Thanksgiving, with its fears, family and feast, you may have noticed, is just around the corner and I, like many, have been shopping for turkey (fresh ones are $1.29 at Fine Fare, $1.19 with $25 purchase at Key Food), searching for recipes (stuffed mushroom cap ideas, welcome), counting the chairs and plates. In this context, three holiday thoughts came to mind.

Mayor Bloomberg and other electeds can be counted on to serve turkey to the hungry Thanksgiving day but in the days leading up to it, the diminished supplies on the shelves of NYC food pantries have been leading to people turned away without food and – alarming to me at least – struggles and fights on the waiting line. In Mayor Bloomberg’s city with a multi-billion dollar budget surplus, we are evolving a sort of Darwinian survival of the earliest. Disputes on a food pantry line are often a matter of food or nothing. Those at the front get, those at the back don’t. There are more hungry customers, food costs more and pantries have less to give (See Jennifer Lee's NYT report here.)While some pantry food is contributed, even those contributions cost money. Next-time you are treated to a photo of Mr.Bloomberg, Mr. Thompson or Ms. Quinn dishing out food, give a thought to the rising number of those who are not getting any this year. (In a triumph of press gimmickry, NYC added $1 million for emergency food (77 cents for each customer).

One of the things which might have addressed this problem in the future would have been the farm bill – now pending in Congress – the overwhelming portion of which (from a dollar point of view) concerns nutrition issues like food stamps and emergency food aid (in pantries and soup kitchens). Is it worth a headline to discover that the Democratic Party has been unable to move the Farm Bill to a vote because it lacks the 60 votes necessary to cut off debate? Does this show us that all loyal GOP Senators like Olympia Snowe need to be replaced before we can better feed the hungry? Even were the 60 votes gathered, the farm bill and lower income Americans face a promised veto from that less than compassionate conservative George W. Bush. For a very clear description of the impact of GOP-victory on the Farm Bill see post from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities . The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism urges people to call, email etc. their senators -- together with a good riff on Torah, Talmud and hunger.

Finally, Thanksgiving Turkeys bring to mind a great adventure in trade union democracy, labor struggle and Rudi Giuliani. A majority of New York City employees are members of District Council 37, of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) – led at the beginning of this tale by its then-Executive Director Stanley Hill. Mr. Hill and then-mayor Giuliani agreed to a five-year contract with no wage increases for the first two of its years. ( the “Zero-zero” contract).

Surprisingly, where opponents of zero-zero or neutrals counted the votes, city employees rejected it. Where Hill’s acolytes held sway, the contract was approved by statistically shocking margins so large to think the dead were voting. In the ensuing struggle, many union-leaders were convicted of crimes and many (including Mr. Hill) were compelled to resign. The reason this story came to mind as I shopped for turkey was that a key element in unraveling the web of corruption among the union leaders was a dirty-turkey kickback scheme. It had been the custom of some of the DC 37 locals to buy at inflated prices holiday turkeys for the members accompanied as it turned out by a secret custom of of the locals leaders to take a per-turkey kickback from the poultry purveyor. ( Some of the turkey tales were told in a Village Voice series by Robert Fitch

When you sit down to eat dinner, Thursday, I, and I suggest you, think about the hungry, those Republicans who foster hunger and the struggle for workers rights.