Time to Place Chronic Hunger High on the National Agenda
One of the most tragic indications of the desperate straits of tens of millions of poor people here in the United States is the ominously expanding group experiencing chronic hunger. They exist in every section of the nation, and their suffering weighs heavy on everyone of good conscience.
Desperate for food, they congregate wherever they can obtain alms. Such locations commonly include freeway entrances, restaurant doorways, subway steps, grocery store parking lots, food pantries, and the relatively small number of churches that provide them meager meals.
All across the nation, large groups of hungry people gather each day at the doors of feeding stations in the poorest sections of towns, largely invisible to their better off neighbors. Sometimes the long, patient food lines contain hundreds of people, including desperate senior citizens, and handicapped individuals of every sort. The food lines have become so common in major cities that the mainstream news media rarely cover them. Like the large number of homeless people who have come to be seen by the larger society as permanent components of our civic spaces, snaking lines of hungry people seeking free food are as common these days as parking tickets and street side trash.
The hunger-driven beggars who congregate in the commercial districts of major cities are among the most obvious members of this severely disenfranchised segment of society. With their handmade, cardboard signs, and deferential postures, they are representative of the huge, generally unacknowledged, class of U.S. citizens who subsist without the most basic resources necessary to maintain consistently viable lives.
Now and again, a random citizen pauses to drop a few coins into the ever extended cups of the lucky beggars. But more often than not, the people from whom the ragged beggars seek assistance avert their eyes, and scurry along, exuding indifference of a sort that explains a lot about the isolating, callous nature of our dog-eat-dog status quo. Unlucky beggars, including those who appear too, dirty, unkempt, or vaguely threatening, receive few coins. More often than not, they are left, therefore, to hope, on empty stomachs, for better days, which, may or may not, arrive.
Recent data on the subject of chronic hunger in the U.S. indicate that approximately 35.5 million of our fellow citizens are burdened by this life-threatening problem. That number includes almost 13 million children. Almost 11 percent of households in this incomparably wealthy nation experience hunger as a common experience. An additional 24.4 million U.S. citizens, including 12.2 million children, fall into the category of those who experience chronic food insecurity, according to Bread for the World. This group includes an additional 6.9 percent of U.S. households.
The continued, and expanding, existence of this large, preventable, social tragedy should be deeply worrisome to also those who purport to care about this nation’s future good healthy, and viability. For an individual, chronic hunger is a life draining process, and those who experience its ravages consistently, and for long periods, lose valuable physical, emotional and intellectual resources vital to survival. Obviously, extreme hunger kills.
The negative consequences of widespread, debilitating hunger for society at large should also be obvious. Consider the global dimension in order to acquire clarity regarding the nature of the threat posed by chronic hunger of the sort addressed here. Even if the U.S. gets lucky, organized, focused, disciplined and appropriately dedicated to the task, it is going to take extraordinary achievement, maintained over a long period of time, to sustain the pace of economic development currently being set by India and China, with their billion-plus populations. During the years immediately ahead, the U.S. can also expect to be challenged by a host of other regions and nations intent in expanding their share of profits and resources via smart, able participation in the global economy.
Unfortunately, the U.S. can’t hope to perform adequately in the increasingly important global arena with such a large percentage of its population incapacitated by chronic hunger, and the broad array of debilitating social problems it engenders. Therefore, separate and apart from the ethical, moral, social and humanistic reasons why it should be done, the nation needs to eliminate chronic hunger because doing so is critical to the nation’s best interests.
Assuming the best, the in-coming Obama administration will address chronic hunger soon after it takes office. Assuming the best, their plans will include a commitment to keeping every food bank, and free food distribution center in the nation, from ever running out of supplies. The administration should also ensure that the food stamp program is adequately funded, and that needy senior citizens are graciously fed in ways that completely relieve them of fear of hunger.
The in-coming administration should also ensure that school lunch programs are provided the funding they need to ensure that every child who needs food gets it on a daily basis. Given the large number of persons incarcerated in jails and prisons, the in-coming administration should also ensure that all prisoners are properly fed.
This is not, of course, an exhaustive list, and I am aware that I have not noted many kinds of citizens who desperately need food assistance. Nonetheless, my hope is that these recommendations provide an indication of the direction in which the nation needs to move as quickly as possible, and the kinds of practical, grass roots procedures required to begin the process of eliminating widespread, chronic hunger in this nation.