As we approach Depression-era hunger thanks to Republican SNAP and healthcare cuts, our fight to abolish poverty is more crucial than ever.

Sharing a meal with family and friends, homey decor to get us in the holiday spirit, a drink by the YouTube fire crackling on repeat — these are a few of my favorite November things. Unfortunately, Trump and the GOP have a different tradition in mind: harkening back to the good old days of the Great Depression.

On November 1, thanks to Trump and the Republicans’ ongoing shutdown, healthcare premiums will double, federal SNAP funds will dry up, and millions are at risk of losing their healthcare and their food source. And although a federal judge has ordered that the SNAP contingency fund be used to make November payments, even if the Trump Administration complies, it’s not enough to fully fund the program, and there is still no permanent solution to keep it running. 

“I did everything right – I put money into my retirement, I saved for a rainy day, and none of that mattered when I had an accident that changed my life,” said Marcia, a 61-year-old from Michigan. “I depleted my life savings and could no longer work, and it’s only because of programs like SNAP that I survived. These programs save lives, and without them, people – especially children – are going to starve.”

Our economy is in crisis. The cost of groceries, healthcare, insurance, and energy is skyrocketing for families. Mass layoffs and record-high unemployment are juxtaposed with record-low job growth. In between all of it, Republicans in Congress are now holding hostage the programs that families need to survive – Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), Headstart, and Enhanced Premium Tax Credits (ePTCs) for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The decimation of this alphabet soup basically means that what should be a joyful holiday season will instead be a brutal winter.

The most crucial thing to point out is that Republicans always intended to cut these programs and eventually dismantle them – the shutdown is just a convenient scapegoat to do it. But people aren’t falling for it.

Already, communities at the local and state levels are stepping up to respond to the budget shortfalls created by the Big Ugly Bill’s tax breaks for the wealthy. In Colorado, a coalition is fighting to pass Propositions LL and MM, which will establish revenue to ensure that no child goes hungry at school. In Indiana, childcare providers from across the state have formed a first-of-its-kind coalition to fight back against cuts to the childcare voucher program, which allows low-income families to access child care. When our federal government fails, our communities respond by working together and fighting back.

The plan to throw everyone into chaos come November 1 is more intentional than you may think – so who benefits when the clock strikes midnight? 

The Trump Administration and the GOP continue to wage war on poor people because their only goals are to make the rich richer, to get more power, and to force their way of life onto everyone else. 

While Republicans are celebrating some of the largest tax breaks for billionaires ever (while trying to rebrand their effort to you and me), those of us living in reality are thinking not just about the impacts on people who will lose their health insurance and food access, but about the way such a drastic shift in wealth will impact our economy and communities as a whole.

From this summer’s passage of Republicans and Trump’s Big Ugly Bill that decimated federal funding for Medicaid, SNAP, and other social programs that support our communities, especially women, children, the elderly, and the disabled – to the firing of federal workers – to today’s shutdown to steal our healthcare – it’s all part of their strategy to take our rights away, to give us less freedom, and to make us tired, sick, hungry, and lose hope that our government can work for us. 

Make no mistake, this moment will bring challenges and hardship that most of us probably can’t even fathom. Their goal is to demoralize and exhaust us so we’re too tired to fight back. But November 1st and beyond also present an opportunity that Republicans, who count on us being divided, will have overlooked in their scheming. 

When you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us. And ordinary people are tired of being exploited, of having to stretch their paychecks even more, and of seeing tax breaks for rich people’s yachts and private jets while so many of us don’t even get paid time off. They underestimate our anger, our disgust, and our ability to organize from within. They underestimate us. We are more connected than they think, there are far more of us than there are of them, and we hold more power than even we sometimes realize. 

This can be a moment for poor and lower-income people to come together and point the finger at the top instead of at each other, to break down the barriers that have kept us divided from one another, to open our arms to more people who might feel burned by Trump and the GOP and are looking for new political homes. 

“I call my lawmaker every week, so much so that I know his office has to be tired of seeing my name come up on the caller ID,” said Marcia, a SNAP recipient from Michigan. “But I don’t care – I need them to know how much this is going to hurt not just me, but the people in my community that I care about.”

This shadow on our history could become one of the most poignant organizing moments we’ve ever seen. It could help us rebuild class solidarity, repair what has been broken in the progressive movement, and teach us to work together and remember who the real villains are. 

November 1st feels a lot like doomsday. And for many people, it will be. But it is also going to inadvertently create a lot of opposition to the Republicans’ war on poor people and might just be the organizing fuel we need to abolish poverty once and for all. Hurting so many people just to please a small few is going to magnificently backfire. 

And in the meantime, we’ll keep organizing to end poverty and create a country – and an economy – where we all win.