A demonstration of bipartisan cooperation is sitting on the floor in the lobby of Radford High School surrounded by cans of corn, green beans, spaghetti sauce counting boxes of navy blue boxes of macaroni and cheese.
Young Republicans and Young Democrats, officers, members counting, packing food donated by the entire high school, packed and delivered donations to local food outreach organizations Bobcat Backpacks and Radford-Fairlawn Daily Bread to support children, families and seniors in our community.
Recognizing Radford’s struggle with food-insecurity, Young Democrats and Young Republicans have worked together to raise awareness in the school, talking to classes, using SnapChat, setting goals and donations poured in.
“Our original goal was 1000 donated items,” Tina Tapp sponsor of the Young Democrats said stacking a red and white bucket of beefaroni. “We got 1300 yesterday and we said, “Can we reach 2000?” We got to 1864!”
Despite school being closed most of last week, the concerted multi-media awareness-raising paid-off fast.
“It was so quick!” said a club member wading into the canned carrots. “We were out of school for four days.”
“The kids rallied,” Tapp said. “and here we are with 1800 things.!”
In reward and thanks, the two clubs will host a holiday movie for the school.
The idea started Young Democrats wanted to give back to the community. Some were already volunteering at Bobcat Backpacks and both groups extended the effort to Radford-Fairlawn Daily Bread, an organization that provided dining room meals at no cost for people in need in Radford and Fairlawn and a Meals-on-Wheels program.
Barbara Shelor, who cooks for Daily Bread said the need is great.
“We’ve had 139 people in one day and we do 40 people through Meals-on-Wheels,” she said. “We feed a lot of people Monday through Friday.”
Working with the groups they were trying to help, the Young Dems and Reps found out what items are most useful and healthy to target their help more accurately.
“We called them, they said they were desperate,” Tapp said. “We found out what items were needed. In the past, kids brought in ramen, things like that, but we wanted to emphasize healthy meals.”
Carol Andrews is the sponsor of the Young Republicans, Zan Armentrout is student president of the group.
“In the future, I see a lot of us working together to help the community,” Armentrout said standing with Riley Bloomer, president of the Young Dems.
On-line, at least one student said the food drive isn’t a political issue that would test the cooperation among the groups, but, in light of political divisions in regional and national levels, the two leaders say cooperation shouldn’t be a surprise.
“Even though this isn’t obviously political, we wanted to prove we can work together
Overlapping as they spoke about the clubs’ united effort, the two nodded and talked about working together.
“Polarization in our government is one of the biggest issues right now,” Armentrout said. “Automatically putting each other into categories is the biggest problem. I see ourselves as individuals.”
“Getting a ton of food for the community. That’s the goal,” Bloomer said.
“We’re friends in real life,” she said. “Yeah,” Armentrout said. “We’ve talked.” They both laugh. “We found we share a lot of the same goals and ideas.”
