The Community Food Shelf

     Photo courtesy of apium on Flickr

      Hennepin County Community College recently opened
      a food shelf on its facility. It’s manned completely by volunteers.

Ever work in a food shelf, dispersing the donated food that sits upon the shelves and in the refrigerators and freezers to hungry families? Believe me, it ain’t fun! It takes some sense of control and steadiness.
by Charlie Leck

It’s easy to kind of fall apart when you see the need. It hurts even more when you see the sense of pride that these hungry folks have. They don’t want free food. They don’t want to be visiting food shelves to ask for free food. The problem is, they’re hungry and they have hungry children. They realized they must swallow their pride. It hurts to look such a person in the eye, but you do it. You smile and greet them as equals, friends, members of the community; and you give as graciously and generously as you can.

Only seldom is there some blame to place on those seeking help. The blame goes mostly to the system (the organized government both local and national). Many who are willing and able to work, can’t – for one reason or another. It isn’t that they won’t. They can’t! Jobs are still scarce in America – especially jobs for the untrained.

And, as a food shelf worker, you often have to look into the eyes of hungry children – damned hungry children who are cuter than all-get-out and have no responsibility for any of this. Zero!

At a minimum, a third of the people fed by food shelves are hungry children – minimum!

A lot of the adults served by food shelves are disabled people and senior citizens with retirement income that won’t stretch far enough to handle housing, energy costs, clothing and food.

Some of these people get food stamps. Those government stamps just don’t stretch far enough to get a family through an entire month. Have you looked at the price of groceries lately?

Now Congress is in a debate about severely reducing the number of food stamps provided to low-income Americans. This debate is a god-danged shame! We’re talking here of only a relatively few pikers who take advantage of the system. Who we’re feeding are children, the lowest income families, the disabled and seniors with very low retirement benefits.

Please, for God’s sake (and I mean that), contact your Congressperson and Senators and tell them not to reduce the food stamp benefits provided to unfortunate Americans. A vote may take place any day, so make sure you speak up and speak out against any reduction in food stamp benefits.

Don’t know how to make contact with your Congressman?
Go to this list of Congresspersons! Select your representative and click on the name. All the contact information (address, email address and phone numbers will come up). Sending an email is probably the best and easiest thing to do. Tell them not to reduce the budget for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is commonly known as food stamps. Tell them there are too many hungry people in America. Tell them, if they don’t believe it, they should volunteer to work for awhile in a community food shelf.

Find your local food shelf!
The second thing I’d ask is that you find your local food shelf. If you can’t volunteer time, please give generously. Either provide food for their shelves or just give them money so they can buy what they need.

I decided, a few years ago, with the help of our handy computer, to keep track of every penny I spend on groceries and beverages (including wine) and on dining out. Then I determined that I would give 10 percent of that amount to local food shelves and the food shelf downtown in my church. I give most of it to the local organization. If you do this, you’re going to be surprised about how much you spend on feeding yourself. I also make sure that this amount I give doesn’t impact the amounts I already give to charities and my church (in other words, doesn’t take away from those amounts of regular giving).

And, I decided to give some volunteer time to the food shelf; that is, stocking the shelves with the foods donated by various neighbors and grocery stores. I also help distribute that food to the families that come, searching for help.

I ain’t braggin’ my dear readers. I’m askin’ you to think about some kind of commitment to hungry people. No one should be hungry in America, but, unfortunately, there are many hungry people who need our help.

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Organizing for the Hungry

     Library of Congress photograph
 

Congress, under  constant, unrelenting pressure from the conservative wing, will turn its back on the poor and hungry in America this week.
by Charlie Leck

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me...”
                                                                [Matthew 25:35]

Congress will vote, in the next couple of days (and likely today in the House) on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). We have known the program as food stamps. The proposal that will probably become law will drastically cut the food stamp program and will desperately hurt the poorest among us and many of them will be fellow senior citizens. Families with very low income, trying to adequately feed their children, will also be desperately hurt.

Congress has received significant and trust-worthy reports that food stamps kept as many as 4 million people from falling into poverty last year. Under the new law, according to the trusted, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, more than 4 million people will become ineligible for future assistance.

Hunger in America is about to become a more significant problem than it has been in the a long, long time.

Providing assistance through food stamps has been a bi-partisan effort in Congress over the last several decades. With the restructuring of Congress under the influence of the Tea Party that is about to change. This has been our nation’s most effective way to fight hunger ever since the end of the depression.

As Jim Wallis, of the Sojourners organization, has recently said, food stamps are “the nation’s foremost tool against hunger and hardship, particularly during recessions and periods of high unemployment.”

This is a fight in Congress between those who believe we have something of a responsibility to care for our fellow-citizens who have fallen on hard times and those who don’t. Now that’s blunt and cold; however, it is the absolute truth.

If you can, communicate with your U.S. Senators and ask them to defeat this bill that the House of Representatives is about to send over to them. We must not allow hunger to become brutally real in America again.

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Pensée overlooking the Golf Course

Most of us don’t want to know about it because it hurts us and gets us angry, but there is a world of unbelievable need out there and much of it is in our own communities.
by Charlie Leck

I sat for a while yesterday, over lunch, with a lady who was a perfect stranger until we chatted for the half hour we had to dine. I was doing some volunteer work for the state’s golf association and this lady was a spectator, out to watch her grandson play golf. She’s retired and tries to do volunteer work as often as she can. She works in a food shelf for the hungry in the little town where she lives, in the western part of the state. She laughed at a big story in the StarTribune that day that reported the success of current farms and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that farmers are making annually.

“Their equipment is so big and efficient now,” she said, “that they don’t need to hire much help. The farmers might be doing well, but small town America is in pretty bad shape.”

She told me how busy the food shelves are in little towns all around – that it’s difficult to keep up  and it’s difficult to find the volunteers they need to stock the shelves and give out the food.

“Thank goodness people are so generous. So many people would be starving if it weren’t for neighbors who constantly give food and money to us.”

She had a big smile on her face and a few tears in her eyes. She was aware of the conflicting values that were tugging at us both.

“We have lines now. It reminds me of what my folks told me of the depression years. The people are proud and humiliated. They don’t want to be there, but they have children who are hungry. This is America, mind you. This is America!” She looked down at her plate and shook her head.

"It's hard to believe, isn't it?" She saw the the question in my eyes. "That we can eat like this, I mean."

We didn’t talk politics. We didn’t have to. We both knew that politicians are just consumed by their differences right now – so much so that they can’t see reality. They won’t work together to solve the nation’s problems. The politicians call it “hand outs!”

I told the woman that my wife and I have given more to food shelves in the last year than we gave in the previous ten. I promised to give more. We had a beautiful, immense lunch before us and we sat in the clubhouse of a beautiful country club and looked out over the vast playing field of lush, green grass. She had these tears glistening in her eyes and I loved her for it. I rose and thanked her for her work and told her I hoped her grandson would play well. I shook her hand.

She nodded and thanked me for volunteering my time to help with the tournament.

I’m off to Mississippi in the morning. For a few days I’ll be surrounded by brave and loving people. It will be a good occasion when we’ll gather and sing songs about injustice and inequality. We’ll hold hands and ask the immense question: Why in such a wealthy and bounteous place is their poverty and injustice?

How can there be such gloriously beautiful fields of wonder and amazing beauty on which we can so peacefully golf a ball and, at the same time, such staggering need. I love the golf fields passionately. I cherish the wonder of the game. I also cherish the volunteers who work so bravely to feed and care for the poor and needy. The contrasts all came together at my little table yesterday and the nice lady (I didn’t catch her name) touched me pretty deeply.

Pensée… a reflection or thought (dictionary.com)

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