class warriors, and most of the Democratic presidential contenders in this election portray themselves as champions of the middle class, for good reason. Americans who see themselves as middle class are much more likely to vote than those who know they are poor. Mrs Chriss thinks all parties should be abolished. Angela Cooper, also queuing with a young child, complains that families like hers have been forgotten. But then again, she has relatives posted in Iraq and feels she ought to "support our troops" by voting for the president.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1076574,00.html
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