(Image source from: www.thesundaily.my)

A month since the United States government shutdown began, dozens of federal employees are lining up in Brooklyn for basic needs.

Since December 22, customs, tax and emergency management officials are all among the crowd, having gone unemployed. Prison guards or transportation workers are being forced to go along working without pay, taking advantage of their lunch breaks to stock up.

Volunteers are using distribution tables in the lobby of the New York Borough’s Barclays Center, which in general hosts sporting events or concerts rather than charity drives.

The workers in need first register and then stuff plastic bags with canned goods, chicken, potatoes, basic toiletries, and grapes. “I came here to grab some goods, to be honest,” said Antoinette Peek-Williams, an employee of the Homeland Security Department, who came an hour by subway from Harlem.

“Any way I can save money and put towards something else - that’s what I am trying to do.” Since the budget deadlock began, the 62-year-old lives “day to day - watching what I eat, watching what I spend, not spending.”

In the meantime, the United States Supreme Court over again turned down to intervene in any way in the conflict over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, which at present protects about 690,000 young undocumented people known as DREAMers (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) from deportation.

-Sowmya Sangam