♪ Draw me a map ♪
♪ That I can hold ♪
♪ Lines that tell me where to go ♪
♪ My head is full ♪
♪ Of lonely harmonies ♪
♪ And questions no one's asking me ♪
♪ Who's gonna take my hand? ♪
♪ Show me the way? ♪
♪ How long will I have to wait ♪
♪ For someday? ♪
♪ Well, it's not the sky ♪
♪ I'm asking for ♪
♪ I'm just having trouble ♪
♪ Finding north ♪
♪ I've gone as far ♪
♪ go♪
♪ Trying to find something ♪
♪ That feels like ♪
♪ Home ♪.
♪ Who's gonna take my hand? ♪
♪ Show me the way? ♪
♪ How long will I have to wait ♪
♪ For someday? ♪
Collbran, Colorado, is really cool,
and it's mostly where
all the cowboys and cowgirls roam.
We're just country people.
The town of Collbran is a quaint, quiet little town
with that honorable Code of the West type atmosphere.
♪ Home ♪.
Close-knit.
Caring.
- And yet, almost desperate. - ♪ The leaves have changed ♪
♪Atime or two ♪
♪ Since the last time the train came through ♪
- Here, food. - ♪ I got my ticket ♪
♪ And I'm going to go ♪
All right, this is my tree house.
This is my table that I built,
and this is the carpets that I found in our shed,
and so I just put it in here.
And sometimes I sit here when I'm, like, sad
or if I'm angry.
If I get a bad, um, grade
in one of my classes 'cause I'm not doing really good.
Our home is a two-family unit.
And my daughter lives with us and her family and my husband.
You're finding out more and more
that the kids come back to the parents
and they live and that's about how you make it.
I work at The Cattleman's Grill.
I've never received government assistance,
but I went down there...
And I was gonna try to get food stamps.
They turned me away.
My paycheck is about $120 every two weeks.
So it's hard.
My husband, he works for St. Mary's Hospital.
And I'm working now, too, so we're over the limit for help.
We've got seven people in our family,
so you make your food stretch.
We've been without vegetables for a while.
We do run out of milk.
We eat dry cereal.
You have to live the best you can.
You've got to make things stretch nowadays.
It's not easy.
Sometimes we run out of food,
so we try to figure out something.
Probably ask friends for food.
We get really hungry, and our tummies just growl,
and sometimes I feel like I'm gonna barf
'cause it feels bad.
But I don't really know what to do.
♪ You alone are my heart's desire ♪
♪ And I long to worship You ♪
The title of the message this morning
is "Church and Community."
The church should always be in the community.
And I believe what we're doing
is exactly what Jesus would have us do,
is exactly what He's doing in the world today.
Jesus was involved in those around Him.
Jesus fed 5,000.
We fed 5,000 here in the not too distant past.
Hunger is an issue in our community.
One of the ways we found that the need
is greater than we thought was, on Wednesday nights,
we started preparing a meal for anyone who wants to come.
And we had no idea what to expect.
And now we have between 80 and 120
that we'll feed a hot meal to every Wednesday.
So it is a bigger problem that we're aware of.
I think when people hear the term "hunger,"
they still imagine a skinny, undernourished human being.
They see the pictures of famine victims from sub-Saharan Africa.
That's the image that we carry around.
If you're comparing hunger in America
to hunger of the most grinding kind,
then no, I mean, people are not dying of hunger
in the same way here that they are in Africa.
But that's about the best that you can say.
It's a problem that people are ashamed of acknowledging.
Our own government is ashamed of acknowledging it
from my point of view.
And you just kind of, you know,
you're... We're in denial about it, I think.
No.
Aww, thank you.
Hunger is right here in the United States.
It could be right next door,
and you would never know
because people are too afraid to talk about it.
- Hold on tight. - Oh, boom.
Bella, watch your shoe.
Being where I'm from, there's so many expectations
of these girls just have kids, drop out, do drugs.
You know, things like that. I don't want to be that person.
Since August, I lost my job,
I had to get on public assistance
to be able to have some type of income coming into the house.
What's that?
- Train. - A train coming.
My dream is to go to college.
If I go to school, it's an investment in my future,
but at the same time, I'm struggling so much every day
to be able to even feed my kids every day.
- Uh-oh. - Wow.
So it's really hard to make that decision now.
Like, I can't tell my kids,
"Okay, I'm going to school,"
"so in two years, we're gonna be fine."
I can't tell them, "Yeah, I'll make sure"
"you guys eat in two years."
Aiden, come eat.
- Eat it all. - No.
Look, you could pick it up.
All my life, I know what it's like to eat Oodles of Noodles,
seven days a week, three, four times a day,
'cause it's all we had and cans of Chef Boyardee.
When I had my children,
I said I would never, ever let them taste it
just because that was my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
But life brings you situations and circumstances,
and it's up to you to be able to deal with it
and find a way to get through it.
A survey from the U.S. Department of Agriculture
reports that one in six Americans
say they don't have enough to eat.
Last year, nearly 30% of U.S. families
were classified as "food insecure."
Food insecurity is this idea
that you don't know where your next meal is coming from.
You have no idea how you're going to manage
to find that food or afford that food.
And when 50 million Americans don't have that power,
that's a very dark indication indeed of where we are.
Step up on there. This will make a noise.
Step up on the table right there.
I'll be with you in just a second.
- What grade you in? - Second.
Second? You're in the second grade?
- How old are you? - I'm gonna be eight.
Fixing to be eight.
All right, and you've got asthma?
Okay, do you ever have problems with shortness of breath
when you're outside playing or anything?
I have to stop playing and take a deep breath.
Okay. What did you eat for breakfast this morning?
I didn't eat.
You didn't eat breakfast this morning? Okay.
When you get home in the afternoon,
do you eat a snack? What do you eat?
- Chips. - Chips? What else, baby?
What do you drink?
- Pop. - Pop? Oka)!
Do you have any other snacks besides chips you could eat?
- Huh? - Cookies.
- Kisses? - Cookies.
Cookies. Cookies and chips, okay.
Maybe you could ask Mom to start
buying you some... some carrots and some celery
and maybe some apples.
You could slice some apples up. That'd be good, hmm?
A lot of people think there is a yawning gap
between hunger on the one hand and obesity on the other.
In fact, they're neighbors.
And the reason that they happen often
in the same time and often in the same family
and the same person
is because they're both signs
of having insufficient funds to be able to command
food that you need to stay healthy.
Mostly, I really shop for...
I look around and see what's the cheapest.
You have... Fruit are very high.
And you got chips that's 35¢ a bag.
So I say, "Okay, I'm not gonna get the fruit."
"I'm gonna get some chips."
But if the fruit on sale, I'll leave the chips and get the fruit.
She's overweight for her age.
She's very overweight for her age.
So I have to sort of watch, and that bothers me.
Tremon, do you want blue juice or cranberry juice?
Blue juice.
If you look at what has happened
to the relative price of fresh fruits and vegetables,
it's gone up by 40% since 1980 when the obesity epidemic first began.
In contrast, the relative price of processed foods
has gone down by about 40%.
So if you have only a limited amount of money to spend,
you're going to spend it on the cheapest calories you can get.
And that's going to be processed foods.
This has to do with our farm policy
and what we subsidize and what we don't.
♪ Look out, Ma, look out, Pa ♪
♪ Look at that horizon ♪
♪ Something's out there, kicking up dust ♪
♪ Storm is coming fast ♪
The subsidy system that we now have
actually started back in the 1930s during the Great Depression.
Farmers were the first to be hit hard when the economy went bad.
There was a lot of pressure to put
some sort of government assistance forward
to help them get a decent price at harvest time for their crops.
The programs in the Great Depression,
of course, were emergency programs.
The idea was, if we could, on a temporary basis,
help support the prices of farm products,
that we'd get through this difficult period.
And then we would let the market take over,
except we never let the market take over.
♪ It's been a long time coming ♪
In the 1930s and '40s and into the '50s,
and even a little bit beyond that,
I think you could make the case that it really was family farmers
who were mostly benefiting from these programs.
But as the agricultural sector became more concentrated
in terms of ownership of the land resources,
more and more of these operations
came to resemble agribusinesses
and not family farming operations.
♪ It's been ♪
♪ A long time coming ♪
♪ It's been ♪
♪ A long time ♪
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA,
ls one of the most diverse and complex agencies
in the entire federal government.
It does everything from international food trade
to the Forest Service, to food safety,
to animal protection,
to, of course, farming programs, and food and nutrition programs.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture
has increasingly become the domain
of support for mega-farms and mega-farming corporations.
Most of that subsidy money, about 70% of it,
has gone just to 10% of those beneficiaries.
The biggest, largest, best capitalized farms,
they're hauling in this taxpayer money now.
And so there is this weird paradox
where welfare for the poor is scorned,
but corporate welfare, as it's known,
is sort of heartily endorsed.
We subsidize the basic ingredients in processed foods.
We do not subsidize fruits, vegetables, and whole grains,
because the producers tend to be small producers.
They don't have the kind of political clout
that the big commodity producers of corn and soybeans
and wheat that gets processed do.
These subsidies made products very cheap,
and therefore made it profitable for the food industry
to invest in the infrastructure
for processing those products into the packaged goods
that we see on every counter, in every corner store,
in every vending machine,
that are really ubiquitous now and all around us.
Slicin' onions, gets you... so you know that.
Just try to be careful.
I'm Ree. I have four boys,
and I live in Jonestown, Mississippi.
I've been living in Jonestown all my life.
I'm in the kitchen.
Look, that's funny to her.
Raw onion, grilled onion.
What I do for work is I cook.
I work the cash register, I do the dishes.
Mainly, I just pitch in, you know, and help.
We have stores in Jonestown.
We have about three grocery stores,
but it's hard in getting some of the things
like, when you want fruits, there's no store sell fruits.
Maybe one store will have a few bananas.
They have vegetables, but it's in a can.
I love fresh vegetables and fruit.
It's very frustrating they don't have it here.
There's this thing called a food desert.
So out in the county, you have these mom and pop shops.
And they don't have fruits and veggies.
There are several issues. Agriculture's a big business.
So I get this big 18-wheeler, and I'm delivering food.
I'll deliver it to Walmart, and I'll deliver it to Kroger,
and these others chains,
but I can't afford to take my 18-wheeler
and go through these back roads.
They're off the beaten path.
So you just don't fit our model, you know.
Maximum delivery, minimum cost.
And so we're consuming what's available to us.
Chips and ice cream and cakes.
They have that here.
They have lots and lots of stuff like that here.
And so, that's why I go to Clarksdale
sometimes grocery shopping, or Batesville,
about a 45-minute drive.
Those that doesn't have transportation, it's hard.
All right, hon, help Mommy cook.
Mommy cook.
I want to help you to make spaghetti.
Okay. Here you go.
This one goes on the table.
The assistance programs in the United States
are very hard to qualify for.
It's, like, either you're starving or you don't get any help.
But what defines starving?
Like, if you don't eat for a day, are you starving?
In their eyes, no.
But in your eyes and the way you feel, of course.
' - Okay.
Good job.
Mom, can I do the next one?
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Put that in the water.
But do we gotta break it?
No. You don't gotta break it.
It goes in the water.
It was Aiden's turn to help, too.
Put that in there.
Okay, that was a bad idea.
I do get food stamps now,
but they last about three weeks out of the month.
And for that last week, I'm just going crazy.
Is it good?
Mm-hmm.
Put them in there.
- The ones that are cut. - I'm making.
JAMES McGOVERN: I lived on a food stamp diet for a week
along with Jo Ann Emerson from Missouri.
We did so because we thought
that the food stamp benefit was inadequate.
Most of my colleagues had no idea
that the average food stamp benefit was $3.00 a day.
I had my budget, and I went to a supermarket.
It took me an awful long time
because you have to add up every penny.
And it has to last you for a week.
And so I did it, and I will tell you,
I was tired, I was cranky,
'cause I couldn't drink coffee, 'cause coffee was too expensive.
There are people who are living on that food stamp allocation.
And you really can't.
For us, it was an exercise that ended in a week.
For millions of other people in this country,
that's their way of life.
Every day is a struggle just to eat.
$39.37.
Um...
Would you take 35?
You're gonna have to put something back.
Back in the '80s, when I formed the End Hunger Network,
we wanted to show what it was like to live in America and, you know,
be holding down three jobs and, you know,
you got a couple of kids and maybe a medical problem,
and you've gotta put food on the table,
keep a roof on your head, and it's...
It's really a daunting task.
And we wanted to make a film about that.
And it was made, you know, 10, 12 years ago,
and it doesn't seem out of date at all.
It seems...
It seems just as fresh as the day we made it.
The problem is getting... is getting worse.
The policy and my own feeling in this administration
is that if there is one person in this country hungry,
that is one too many.
And for those who cannot do for themselves,
society has to respond.
In this era of unprecedented prosperity,
we still have some work of our own to do.
We hear the call to take on the challenges
of hunger and poverty and disease.
And that is precisely what America is doing.
We are Americans.
We are tougher than the times we live in,
and we are bigger than our politics have been,
so let's meet the moment, let's get to work,
and let's show the world once again
why the United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth.
We've got 44 million Americans
on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program,
what we used to call food stamps.
One out of every two kids in the United States
at some point in their childhood will be on food assistance.
You better watch it.
Come on.
Chips right here, Mommy.
- Can I have a cheeseburger? - Huh?
No.
Mom, I need a doughnut.
No, you got chips in your hand.
- I want a doughnut. - You don't need doughnuts.
- [ <=n/ins 1 - Aiden.
I want a doughnut!
Aiden's first year of life was a period of a lot of struggle.
At that time, I was making $9.00 an hour.
Buying food was really an obstacle for me.
So I applied for food stamps,
which means I was in the welfare office
from 8:00 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon,
to then be told that I was $2.00 over the income limit.
So because I was $2.00 over the income limit,
I didn't... I was not eligible for even a dollar in food stamps.
Watch.
So, you know, I didn't have what they needed,
or there just wasn't any more food.
And I feel like it affected Aiden a lot.
- Mom. - Yes?
Here, it's...
- My Elmo. - Yeah.
- Thank you. - I want a hug.
Huh?
What happened?
- House. - What happened with the house?
What happened? Mommy room?
Aiden... he was constantly in and out of the hospital.
He was diagnosed with G6PD, which is an immune deficiency.
He has hearing problems, and earlier this month,
he was diagnosed with speech delay.
Any kind of nutritional deprivation,
however short that it could be,
in those first three years of life
can have lifelong consequences for a child.
It affects their cognitive development,
their ability to get along with others.
No!
Let's shine our flashlight here and look.
They could be constantly sick, constantly getting infections,
because they're not well nourished.
Do you know, has he had any colds?
He's actually a little sick right now.
- Okay. - Yeah.
It can truncate a child's developmental potential.
Whether or not it affects their growth outcomes,
sort of their physical... their stature and their weight,
it affects their brain at a much deeper level.
Okay, mine is about this, um, goddess or queen.
Her husband died, and he gave half of his kingdom
to the Romans and...
Hunger definitely impacts my classroom.
I have had students come to me upset,
and it's definitely a huge issue in our small community.
We are going to spend a little bit of time
talking about how to use context clues
to help us when we find words in the textbooks that we're reading.
One student in particular, Rosie,
I just really felt that she wasn't really
applying herself in the classroom,
and I couldn't figure out where that attitude was coming from.
I felt that she just really didn't care about what
I wanted her to learn or that school was that important,
and what I realized when I brought her in one day was
the main issue was that she was hungry.
I struggle a lot.
And most of the time, it's because my stomach is really hurting.
So let's take a look.
And my teacher tells me to get focused,
and she told me to write "focus" on one of those stickers.
And every time I look at it,
I'm, like, "Oh, I'm supposed to be focusing."
I start yawning, and then I zone out.
And I'm just looking at the teacher,
and I look at her, and all I think about is food.
So I have these little visions in my eyes.
You're still gonna use the same skills.
Sometimes when I look at her,
I vision her as a banana, so she goes like a banana.
And everybody in the class is like apples or oranges.
And then I'm, like, "Oh, great."
What were the two you were trying to narrow it down to?
- IIAII IIB-II. - IIAII IIB-II
And why were you thinking "A"?
Um... Me, um...
We are tying the arms
behind the backs of children as they go into public schools.
We're making it so that we spend money for teachers
and that we deliver to them a lot of children who can't learn.
The lost potential... Some of those kids
could potentially be a great scientist
or go on to be leaders in our armed forces,
but the impact that hunger has messes everything up.
And as a result of that, we're weakening our nation.
Food was really important growing up,
especially around holidays.
We had to be home for dinner every night.
My mother was the typical Italian mother
who would not sit down unless everybody was served.
Um, and I think that was, you know,
her way of showing how much she loved her family.
I was in high school at the time.
My mother decided to take a job
managing a school cafeteria at Elizabeth where we grew up.
Years later, my brother and I, we tried to get her to retire.
And she sat down and she said, "You know, I'm not ready to retire yet."
I said, "Why?"
She said, "You know, these kids"
"that come into my lunchroom for breakfast and lunch,"
"I know this is the only thing they're eating all day."
For your elimination challenge, you'll be feeding students
using the same restrictive budget
that our public schools have: $2.68 per child.
Childhood nutrition has become a huge health crisis in this country.
And in this challenge, we were looking at various things.
Part of it to get kids to eat vegetables and stuff
and whether or not you were cooking food
that was appropriate for a school lunch.
I had wanted to do a healthy dessert that incorporated fruits,
but that was not possible within our budget.
The point was that you guys would get tripped up
because that's the problem that the country has.
Did you find that you had to add more sugar
because the bananas were starchy?
I believe there was a total of about two pounds of sugar.
What's served in the schools
is very much a function of the kind of investment
we've been willing to make.
If you figure that the federal government
is reimbursing schools $2.68 for a meal that's served free,
and you take out the labor cost and the administrative cost
and cost for gas and electricity
and custodial services and what have you,
it really doesn't leave a lot for food.
Most schools report that they have between
90¢ and a dollar to actually spend on food.
We're spending less than a dollar, okay? On lunch.
Now I don't know about you,
but I go to Starbucks and Peet's and places like that,
and a Venti latte in San Francisco is $5.00.
One gourmet coffee-
One... is more... We spend more on
than we are spending to feed kids for an entire week in our schools.
The dollars that are being used for reimbursement
haven't changed since 1973.
We need to get better nutritious foods in school.
And the only way to do that is by increasing
the amount of the reimbursement.
The Committee on Education and Labor will come to order.
Good morning to everyone.
This morning, we'll discuss a new bipartisan child nutrition legislation
we introduced earlier this month to address
critical health and economic needs in this country.
As thinking adults, as fellow parents,
this is an egregious abdication of our responsibility towards kids.
Let's fund school programs at a spending level
that significantly raises the quality and variety
of what schools can afford.
A country as strong, as rich, as powerful as ours,
and yet we have youngsters who are hungry?
It's one of the reasons why Harry Truman in 1946
established the school lunch program,
because he recognized that a country was only as strong as its youth.
Only 25% of youngsters in America today,
ages 19 to 24, are fit for military service.
And one of the principle reasons for that
is that too many of our youngsters are overweight.
The Institute of Medicine did a study of the nutritional value
of the meals that we are currently serving
to our children and found
that there was too much fat, too much sugar,
too much sodium, not enough fruits, not enough vegetables.
There is obviously room for improvement.
And that's why I'm here today
to encourage this committee and this Congress
to take action now, not to delay.
There are concerns on both sides of the aisle
by many members of Congress,
and I think by the American people,
that we don't have enough money to do everything we want to do.
When it comes to domestic issues,
the health and education of our nation's children,
I think is one of our highest priorities.
If we don't change the direction we're heading,
this generation will be the first to live sicker and die younger
than their parents' generation.
Check it out.
I want to see how tall you are, okay?
Okay.
Thank you. High five.
High five.
Okay, since March of last year,
did you ever eat less than you felt that you should
because there wasn't enough money to buy food?
Yes.
Since March of last year
did you ever cut the size of your meals
or skip meals because there wasn't enough money for food?
- Yeah. - Okay.
How often did this happen?
- It happens quite a lot. - Okay.
Okay, okay, okay.
I was really frustrated because I felt
like anyone can see how touching those interviews are
in the emergency room,
A mother when she starts to cry
'cause she's working, trying hard to take care of her kids,
she's scared for the health of her child.
We see that on a daily basis in the emergency room.
But then I'd go to Congress,
and I would announce the numbers
and pronounce how important food stamps are.
And I just felt like the legislators there were not really listening,
that they could not relate.
I felt like it's time for me to be quiet
and give the power of framing the issue
of food insecurity and hunger
to the people who are experiencing hunger themselves.
Everybody say, "Washington!"
Washington!
Here's the plan.
At 11 :30, the reception at the Senate.
Senator Casey will speak, I will speak,
Tiana will speak, Barbie will speak.
And every time that you have an opportunity,
give your ideas for change, for what you need
for the success and healthy life of your kids, okay?
These guys are the ones who make it happen.
I was the first mother in Witnesses to Hunger,
and I didn't think anyone would take us seriously.
But I am here to let everyone know
that just because we live where we live,
and come from where we come from,
doesn't mean that we're not smart.
It doesn't mean we don't have potential.
It doesn't mean that we not... We do not want education,
doesn't mean that we want to depend on welfare
for the rest of our lives.
I want the same hopes and dreams as everyone
in this room for their children.
We just need the opportunity to make it come true.
Came from, and where we're at now
and where we're going to be.
As you walk through the Rotunda and you look at our pictures,
look into our eyes, see our pain.
Our pictures that you see in the exhibit
demonstrate what we go through every day.
This is un...
It's unnecessary.
One of the most important things
about Witnesses to Hunger is the whole concept of change.
This is not simply just empowerment for the women.
This is about sincere and profound legislative change.
McGOVERN: I know some of this stuff is not easy to talk about.
But yet you're down here, and I am very, very grateful.
And I feel food should be a right.
We have a lot of lobbyists who come down here
who get well-paid and talk about other things, so...
You know, you're kind of a dream come true for me,
because I want people to descend on Capitol Hill,
you know, and talk about the need
to make sure that we focus on issues
dealing with poverty and hunger and nutritious food.
Anyway, thank you for coming
all the way up to the Rules Committee.
Thank you so much.
The Obama Administration takes this opportunity very seriously.
The administration proposed an historic investment
of $10 billion in additional funding over ten years.
As we reauthorize the programs,
have you been able to work through the budget process
to determine whether we can pay for them?
Senator, I think it's important
to focus on what the cost of inaction and inactivity might be.
And as you well know, Senator, from your experience,
you fund your priorities. You fund your priorities.
The President proposed an additional $1 billion a year
to strengthen child nutrition programs.
And he was very clear.
Let's take that money away
from some of the least justifiable payments
to affluent landholders.
Well, that part of his proposal died within 24 hours.
Both the Ag committees said, "No way, you're not touching that."
We want to thank everyone
as we begin the committee's work to reauthorize
the Federal Child Nutrition Programs.
Hopefully, we'll be able to work this out.
I hate to pit agriculture against nutrition,
would seem to be inconsistent.
The Agriculture Committee is there
to allocate lots of money to agribusiness,
support and subsidize the prices of other agriculture products,
and we're very sorry that we're not going to address fully childhood hunger.
We are voting on yet another bill
that calls for the government to grow,
expand, spend more, and intrude more.
I can't help but be reminded
of the fact that my friends on the other side of the aisle
have borrowed countless billions of dollars
to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.
They have no problem with doing that.
The critical investment this bill makes are completely paid for
and will not add 1¢ to the national debt.
The fact that they call it the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act
and then, at the same time,
scoop money out of the food stamp program,
that to me is a paradox.
You can't just, like, push a tiny bit
of mashed potatoes from one side of the plate
to the other and say, "Okay, now we have fed you."
McGOVERN: It's not a victory.
You're taking money out of the mouths of poor people,
and, yeah, you're putting it toward a good cause,
which is child nutrition, but why are we...
Why are we making this choice?
The great temptation in Washington
is to always take something away from those
who, frankly, can't defend themselves.
I think we spent maybe $700 billion
on the banking and insurance bailout,
so $4.5 billion is really just a fraction of that.
It's kind of symptomatic of how lopsided
things have become in Washington as a result of special interests
that frankly control a lot of the Congressional agenda.
As long as we have a system
where corporates can fund election campaigns,
we're going to have legislators who are more interested
in corporate health than public health.
It's just appalling.
You know, if another country was doing this to our kids,
we would be at war.
This is, you know, it's just insane.
And it doesn't have to be that way.
These children, all of them, are Americans.
And all of them are hungry.
One of the most poignant things that occurred during the 1960s
to really put hunger on the national agenda
was a special hour-long documentary by CBS in 1968.
Here for CBS Reports is Charles Kuralt.
Food is the most basic of all human needs.
Man can manage to live without shelter, without clothing,
even without love.
But man can't remain alive without food.
We're talking about 10 million Americans.
In this country, the most basic human need
must become a human right.
It galvanized public opinion in such a way
that President Nixon and the Democratic leaders of Congress
decided they had to do something about hunger at our time.
The moment is at hand to put an end to hunger
in America itself for all time.
The past ten years now, the federal government
has spent billions of dollars fighting hunger in America.
They expanded the food stamp program
to make it a national program,
they expanded the elderly feeding programs,
they instituted a school breakfast program
to go along with the school lunch program
which had gone back to the 1940s.
It showed that public policy could work.
Political will could work to make a difference in our country.
Regular Americans rose up and demanded
that we create a modern nutrition assistance safety net,
which almost helped us almost end hunger entirely by the late 1970s.
Joining us this morning from Washington,
Jeff Bridges, the national spokesman for Share Our Strength,
and also the group's founder and executive director Billy Shore.
Welcome to both of you.
Thanks forjoining us this morning.
Good morning, Kyra.
- Thank you. - Jeff, let me start with you.
You've been passionate about this for a long time.
I know that you founded the End Hunger Network back in 1983.
- Mm-hmm. - Tell us about this new campaign,
the No Kid Hungry campaign that launches today.
We're in dire straits.
We have 17 million of our children
who are living in homes with food insecurity.
And I believe no child in America should go hungry,
and by taking this pledge, I'm adding my voice
to the national movement of people who are committed
to end childhood hunger in America by 2015.
Back in the early '80s, when I went to a seminar
about ending world hunger,
hunger was pretty much handled in America.
We had food stamps and the WIC program
that were really keeping hunger at bay.
And then these programs started to be underfunded.
And I figured, well, you know, it's a little difficult to be telling
some other country on how to handle hunger
when we're not handling it ourselves.
We virtually eradicated hunger in America in the 1970s,
but it's back with a vengeance.
People look back on the Reagan years,
and particularly during the recession,
and they saw several things happen.
There were a lot of tax cuts, so the government's tax base shrunk.
There was a big increase in defense spending.
And so how is that going to be made up?
It was made up by cutting the budgets of a lot of social programs.
So at a time that need was going up more in the country,
they cut the programs that made them less.
And what popped out of that equation?
More hungry people on the streets.
The '80s created the myth that A: hungry people deserved it,
and B: well, we could really fill in the gaps with charities.
And so we had a proliferation.
Of emergency responses.
Soup kitchens, food pantries, moving from literally a shelf
in the cupboard of the pastor's office to an operation with regular hours.
Something changed during that period of time.
There developed this ethos that government was doing too much.
And more importantly, the private sector's wonderful.
And let's feed people through charity.
We have basically created
a kind of secondary food system for the poor in this country.
Millions and millions of Americans,
as many as 50 million Americans,
rely on charitable food programs
for some part of meeting their basic food needs.
431 and 451 for backpacks for this week.
Every Wednesday we go down and get a trailer full of food
from Food Bank of the Rockies.
The problem that we run into
in small towns is that the income level has gone down,
the jobs are minimal,
the second- and third-generation people
are having to leave the area to find work.
Ten years ago or so, when we started this,
my wife and I had purchased an old Suburban.
And I remember driving it to the food bank
and being excited about backing up
and filling that Suburban with 10 to 15 boxes of food,
and thinking we were really making a difference in our community.
And after a year and a half, we bought a little single-axle trailer
that we could put two pallets of food in it.
And we thought we had really arrived, that that...
We could certainly meet the needs
of the community with two pallets of food.
And four years ago, a gentleman from our church
donated this trailer and now we're doing four pallets twice a week.
And it's... It's amazing how the need
has increased over the ten years.
About a month ago, we had three officers including myself.
However, due to budget constraints, we're now down to just me.
It was always kind of a prideful thing
that I never needed anybody's help.
Unfortunately, I haven't received a pay raise in four years.
And what I used to spend on a month in groceries
now gets me about two weeks.
I have utilized Pastor Bob's food bank.
The way it makes me feel, it's very humiliating.
Uh, well, incorrect. That... It's not humiliating.
It's, um, very grounding.
The stereotype of food banks is always
for the unemployed or the disabled,
people that can't go out and get a job.
That's not always the case.
Sometimes in life, you just get to points
where you need a little extra help.
[shouts 1.
Ranching is a good part of life.
It's a lot of work.
But it's an honest...
Actually, it's an honest trade.
But the way the economy and everything has gone south,
I have had to go find another job out of the house.
So I work on the ranch from 7:00 in the morning
till 3:00 in the afternoon.
And then at 3:00 in the afternoon
till 11:00 at night, I got down and clean the school.
♪ And a secret ♪
♪ In an envelope ♪
It's a good job. It's close to home.
There's a lot that you... You worry about.
Your kids is the main one.
And that's part of the reason I did take a second job
is so I can help buy groceries
and put food on the table for my kids.
Come on, dogs.
Don't touch and don't look.
Cool.
Pastor Bob and his wife,
they do give 'em a warm meal after school.
- Hi, Daddy. - Howdy.
It helps, you know.
It's getting harder to try to figure out
how to make all your ends meet.
But you gotta do what you have to do
to help support what you created, you know.
All right. Do you need help?
- Nope. - Okay. Thank you.
I'll grab three off there as I go by.
I was one of those kids that was hungry.
Growing up, it was difficult,
because I could see how difficult it was
for my mother when she would return from the food bank.
It was embarrassing.
I remember I was in second grade,
and just remembering opened up the refrigerator
for, like, the first time in my life and going, "Wow."
I'm one of those kids, you know,
that you hear about on TV, or you see about on TV.
There was, like, two carrots in the bottom of the crisper.
And I just remembered thinking, "What are we gonna do?"
I deliver food bags every week from the food bank at our local church.
It's uncomfortable sometimes, so what I've tried to do is
get an understanding of their schedules,
and then drop it off and leave it,
so it's not that added pressure.
And I know that they're thankful,
because it's gone when I come back.
I know how I operated. It wasn't very good.
I didn't do well in school.
I didn't have that great of attendance.
And I just felt like I kind of lived
under this umbrella of feeling inferior to others.
It messes with you.
It's just still always there.
Rosie just really struggles.
You know, she was significantly behind.
But despite all of that, she tries so hard
to be so positive all the time.
One of my own personal missions was
to try to see if there was something I could do
that could make a difference.
And I asked her if she'd be interested in the food bags.
And she was very excited.
We could do with another one.
You want cake for breakfast, right, Rose?
- Yeah. - Yeah? All right.
- I'll take that in for you. - Okay.
You guys got your hands full.
- I'll just walk it in for you. - Okay.
All rightv-
- How are you, Miss Nichols? - I'm good, thanks.
You ready for your last big week of school before Christmas?
- Yeah. - Yeah?
O K3)!
Blah. There we go.
Okay, a bunch of graham crackers.
Mrs. Nichols comes about once a week.
It's eight bags that she brings.
There might be potatoes. There might be bread.
You know, right now, I think we have 30 jars of peanut butter.
That's just one of the things that Mrs. Nichols brings out right now.
There's always some kind of soups,
Spaghettios, a lot of snacks.
I like these.
Ooh, now these ones...
Sometimes, I will admit, I do feel a little bit guilty
bringing 'em food bags, because it's starch,
it's lots of carbohydrates, it's lots of sugars
and other chemicals.
Grandma, we got apple pie bars.
Oh, awesome.
Apple pie.
In a perfect world, you would want it to be
as well-balanced as you could make it,
but the reality is you get what you can.
And giving something is certainly more than nothing.
And so you just kind of find a little bit of...
I guess reassurance in knowing that you are making a difference,
even though it's not perfect.
Okay. Give these three...
- Are you gonna take 'em all? - Yeah, I got 'em.
All right. Thank you.
- Good job on your basketball game. - Thank you.
That's something that's extremely important.
The churches and the community groups that do hand out food
are doing an incredible service to this country
and to the children that are experiencing hunger.
But that's just a quick fix. That's for today and tomorrow,
maybe for next week.
We call it emergency food.
It's no longer emergency food.
This is called chronic use of a broken system
for which people cannot be held accountable.
If people are gonna be relying on this food
as a significant portion of their food intake over time,
then we do need to pay attention
to what kind of food are they getting?
Charity is a great thing,
but it's not the way to end hunger.
We don't fund our Department of Defense
through charity, you know.
We shouldn't, you know, see that our kids are healthy
through charity either.
There should be, you know, something that...
In our country, in America, the richest country in the world,
you know, we should, you know, take care of our kids.
We have tried 1,000 points of light.
We have tried it in spades.
But with all that expansion of private feeding,
all of that effort, especially by the faith communities,
we have not reduced hunger.
Our legislators only think of the cost of hunger in America
as being what it is that they spend on food stamps.
But the genuine cost of hunger in America
is way, way higher.
- Hey, Mr. Broom. - Hey, Doc. How you doing?
I gotta get a forklift to get your chart out the door.
What do you think?
You gotta roll around on a cart.
Yeah. How you doing today?
- Not too good, Doc. - Uh-oh.
Where have you noticed the swelling at?
My legs again.
And the fluids get all riled and jump up, and I just...
Oh, I mean, I be scared to lay back down.
I just sit on the side of the bed and halfway doze.
Okay, for the last couple of days, how have you been doing?
Uh, if I walk ten steps, I get out of breath.
Obesity makes all other medical problems worse.
High blood pressure, diabetes.
We probably diagnose new cases of diabetes
four, five, six times a week.
This is Dr. Booker. I need a telemetry bed
- for Mr. John Broom. - John Broom.
Congestive heart failure. I'm going to directly admit him.
He's gonna bring his orders by the emergency room.
Those younger people who are developing those diseases
at an early age are gonna get
the end-stage complications a lot earlier.
So education is what it's gonna take
to get people to do what they need to do
to reduce some of these problems.
And we need to start it very early on.
At the bathroom, line up at the door.
I am Odessa Cherry. I am a second-grade teacher
here at Jonestown Elementary School.
Love it. I've been teaching over 17 years.
I love the babies.
I was diagnosed with diabetes.
And it's been about a year... almost a year.
And when I was first diagnosed,
I told the doctor, "I don't want the pill."
"I think I can do it with just diet."
And so that was the one thing that really
got me to thinking about what you're eating.
Oh, check it out. Did y'all see that?
Is that what... Is that what sparked
y'all talkin' about what he said, huh?
'Cause I was wondering what it was.
And when the change started,
everybody was, like, "What, no fried chicken?
"No fried fish?" That was the biggest thing,
that fried fish, 'cause we love catfish in this area.
I mean, if it's not fried, it's not fish, so...
And it was just, "I don't eat that."
"I don't eat this. I don't like that. I don't like... ."
And I'm like, "Have you tried it?"
And I have many of 'em say, "No."
And so I'm saying, "Try it."
And I'm trying to force myself to try it because,
you know, this is new to me.
And once you eat it, it's like, "That's not bad."
Now, that helped me to understand the impact
that we can have on our children.
And the younger they are, the better.
Awareness is the beginning.
You did good. Yeah.
This is a kitchen.
This is our table, and this is our microwave.
If you want tea, just push "hot water,".
And then it goes.
And it's really cool.
And this is our box where we put all of our food
that we get from the food bank and from Miss Nichols.
And this is our bedroom.
Excuse me...
It's not that pleasant.
This is where I sleep, right on this pillow.
This is where my sister sleeps with her dog.
And this is where we have... put all of our clothes.
When my friends come over, I get embarrassed
because they have bigger rooms than I do.
And, well, we try to keep it clean.
And I put flowers up because I just wanted
to decorate it and make it look nice.
Kitty.
Is it that people are going hungry because of a shortage of food?
No, it is not.
The reason people are going hungry
is not because of a shortage of food.
It's because of poverty.
Then, all of a sudden, you're in a different question.
You're not asking, "Why is there insufficient food?"
which is this sort of very beneficent question.
But it turns out to be, "Why are people poor?"
And right there, you're in a political question,
and one that's far more difficult to answer,
and involves asking questions about power,
and about, you know, class, and about inequality,
and the persistent inequality in this country.
And that's a much harder question to ask
than the question about, well, is there enough food in America?
To which, clearly, the answer is yes.
Barbie, you got it.
So have a seat.
And, Mariana, I'm gonna stick you over here.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Radio Times.
I'm Marty Moss-Coane.
And today on the show, what does it mean
to be "food insecure"?
I mean, we shouldn't be surprised
that there are... that there's hunger in this country,
when you look at the level of poverty.
And I wonder just how much of a...
sort of denial there is out there.
And, of course, we are still, as I think's true today,
the richest country in the world.
And this disconnect between all this wealth
and people that don't have enough.
If you look at the food insecurity numbers
in this country, 85% of those families
that are food insecure have at least one working adult in the household.
So from my perspective, how do people get out of poverty?
They get... They earn a living wage.
And so I think we need to turn it around to accountability.
It's government accountability.
It's also corporate accountability for ensuring
that people get living wages.
I mean, it sounds like a lot of emotional stress
and strain that you both have.
- The humiliation of it? - Yes.
Being labeled as "low income" is shameful in itself.
It's the reality, but you don't want to admit
that, okay, I am of low income.
Or because of we're of low income,
we have to stand in this line
and receive food from whoever wants to give it to us.
- So I think... That's what... - That's tough.
Yeah, how about for you, Crystal?
It seems like America has turned a blind eye
to the fact that people are hungry on a day-to-day basis.
It's not just women.
There's men who are raising their children.
There are two-parent households who go to work every day,
and still have to turn to public assistance
to sustain their families,
which makes no sense.
Which is our bus?
We gotta watch out for the bus.
Do I got toothpaste on my face?
No? Okay.
No.
Yeah.
- No. - Mm-hmm.
Mm-mm.
- Yep. - Uh-uh.
There's a difference in your step.
Like, when you're on your way to work,
and you know that "I'm going to work now..."
it's a different type of walk that you...
A different pace to your walk.
Okay.
Thank you for calling the food stamp hotline.
How can I help you?
Okay, so according to the information
that you've given me, it's telling me
you're eligible for about $16 in food stamps.
Do you have any other questions?
It's hectic sometimes,
but I just look at it as though every day
I have the chance to put food in someone's mouth.
Not directly, but I know what it's like to be turned down.
And now I'm on the other side, so it makes me feel good.
Oh, my God, I'm gonna cry...
- Y'all want this? - What?
- No. - Why not?
Because.
Um, eat, um... sandwich.
All right, but you need to eat food.
- We ate food. - What you ate?
We ate chips.
That's not food.
That's it.
I want to eat, too.
- The meatballs. - Who's gonna help me?
- Me. Me. - Wait, Mommy.
Hold it.
Anyone can sit there and tell you,
"Oh, I've been through this, I've been through that."
"I got through it."
Yeah, I've been through this, I've been through that,
I got through it, but if you open my fridge,
I'm there again.
Five days into the month.
And I'm gonna be there next month
and the month after that.
It gets tiring.
Oh, we're good. Let it go.
I was gonna help you again.
- No. - That's it?
Lalani.
When I was on food stamps,
I didn't have to worry about my kids not eating.
It was just how can I make it stretch?
You know, I might have to take a little bit from this day.
It was more about balancing everything,
where now we have nothing.
I literally have nothing left.
Like, I'm gonna give 'em a Hot Pocket for dinner tomorrow.
What am I supposed to do? What do I give them?
Yeah.
We have to put a system in place where people get...
and have enough time... to get themselves back on their feet.
It's not like you get a full-time job,
the next month you're off of food stamps,
and all is... all is well.
It doesn't happen that way.
We don't have a food policy in this country to address hunger.
We never have. We have a welfare system
that is very limited in its ability to get people on their feet,
which is what you really want,
is you want to empower people to be able to make enough money
to buy their own food and take care of their own needs.
We don't have anything that does that.
We sort of have this love-hate relationship
with poverty and the poor.
On the one hand, you know, we have a wonderful history
of helping others and a lot of good rhetoric.
"Bring us your struggling masses yearning to be free."
This is the land of opportunity, and we care about one another.
And we do in many ways.
But our care is always predicated on the fact
that we're worried that somebody else
is getting something for free or something they don't deserve.
In our country, we put a lot of emphasis on self-reliance,
on everybody fending for themselves, liberty.
And those are all great strengths.
But as a nation, it has not been our strength
to do what we can to reduce poverty.
"Corduroy is a bear who once lived"
"in the toy department of a big store."
I feel like America has this huge stigma
of how families are supposed to eat together at a table.
But they don't talk about what it takes to get you there.
Or what's there when you're actually at the table.
Bring that bucket.
There's probably 600, 700 chefs here,
all really committed to helping this problem that we have
with child obesity and hunger.
- Here, grab the leaves... - Okay.
And break them in pieces like this.
- We're gonna toss on the spinach. - Oh, look at that.
We're working to make sure
that families and communities
across this country have access to quality affordable food.
It's so good.
If they get a first taste of broccoli and green beans
and peas and things like that, it'll stick with them for life.
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
There's a lot of education that needs to sort of happen again
around food, and around what is healthy.
And there has gotta be a way where healthy food...
fruits and vegetables... are made accessible
and less expensive than they are now.
We're spending $20 billion a year
on agricultural subsidies for the wrong foods.
$20 billion would go a very long way
to promoting a healthy, educated population,
starting with kids.
Now, close the book. Put the book away.
Thank you. All right.
I want you to feel this so you can see
the texture of the outside of the honeydew melon.
Uh, try not to drop it.
Look at the color. You kinda feel the weight.
What is this called?
Honeydew melon.
We are now... We are pushing, if you go to the store,
and Mom asks you, "What you want?"
Don't say chips. Say, "I want fruit."
And so we're looking for inexpensive healthy foods.
So that's what we're working on now in the classroom.
And we're looking for alternatives.
Is it rough or is it smooth?
- It's smooth. - It's smooth.
I brought it so that when they see it in the store, they can relate.
"That's a honeydew not sliced already."
Everybody ready?
Get set... and taste.
What adjectives would you use to describe the honeydew melon?
Good. Juicy. Everything.
Would you buy one?
How many of you would buy, or would like to buy a honeydew melon?
I'd buy two of 'em.
You would buy two. You love 'em, huh?
But now, what about how you like 'em
compared to chips?
Which one do you like better?
Honeydew! Honeydew! Honeydew! Honeydew, baby!
Let's take a vote.
How many people love the honeydew,
would prefer the honeydew over the chips?
If you said...
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 3,
9, 10, 11, 12. Ooh, we're way over 50%.
I love it. I love it. Mm-hmm.
I think I go out of my way to try to take that burden
and that worry away from kids because I was there.
And teaching, it kind of puts you in that natural place
to say, you know, yes, obviously I can make a difference
in the education of a child,
but I think it's so much more than that.
It's that personal connection that goes beyond that.
Last year you missed...
twenty days of school.
This year you've missed seven days.
And five were when you had pink eye
and you couldn't be at school.
And I know you wanted to be at school.
- Yeah, I did. - Remember when I stopped by
your house and we talked about that?
- Yeah. - So do you think being...
My dream is to be an honor roll student.
My other dream is, um...
Have you heard of the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition?
I always have a dream every night
that they would come tear down our house,
let us go for a vacation.
I just wish they would come
and actually rescue us from our house.
But we don't have a story like they do.
I want my kids to have a better life than I do.
Have more food, have a bigger house, no mold.
And they get to do what they want to do
and what they need to do.
And never be hungry.
Like, you take 'em one at a time.
We know we can't help everyone, but we can help one or two.
So you take those and look at 'em, and go, "Wow."
"In that life, we made a difference."
It's about patriotism, really.
Yeah, that's what it is, you know?
Stand up for your country, you know?
How do you envision your country, you know?
Do you envision it... a country where one in four
of the kids are hungry?
What I'm hoping is that maybe an increase in the problem
is part of the solution.
That that's gonna finally wake people up to how...
You know, what dire straits we're in here with this.
Do we just continue to give
more cans of food through the food drives?
That's not the answer.
The answer is widespread governmental programs
that are focused on the human being.
I think Americans, basically, want to do the right thing.
There's a lot of issues that we could all struggle with
for a long time we wouldn't know how to solve.
I don't know how to solve the climate change problem,
you know, by myself.
I don't know how to come up with a vaccine for AIDS.
I don't know how to, you know, end terrorism.
But when it comes to hunger in this country,
we know the solutions because we've proven it in the past.
We all have a stake in this,
and we really need to reclaim agricultural policy
as a policy on behalf of us all.
We're wasting billions of dollars by not spending less to fix hunger.
We all understand that the government
will do the right thing only after
every other possibility has been exhausted.
We need to bring government to the right thing much more quickly.
But the only way to do that
is not by, you know, saying, "Well, you know",
"government will take care of it," but by making government care.
We need to make this an issue where
if you're not with us on ending hunger,
then we're not gonna be with you on reelection.
I mean, if making sure people have enough to eat
is not an important issue, then I don't know what the hell is.
"'You are where you come from.'
"it is a quote that is said very often.
"If your mother was a single mother,
"you will be a single mother.
"If no one in your family was a high school graduate,
"you will be the next one to follow in those footsteps.
"Have you ever been surrounded by the people you love,
"like your children, but feel completely alone?"
"Have you ever been in a home with open doors,
"but feel trapped?
"Have you ever been in a neighborhood
"with constant yelling, screaming, gunshots,
"and fighting, but are so accustomed to it
"that it puts you to sleep?"
"I know what it's like to have your children
"look at you in your eyes and tell you they're hungry,
"and you have to try to force them to go to sleep
"as if they did something wrong."
"Take time and learn a little from each of us,
"because you never know where tomorrow can take you.
"Remember us... remember people like us
"that are here in the United States
"that need help, that are not receiving it adequately.
"If we switched lives for a week, could you handle the stress?
"If we switched salaries for a month,
"would you be able to live and still keep your pride?
"Are you aware of my hope and my determination?
"Are you aware of my dreams and my struggle?
"Are you aware of my ambition and motivation?
"Are you aware that I exist?"
"My name is Barbara lzquierdo, and I do exist."
♪ Look out, Ma, look out, Pa ♪
♪ Look at that horizon ♪
♪ Something's out there kicking up dust ♪
♪ The storm is coming fast ♪
♪ Look out, sister, look out, brother ♪
♪ The river's gonna be rising ♪
♪ Something we've been waiting for ♪
♪ Oh, it's here at last ♪
♪ It's been a long ♪
♪ Long time coming ♪
♪ It's been a long ♪
♪ Long time gone ♪
♪ Let's all sing, let's all dance ♪
♪ Stomp our feet in that red clay ♪
♪ Come on out of those old brown fields ♪
♪ Watch 'em turn to gold ♪
♪ It's been a long ♪
♪ Long time coming ♪
♪ It's been a long ♪
♪ Long time gone ♪
♪ Ooh, it's been a long ♪
♪ Long time coming ♪
♪ It's been a long ♪
♪ Long time gone ♪