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Sunday, July 29, 2007

enlarge Staff photo by Jim Evans

LOAVES AND FISHES: Russ and Myrna Hamm helped start the food pantry, called Loaves and Fishes, in Albion when they learned about 80 people in their town were having to go to another town for help. The pantry is open to all from the basement of the Albion Christian Church.

enlarge Staff graphic by Sharon Wood

Today's Top Headlines
from the Kennebec Journal

Sport of Kings
Collins: Detecting 'home-grown terrorists' difficult
Recession over? Don't tell the hungry
Downtown remains optimistic
Health-care bill clears key hurdle
A chance to cash in
A tough way to end it
Windham pulls away to win Class A title

All of today's: News | Sports
from the Kennebec Journal

Today's Top Headlines
from the Morning Sentinel

Old building gets new lease on life
Freedom brings perils along with privileges, Sen. Collins says
At food pantries, recession still very much alive
BILL CLEARS KEY HURDLE IN SENATE
FARMINGTON Volunteers take day to replace roof
OAKLAND Sewer project finishes first phase, ready for next
Black Bears fall to Wildcats in finale
Eagles rally to state title

All of today's: News | Sports
from the Morning Sentinel

Seventh in a 7-day series

For I was hungry, and ye gave me food: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in. –Matthew 25: 35-40

Whether our motivation is religious or secular, spiritual or pragmatic, we must feed those among us who are hungry.

They are many.

They are our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers, our family.

They are our children and our parents.

They are strangers.

All deserve our compassion and our action.

Why?

Choose your justification:

From a biblical perspective, all who are hungry are the children of God, first among equals and more deserving because of their suffering.

From a political perspective, the hungry cannot achieve the promise of America — “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” To be hungry is to live an incomplete life, to be enslaved to one’s most basic need, to be sad and defeated and lacking in dignity.

That is not the promise of America.

From a pragmatic perspective, hungry children, hungry workers, hungry seniors and hungry veterans cost us money. Hungry children don’t learn well, hungry workers don’t perform well, hungry seniors and veterans get sick and need to be taken care of, often with our tax dollars.

That’s not sentiment speaking: A recent study by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health puts the cost of hunger to the nation at a minimum of $90 billion a year in reduced workplace productivity, health-care costs and charitable donations. Lead author J. Larry Brown concluded: “It costs many times more to maintain the problem than to actually end hunger.”

And from a moral perspective, it is wrong to allow hunger among us. It is unacceptable that in this country of plenty, there are many who are not ensured the fundamental human right to adequate nourishment.

In this series, we have brought you the faces of hunger in Maine. They are not the faces of an alien tribe in our midst. The only difference between the hungry and those who are not is that the hungry don’t have enough food.

Our purpose in this investigation has been to help Mainers understand how pervasive hunger is — and how hidden. In its very ordinariness, its wholesale acceptance by us as a fact of life, hunger is a rebuke to our morality.

We must become intolerant of hunger. It must become as dreaded as high taxes, as repulsive as sexual predators, as reviled as terrorism. It must become as unacceptable as all the other things we rail against daily. But first, we must resolve among ourselves to see hunger, to count it, to take its full measure and respond to it wholly and in a sustained way — not simply by pitching a quarter into a donation jar.

And then, once we understand how pervasive hunger is in Maine, we must act. Specifically:

The state should mandate that all schools that serve reduced-price and free lunch also offer reduced-price and free breakfast.

The state must effectively promote the school breakfast program so that the percentage of students getting free and reduced price breakfast doubles.

The federal government should change the standard deduction used in calculating food stamp benefits, which keeps benefits at a ludicrous $1 per meal average benefit per person. That would increase monthly benefits by $24 to an average household of three or fewer members.

The federal government must raise the cutoff level for food stamp eligibility to allow benefits for those working their way out of dependence on the program.

These are modest, but essential, moves that should be taken to begin the end of hunger in Maine.

Much more will need to be done over many years and across a much bigger landscape. Making higher education more affordable and accessible, accomplishing economic development in some of our must rural and hard-hit areas, retooling our public assistance programs to reward, not punish, initiative — these are all long-term initiatives that should, ultimately, bear fruit. But the very largeness of the task should not force us into willful blindness to the things we can and must do immediately.

What about the cost to Maine taxpayers of ending hunger in our state? Isn’t there consensus that Maine spends more than it can afford now on human service programs?

In many respects, we agree with these rhetorical sentiments. And this newspaper has and will continue to argue for a combination of reduced public spending in some areas, and greater investment in areas that promise long-term prosperity for every Mainer.

But no one can make progress when they don’t know where their next meal will come from. The cost of immediate and effective action to stem hunger in Maine is not so great, especially if the economic and moral cost to our entire society of not doing it is greater.

In the end, this issue is not simply about the hungry among us. There is an Old Testament verse in Isaiah that speaks to the task before us:

“If you offer yourself to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted one, then your light will shine in the darkness, and your night will be like noonday.”

Hunger is a terrible scourge that is allowed to continue because it lives in the shameful shadow regions of our lives. We must force it into the light — where it cannot survive.

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