National Hunger Awareness Day

National Hunger Awareness Day is observed annually on June 6th to call attention to the growing problem of domestic hunger.

National Hunger Awareness Day will take more than awareness or even large-scale charitable efforts to solve this crisis. In order to remove hunger forever, America's political leaders must do serious, concrete actions.

In my work with New York City's Coalition against Hunger, I hear every day about working parents who can't afford to put food on the table, seniors forced to choose between buying food and drinks to eat and fill prescriptions, and the kids face hunger because of them. My colleagues in the nonprofit sector around the country keep hearing the same stories.

This is especially worrisome because the United States is the richest and most agriculturally productive country in the history of the world. However, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, 34 million people, including 12 million children, lived in hungry households or were struggling on the brink of famine in 2002. Those numbers have increased. The country has grown significantly since 2000. Today, the nation has more than 30,000 charity soup kitchens and a longer food stockpile than at any time since the Great Depression, when these hard-hit agencies ran out of food and other resources needed to meet the growing demand.

Add to the tragedy of the hungry in America that we are facing a growing obesity epidemic. However, what most people don't know is the inability of the poor to afford nutritious real food is one of the main reasons of obesity.

What explains this irony situation? In a word: politics. A majority of Americans agree that this problem should be addressed, and recent history suggests it can be necessary steps to improve the situation.

Certainly a succession of conservative presidents and congresses should bear some of the blame for policies that curtail social programs; wealth transfer from low- and middle-income Americans to the super-rich through tax cuts; and keeps the federal minimum wage thousands of dollars below the poverty line - all while finding ways to bring low-income Americans down. The Bush administration is continuing the conservative tradition of blaming the poor for being poor. The president has said that poverty is more likely to be due to personal error than to a poor economy. Moreover, Housing Secretary Alponso Jackson told Congress that poverty was a state, not a condition.

But we shouldn't let libertarians get stuck for failing to take a serious anti-poverty agenda and refusing to challenge the status quo of underperforming social programs - all while patronizing low-income people with the expectation that government programs might make them a little less miserable, but won't lift them out of poverty.

Of course, the Clinton Administration greatly expanded the Earneds Tax Credit and significantly increased funding for anti-hunger programs in its first budget. The administration has also helped people transition from welfare to work and raised the minimum wage. However, in the face of unrelenting Congressional opposition and political demands to fight primarily for the "forgotten middle class," the Clinton administration failed to make the best of the economy. for decades by ending hunger in the country.

Why are the poor attacked by conservatives and abandoned by liberals? Perhaps the main reason is the political impotence of low-income Americans. But the vast majority of the more than 22 million American adults who are hungry or on the verge of starvation is eligible to vote. In contrast, about 13 million people belong to AFL-CIO member unions and about 4 million belong to the National Rifle Association. The numbers are clear: if low-income Americans banded together for common purposes, they could easily become the most powerful interest group in America.

With such power, hungry, low-income Americans could successfully demand a new kind of American politics, ushering in a new era of "radical moderation," promoting social change, basic opportunities based on core values ​​such as work, faith, ambition, and family. Such a movement could support the following five-point plan to end hunger and significantly reduce poverty in America:

• Ensure that all Americans get enough food by expanding the size and scope of existing, effective federal nutrition programs, such as Food Stamps, School Breakfasts and Lunches, and Programs for Women, Infants and Children (WICs), and radically reforming them to simplify applications, reduce program bureaucracy, harmonize standards eligibility criteria and provide a seamless service network.
• Provide low-income families with specific, meaningful tools to earn, save, and grow assets without sacrificing other government benefits.

That means an increase in the federal minimum wage, which hasn't increased since 1997, with a congressional wage increase, which has increased sevenfold in the same time period.

• Enhance community food security by using food as the central organizer of neighborhood development by significantly expanding the number of community gardens, farmers markets, and micro businesses related to food throughout the United States.
• Do something serious about global hunger and poverty, thus reducing the number of poor immigrants forced to come to the US and take low-paying jobs that keep them on the brink of starvation.

These efforts may sound expensive, but, by reducing duplicate and overlapping bureaucratic programs, we can feed more people than we currently have with a relatively small increase in spending. Any additional funds can be easily found by reducing corporate welfare payments currently made by the federal government to multinational agribusinesses.

On National Hunger Awareness Day, let's do more than lament the tragedy of hunger. Let's start wiping it out.