It’s Thursday, November 27th, Thanksgiving Day. And also the day of the annual Run to Feed the Hungry in Sacramento. This tradition is defining for Sacramento, or more so, a specific demographic in Sacramento: upper-class families who don’t have to spend their Thanksgiving morning working or recovering from a shift that lasted from the night prior to five in the morning on Thanksgiving Day.

This holiday is huge. It’s treated as much a ritual as cooking turkey for Sacramentans who participate. People take part in Run to Feed the Hungry to raise money for Sacramento Food Bank & Family Services, which provides food, clothing, education programs, and assistance to families in need. But participants often view those same families in need as lesser than.

The specific demographic of families who are comfortable enough to Run to Feed the Hungry spend their Thanksgiving morning feeling charitable. We, the working families, spend our Thanksgiving mornings enduring labor to ensure that our basic needs are met.

So forgive me if I don’t have the time to partake in this charity event when I don’t have the time for my own family. Have mercy on me if I don’t have the energy to help others this time around, when I barely have the energy to help myself.

Although we do not Run to Feed the Hungry, we do Vote to Feed the Hungry.

We vote for supplements for the poor that ensure none of us will be hungry. We vote to fund the programs that keep people from starving, everything meant to make sure no one goes hungry. You label it “left-wing extremism” and “communist ideals plaguing America.” You’d Run to Feed the Hungry, but you’d never Vote to Feed the Hungry.

You disrespect us because your Caesar salad came out five minutes too late, unaware that the woman who made your meal was handling multiple plates at a time while working close to ten hours (clear overtime) to provide dinner for her children. You hang your “Black Lives Matter” signs in your window and place an “Everyone Is Welcome Here” doormat at your doorstep, but you’d never invite me in. You use equality as a moral high ground you can stand on.

What separates your “activism” from mine is that mine demands something of me. Yours is convenient. Yours shows up only when you feel charitable enough to break a sweat and call it solidarity. Tell me, do you call it activism because it burns calories, or because you’ve convinced yourself it matters?

If you have all this energy to support low socioeconomic families, why can’t you spare any of it to vote for policies that would actually change our lives? Why do you label every effort to support working Americans as un-American?

Maybe the problem isn’t that you don’t care. Maybe the problem is that caring only feels good when it’s on your terms.

I believe the Run to Feed the Hungry does good. I’m grateful for its positive effects on our community. But it does nothing if that energy is not brought to voting booths, campaign trails, and social movements.

Running to feed the hungry means nothing if you won’t vote to feed the hungry.