It is Day 20 of the federal government shutdown. What was an inconvenience for Washington has now become a genuine threat to the stability of our neighbors' lives. Programs like WIC (for moms and babies) and Head Start (for early childhood education) are now facing critical funding cliffs, and the stability of hundreds of thousands of federal worker and contractor families is severely compromised. This is no longer a political maneuver; it's a community crisis with national e