HOW DO WE END HUNGER?

SANDI DOLBEE: CURING A SYSTEMIC PROBLEM MIGHT REQUIRE CURING OURSELVES

“How do you get to those root causes? How do you engage racism, lack of opportunity, lack of resources, education, people having such a huge disadvantage they’re almost set up for failure?”

Jim Floros, president and CEO of the San Diego Food Bank

For months, we’ve watched the images — from San Diego to Dallas to Pittsburgh — of long lines of cars with men and woman waiting patiently, hopefully, for food they could no longer afford to buy.

We read the news about how, even before the pandemic began, hunger was a gnawing problem. In San Diego, one in seven residents was said to be food insecure. Now, after waves of lockdowns and downturns, that number is more like one in three.

So I set out to use this first column of the year to ask why we who live in the richest nation on the planet cannot resolve to end hunger once and for all. Period. End stop. Drop the mic.

Even our faiths tell us it is the right thing to do.

The Buddha called hunger “the worst kind of illness.” The Prophet Muhammad told followers, “the best of all charities is to feed a hungry person.” And the Bible instructs readers to also feed their enemies.

So I asked the San Diego Food Bank, the San Diego Hunger Coalition and The Salvation Army what it would take to relegate hunger to our history books. But after each conversation, I kept returning to an interview with a North County woman who helped launch a drive-thru, contactless food pantry last summer at the San Diego Sikh Foundation. They started the twice-monthly program at their Poway gurdwara in honor of Sikhism’s founder, Guru Nanak, who championed the equality of every human being.

Gagandeep Kaur told me the experience has opened her eyes. But not just to the great need for everything from food to diapers. It also has opened her eyes to another human condition: judgmentalism.

“I have had many acquaintances ask me why do these people need help,” Kaur says. “Why can’t they earn like the rest of us?” When someone pulled up in a BMW, albeit a 10-year-old BMW, it sparked another series of comments.

“What I’ve learned over the last nine food pantries is this: You cannot judge somebody by what they wear or what they drive. We do not know what’s going on in somebody’s life. The haves so easily judge the have-nots.”

Her dismay is palpable. “Why do we as people have to know whether they really need it? We don’t. And I think that’s the whole key to this.”

Could it be that curing hunger starts by curing ourselves?

Once upon a time

John Millspaugh, policy and engagement manager for the San Diego Hunger Coalition, told me that America almost had hunger eradicated in the 1960s and 1970s, when U.S. presidents made it a priority by expanding the federal food stamps program and persuading the hearts and minds of Americans to join the war on poverty.

“That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable,” President Richard Nixon told Congress in 1969.

Federal assistance “was considered preferable to grassroots food assistance because the latter could be unreliable and have reduced food choices,” Millspaugh explains.

But then the political climate began to shift. Judgmentalism — and its accompanying stereotypes — were back in fashion, fueled by such remarks as then presidential candidate Ronald Reagan’s description of a “welfare queen” driving a Cadillac and people dining on T-bone steaks bought with food stamps. Government aid was no longer seen as a safety net but a crutch for an endless cycle of ne’erdo-wells.

“Some people mistakenly think that people who receive nutrition assistance are dependent on it or that federal nutrition programs breed dependency,” says Millspaugh, who also is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister.

The truth, he adds, is that before the pandemic, 55 percent of food-insecure adults in San Diego were employed, much of them full time. The problem? “A third of the people in San Diego earn less than $14.35 an hour.”

And then there’s this: “Some people think it’s good for people to be hungry because that will cause them to go solve the problems themselves,” Millspaugh says.

His response? Imagine being hungry when you’re interviewing for a job or trying to be productive at work or taking a math test in school. “Hunger needs to be addressed before people can take the sort of action that you are wanting them to take. Hunger is debilitating. It’s one of the most basic human needs there is.”

‘Systemic problem’

I asked Anahid Brakke, the Hunger Coalition’s president and CEO, what it would take to persuade people to let go of their judgments and support expanding the food stamp program, school meal offerings and whatever else was needed to end hunger.

“It would mean people have to accept that we don’t have a level playing field here in the U.S. anymore,” she says. “There are systemic challenges and barriers, and I think that’s where the politics come in, because there is a refusal to admit that there is systemic racism and there are systemic challenges for people of any color to be able to make it.”

She adds: “One of the top sins in America is poverty. We refuse to admit that it’s a systemic problem. And we cling to this idea that it’s a personal failing. So what that does for people is make them very reluctant to admit that there’s anything going on.”

What might it look like when hearts and minds are converted and committed? “Having all of our kids well-fed and nourished. Having people not have to drop out of school because they need to work full time to put food on the table. Having people pursue a job training because they don’t have to work that nighttime job because they maybe can get SNAP (federal food stamps) a little longer while they get the additional skills.”

Jim Floros, president and CEO of the San Diego Food Bank, agrees that hunger is part of a bigger, systemic problem. “Feeding people doesn’t cure hunger,” he says. “It’s a Bandaid.”

Curing hunger means tackling the big questions. “How do you get to those root causes? How do you engage racism, lack of opportunity, lack of resources, education, people having such a huge disadvantage they’re almost set up for failure?”

As for countering judgmentalism, Floros says this: “You’ve got to keep getting the message out and educating people and going into the community.”

Before COVID-19, he’d lead group tours of the food bank, which distributes millions of pounds of food to more than 500 nonprofit organizations throughout the county. “I have people who go on those tours, and you can see that they’re not buying it. But then I think maybe after the tour, they’re on board.”

A new resolution

Megan Dowell is director of homeless services here for The Salvation Army, which has carved a niche in the world as being part Christian church and part social service agency. She spent much of our time together praising the volunteers and faith-inspired groups who continue to show up, even in the midst of COVID-19, to do what they can for people in need.

“I get to see the people who are wanting to make a difference,” Dowell says. “I know about the other side, but I find hope and am inspired by people who still give freely. They are very, very, very generous of their time, their talents and sometimes their financial resources. So I get to see that side, but I do know the other side exists. I guess what I would say is we all need to do a better job.”

Do better. That resolution might be a good first step.

Dolbee is the former religion and ethics editor of The San Diego Union-tribune and a former president of the Religion News Association. Email: Sandidolbeecolumns@gmail.com

GETTY IMAGES