Black Girl in Maine

Musings of a black woman living in the nation's whitest state

Black Girl in Maine - Musings of a black woman living in the nation's whitest state

Category Archives: Current Events

Chicago on my mind…save a few bucks, kill the lil darkies off

Long before I was ever a Black Girl in Maine, I was just another Black Girl in Chicago. Chicago is my hometown. I was born and raised there and I spent almost the first 30 years of my life in Chicago. I was born to a young, newly married couple who didn’t have two nickels to rub together. In fact by the time my parents finally had a few nickels to rub together, I was long gone.

If you are new to this space, you may not know that my roots are solidly working class though thanks to education, I now reside on the middle class floor, at least at the moment. Growing up, most years we were working class but in hard times, we were poor. Government cheese and butter type of poor, if you have no idea what that means, I will just say you lucked out.

Yet as a child of the 70s and 80s, the one thing that I had access to was decent schools. To this day, I have no idea how my parents managed but I ended up in solidly good public schools. Schools where my love of learning was fostered and I had access to experiences that my parents could never in a million years have afforded. For a kid like me as well as my friends who were also children of the working class, those experiences were the ticket out of the working class. Almost every kid who I went to elementary school with has moved beyond the class station of our birth. I suspect that access to safe and quality schools were the key.

However the current Chicago Public School system is in shambles. Today their school board voted to close 50 schools, schools where there are not enough kids enrolled according to the powers to be. On first glance this may seem like a sound business practice except that Chicago has a gang problem, it always has had a gang problem. Moving kids around like boxes on an Excel spreadsheet in a city with epidemic violence isn’t just a bad idea, it is a truly horrendous idea. Kids will have to cross gang lines and chaos will ensue. This is not hyperbole designed for good reading; this is the reality of life in the third largest city in the US. Never mind that these cuts are disproportionately affecting communities of color, the same communities that have already lost access to community mental health centers as well as other services. The same communities where access to a full service grocery store is damn near impossible and free services like the libraries are a joke and have been for the past twenty years.  Nine out of ten kids affected by these school closing is Black…think about that.

Yet our President and First Lady who both call Chicago their hometown just this past weekend made speeches encouraging African American college graduates to do better, dream for more than being a rapper, etc. Too bad we have a new generation coming up whose chances of living to adulthood probably just got slimmer. Creating situations where children will have to face even greater danger just to save a few bucks and run a more efficient school system is not doing all that we can to help youth, it is basically telling them that they don’t matter.

P.S: Excuse any and all typos, it has been a long day here in BGIM land.

 

                                                                                                                                                                 

America’s poverty problem, it ain’t those other people!

For decades America’s view of what poverty looked like was either some brown or black face in a third world country, urban poverty, again relegated to a brown or black face or poor whites in rural Appalachia. In other words for the vast majority of Americans, poor people were those other people. People whose plight could easily be explained due to lack, whether it was lack of education or some other arbitrary trait but times have changed! Poverty in America has a new face and it just might surprise you. Though for those of us in the helping professions, we aren’t surprised at all, we have been seeing this change for quite some time, but now everyone knows.

A new book from the Brooking Institution, Confronting Suburban Poverty states that poverty in America has climbed over 64% in the last decade, more than twice as fast as the poverty rate in urban areas. Gee, I could have told ya that, but no one asked me.

There are those who will say that this increase is due to immigrants and others looking for cheaper housing in the suburbs which I imagine to be true but some of it is simply a result in my opinion to a changing America. We have pretty much accepted that the rich are getting richer, hell we all know about the vaunted one percent. Problem is everyone else is falling down the rabbit hole of economic despair and that includes the folks in the middle, most aren’t treading water, they are trying desperately to keep from being sucked down the hole…next stop, you are officially poor!

For the past couple of years, I have seen a change in the types of folks that I see looking to receive social services. No longer is it the so-called typical poor person, it’s folks who up until a few years ago used to help the poor themselves. Now they need help. Sadly in most parts of the country, once you leave the larger cities, social services in most rural and suburban areas is woefully inadequate to assist the surge of the newly poor. I was just in a meeting today, trying to plan summer feeding programs in the community that I work in. Three years ago, my agency was the only summer meal site for one of Maine’s largest cities, now we will be one of nine sites this summer. In my line of work, that type of growth isn’t necessarily good especially when we are discussing kids in families without the means to adequately feed their own kids.

Poverty in the land of plenty is a dirty little secret, especially in a society that decided that talks of income and money is just gauche. Yet I know personally in my own personal circle, most people that I know who are teetering on that edge are people you never would expect. Some time back a casual acquaintance revealed that she and her husband were receiving food stamps, this is a woman I knew that just a few short years ago was driving a pretty plush Mercedes. I did a double take when she told me; this is a college educated woman, solid background…what happened? Closer to home is a friend of mine who has taken to publicly writing about her journey to poverty from her upper class privileged background.

America may be a place of dreams but for too many those dreams have become nightmares because once you cross the line into poverty, poverty is a lot like the Hotel California. You can check in, but your chances of checking out and staying out are damn hard. The only way we will break this trend is to start talking openly and honestly about poverty, stop thinking that it is something that happens to other people and start demanding real safety nets and discuss and plan ways to change the economic inequalities that have become the norm.

Minding my manners and admiring a fellow mother

This morning the world awoke to the eloquent and deeply personal Op-Ed piece in today’s New York Times by actress and activist Angelina Jolie; where she revealed to the world that she recently underwent a preventative double mastectomy due to being a carrier of a cancer causing mutation. Jolie is not just any actress, she is a high profile actress and she is partnered to a high profile actor, Brad Pitt. Jolie is known as much for her humanitarian work as she is for the roles that she plays and she is a mother.

The media and world were immediately on fire discussing this revelation, after all Jolie isn’t exactly Jane next door, so this was news. The problem is that for many of us in discussing this news, we forgot that at the center of the news was a very real human being with thoughts and feelings.

I am embarrassed to admit that I forgot for a moment that attached to this news was a fellow mother and woman striving to make the best choices or herself and her family. Instead in a moment of thoughtlessness, I launched into a twitter rant about how not all women have the ability to make such preventative choices. While that is true and even Jolie has acknowledged the inequalities that exist, today was not the time and place as a long time BGIM reader and supporter told me and she is right.

For some reason living in a ramped up news cycle fueled by 24/7 access to the media, we often feel the need to speak when the better response is silence.  When it comes to public figures we and I am guilty of this myself, feel the need to say something because somewhere along the way it became easy to not afford public figures the same level of respect and treatment that we would give to our friends and loved ones and it is wrong.

Being mindful and respectful should not be limited to only people in our personal circles; it should be something that is extended to all people.  Social inequalities exist and unless one is under a rock in a cave, we all know that. However on this day, I will sit and just admire a woman and mother who in light of her very public life and status made a brave choice and feel honored that she chose to share that with the world.

When Mom is Dad…some thoughts on Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day will be here in a few short days and while it is a day of great emotion for me due to the loss of my own beloved Mother, this year I am flipping the script. For 31 years I had the best Mom in the world (at least in my world) and losing her crushed me. I thought she would be here forever and most certainly didn’t expect to lose her so early in life but that is the nature of life. We just don’t know when we will leave.

Yet in the nine years since my Mom died there has been someone playing the role of mother in my life. While my dad would probably have my head for saying this (let us be happy that Papa of BGIM is not online) the truth is there have been times in the past nine years when I needed a mom. Even adults with their own kids occasionally need to be mothered.

I probably should point out that before Mama of BGIM took ill and died; my Pops and I had a decent relationship. It wasn’t bad but there were times when it could have been better. As far as anything related to womanhood, my Dad was a hands-off dude. Except for the time when he came home bearing coffee cake to celebrate my first period at age 11.  A truly tender moment, though I suspect at the time I was mortified that my mother felt the need to share these details with my father.

Papa of BGIM a few years ago.

Papa of BGIM a few years ago.

In the years since my mother’s passing there have been times when I needed a woman’s advice…I needed my mom.  One of those times was when I was pregnant with the seven year old. My dad reached out to his sisters and loaded himself up with information to share, the sort of annoying stuff that one’s mother does but at the time and even now I appreciate my father going that extra mile to fill my mother’s shoes. Then there was my breast cancer scare, which is definitely a strange thing to discuss with one’s dad and even my dad has acknowledged in those moments, it is a shame that my Mom is not here.  There have been many more moments when it was clear that my father was taking off his dad hat and attempting to wear my mother’s hat, no matter how awkward it felt for both of us. For that I thank you Dad on this Mother’s Day weekend for recognizing that there were times when I needed my mother and though you didn’t know what the hell you were doing, you were willing to try.

In thinking about my own situation it made me think of all those who play the roles of mother in someone’s life but aren’t officially recognized as mothers. Mothers are the ones traditionally seen as the caregivers to children but the reality is anyone in our village is capable of mothering because loving and nurturing is not just relegated to mothers. So while this Sunday may involve being pampered as mothers or pampering our own mother’s, let us not forget all that mother to those in need of mothering.

 

 

Musings on words and Charles Ramsey

Words and money are the currency on which our lives depend on. Loving and caring words, lift our spirits, keep us going and can even fill our hearts with joy. Money? You simply need it need it to live. There is no way around it.

Until a few days ago, it never dawned on me that as a wordsmith; even I could create words that while honest, simply missed the mark. Of course it’s easier to see when others fall short in their words but sometimes it takes a bit more to look at ourselves and acknowledge our own shortcomings especially when we assume we know.

I found myself in a rather uncomfortable place professionally a few days ago when I realized the words that I had been using while honest, simply fell short. Thankfully, I was able to make a course correction and there is light at the end of this challenging professional tunnel.

This unfortunate incident has made me ponder the greater issue of honesty and intentions in our words. It seems everywhere I turn, whether it is online or offline, everyone is being honest and speaking their truth and while that always feels good. There are times when honest words fall short. Either they are used as weapons to destroy and hurt others or an excuse to highlight our own personal failings and lack of common sense.

Then just when I was mulling this all over today, I heard about Charles Ramsey, the Black man in Cleveland, OH who helped rescue three missing women who had long been assumed dead. Charles Ramsey is like many relatives of mine, a plain talking, working-class Black man in the Midwest. For those not used to such people, Ramsey is a delightful and colorful man who is hamming it up. Really? In my extended family, we must all be hams then!  

No one disputes that Ramsey is a hero but what I find fascinating is how in using his words to tell a story which isn’t funny in my two cent opinion, it created a situation of humor for some.  His words are a reflection of his reality and to some degree his place on America’s invisible but not really class ladder.  I suspect the line between those of us laughing with him and those laughing at him is a thin line indeed. At the moment Ramsey is the toast of the internet and cable news networks with viral memes popping up, yet there is a part of me that wonders how many are uncomfortable with his honesty?

 In sharing his version of the story with us, he used his words to speak his truth, yet some honest and truthful words cannot ever be heard because we would rather be amused at times. Words…they are a tricky and messy business indeed.   

When the villain looks just like us…or isn’t the brown guy

What a wild ride this week has been and for once I am not just talking about my personal life. For Americans this week was nothing short of a long and crazy trip. One where many of us found ourselves wondering…what next?

This week’s bombing at the Boston Marathon seemed to bring back old feelings and fears from the September 11, 2001 attacks that effectively changed this nation. Yet just like with the 9/11 attacks where we saw the best of humankind in the days and hours after the attacks so we saw the same phenomena in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon attacks. People helping one another, thanks to social media there were even more ways to help one another as sites were quickly set up to assist those affected by this tragedy. Even on Twitter, the hashtag #helpers started to trend so that people could quickly identify assistance. It was a beautiful thing to witness.

Unfortunately just like in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks we also saw another side of humankind, one where judgment and assumptions were quickly made. One where the prevailing theory was that whoever was behind this attack had to be someone unlike us, whoever the villain or villains were they were clearly different. Of course such thinking is foolish and dangerous but sometimes people when caught up in the wave of emotions tend to lay down rational reasoning and common sense.

Of course as the week progressed and the suspects were identified, there was a collective gasp as the villains behind this heinous act were revealed to be two brothers, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Two young men who hailed from Chechnya also known as The Chechen Republic, a republic of Russia located in the southeastern part of Europe in the North Caucasus Mountains. In other words our villains were not the brown faces we were expecting, on the surface they looked white. Collective jaw dropping commenced as some pundits on cable television attempted to explain that these two were not white, they were ethnic. Oh really. Methinks that on the census records they are listed as two white guys but hey…whatever floats your boat.

As I watched the events of Friday unfold since my plans for a day trip to Boston were canceled thanks to these two, I found myself wondering about the role whiteness played in their crime and even our reactions to their crimes.

Once the photos were made public revealing these two, I had the rather unpopular thought that in many ways their whiteness allowed them to get away with this. The still shots that have been released show two clearly suspicious looking characters in the midst of the Marathon happenings. They don’t blend in and they actually look nervous. I asked a friend of mine who is a law enforcement officer in New England who also happens to be a Black woman and she agreed with me that as a cop, she thought they looked suspicious and had she been present she would have  had her eyes on them.

Yet their white skin privilege gave them the cover they needed to pull off this depraved act because I am sure the Brothers Evil knew on some level that no one would expect two white guys to commit such an act. They were almost right though they were also stupid because we live in a world where most of our actions will come back to us and we will be discovered.

I am sure though this is not comforting news to the people of color in the minutes and hours after this tragedy who were harassed for no other reason than as brown skinned people, they fit the profile of what we believe a terrorist is.

Salah Barhoum is a teenager and running enthusiast who had his image splashed on the cover of the New York Post and was called out as a possible terrorist by both the paper and the internet sleuths of the Reddit community. This kid’s crime is being of Moroccan descent, having brown skin and being into running. Sure his name has been cleared but I stand with Salah’s parents, this shit isn’t cool at all.

Next up we have Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi, a 22 year old national from Saudi Arabia who was also watching the marathon and who made the tragic error of running like all the white folks present when the bombs started exploding…gee, self-preservation, can’t have that when you are brown. Alharbi was immediately deemed suspicious and while in the hospital being treated had his apartment searched for hours and reported to the world. Never mind the young mother and physician of Palestinian descent who was physically assaulted in Malden, MA after  the bombing while walking down the street pushing her baby in a stroller. Her crime? She dared to be faithful to her faith and wore hijab and for that she earned the wrath of some unhinged man. I could go on, but the bottom line is there have been too many news reports of people harmed for their status as being different.

So the authorities wasted valuable time chasing brown boogeymen because in our minds this had to be the work of brown guys from the Middle East. People have been harassed and made to feel less than but we have the villains, Or should I say the one villain since the eldest Brother Evil has gone on to his great punishment wherever that may be.

Last night as this story wound down and the celebrations started, I couldn’t help but feel saddened by not only these two brothers but everyone. Many of us would never intentionally harm anyone much less orchestrate the type of pain that the Tsarnaev brothers put upon the American people. Yet it is clear to me that in many ways when we refuse to see all people as people and not roles or stereotypes that we unwittingly create situations where evil can possibly thrive. I realize this view may be highly unpopular but as always I speak my mind in this space.

Blessings upon all affected by the tragedies of this past week not only in the United States but all over this ball we call Earth.

 

Musings on an accidental racist

Several years ago when I was pregnant with the now seven year old, I was in a deep funk as I was still reeling from the recent death of my mother and desperate to start making connections here in Maine. So I joined a local mothering group in an attempt to make those connections and to be honest, those efforts at connections were damn messy. I was the only woman of color and all too often, my Blackness seemed to serve as a block for meaningful connection with the vast majority of women. Oh they were nice enough but our conversations never went beyond the surface and all too often it was clear that we were all mildly uncomfortable.

Yet there was one mama in the group, who went out of her way to connect in a meaningful way with me, but as she told me on more than one occasion, I was one of the few Black people she knew. Let me just say, no one wants to be “the Black friend.” In the early days of our friendship, I would come home emotionally depleted and wonder…why the hell was I attempting to be friends with this woman?

Despite the stops and starts, a real friendship developed but not without some messiness. Over the years, we have had conversations about how our upbringings and positions on the class ladder sometimes do color the way we communicate. I am a middle class striver, a child of the working class whose only entry higher up on the class ladder is via education. I fully own the fact that in many ways  I am still working class and at times rough around the edges. I clean up just well enough to do my job and charm others when needed. My friend is a self-professed elite liberal, a child of the upper middle class who until recently never left her class station and as a result, we sometimes speak vastly different languages. Even now after seven years, we still have moments when our communication is a miss; thankfully, we have enough history with each other that we can bridge those gaps. It would have been very easy for me to dismiss my friend as a clueless white woman and end the relationship but even in the moments when I was left scratching my head, I always knew that her intentions were never to do harm. So I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

I share this story because when the hubbub broke about country western singer Brad Paisley and rapper LL Cool J’s latest song, I immediately thought of my friend and I. Paisley and Cool J’s new song is called ‘Accidental Racist’ and let me just say…damn, it’s a hot mess. With lyrics such as

I’m just a white man comin’ to you from the south land tryin’ to understand what it’s like not to be.
I’m proud of where I’m from but not everything we’ve done. It ain’t like you and me can rewrite history.
Our generation didn’t start this nation. We’re still pickin’ up the pieces, walkin’ on eggshells, fightin’ over yesterday.
Caught between southern pride and southern blame.

I think it’s safe to say that this song was begging to piss someone off and, well, we the people are happy to deliver.  Dude, what the hell were you thinking? Never mind the fact that you have the audacity to try to convince us, the listeners that wearing a t-shirt with a Confederate flag is just showing your pride. Look, I don’t know too many Black Americans that will ever see an image of a Confederate flag and not mentally see our ancestors hanging from a tree.  I hear you on the fact that you want to be prideful man but the approach was just all wrong. Never mind that LL of  ‘Mama Said Knock You Out’ fame clearly must have gotten knocked on his head considering his lines:

Dear Mr. White Man, I wish you understood
What the world is really like when you’re living in the hood
Just because my pants are saggin’ doesn’t mean I’m up to no good
You should try to get to know me, I really wish you would
Now my chains are gold, but I’m still misunderstood
I wasn’t there when Sherman’s March turned the south into firewood
I want you to get paid, but be a slave I never could
Feel like a new-fangled Django dogging invisible white hoods
So when I see that white cowboy hat, I’m thinking it’s not all good
I guess we’re both guilty of judging the cover, not the book
I’d love to buy you a beer, conversate and clear the air
But I see that red flag and I think you wish I wasn’t here

You can safely say that I think this song is shit, but this is where I am about to go off the script of righteous indignation.

I did a little peeking around into Paisley’s background (sorry to say that I am not a fan of Country music aside from a little Johnny Cash) and what I found from my perspective is a fellow Gen-X’er who seems like he wants to make a change. It sounds like Paisley has dipped his toe into going outside the country box in the past. Not that he gets any brownie points but the reality is we are a divided nation. Many of us on the liberal coasts and the few liberal pockets of flyover nation in the US pretty much do look upon the south as a bastion of backwoods bigotry. The south in many ways begs our derision but is it fair? Is it just? More importantly how can we move on?

In many ways it’s easier to get pissed off about this song and write these two off as too incredibly insensitive men, one unwilling to examine his own white privilege and the other unwilling to well…I don’t know, just not be stuck on stupid. But I think as clueless and offensive as this song is, it is actually a starting point to a dialogue that is long overdue. We can’t erase the history. It is what it is. But what can we do to move towards becoming a more cohesive nation, one that does not need to cling to misplaced notions of Southern Pride and instead works towards being a nation.

Anytime issues of race and difference are brought up, you have entered the danger zone but how do we move beyond that? How do we move beyond knee jerk defensiveness and clinging to our deeply held beliefs and create real change rather than sticking to anger and judgment that never changes anything?

None of us know Brad Paisley personally and while he makes for a convenient target and symbol of utter cluelessness, I can’t help but wondering if he is a bit like my friend…well-meaning, clumsy in his efforts but maybe it’s worth trying to find out what his intentions are and seeing if we can move beyond the initial outrage and seeing if his actions can launch a true dialogue.

Four brave girls creating change

It surprises me when others are surprised that we live in world where bigotry and intolerance are still very much in style. While laws can and are being changed to make some attitudes no longer the law of the land, the sad fact is that changing hearts and minds is far harder. Yet the younger generations are coming of age in a world where technological savvy is making it easier to break down the walls of intolerance and they can find the support outside of their communities to make it happen.

That is the case in a small town in Georgia, where a group of lifelong friends and high school seniors are working to change their school’s tradition of a white’s only prom. Yes, you read that correctly. In 2013 at the Wilcox County High School, they hold a whites only prom and they aren’t even breaking any laws since the proms are held off site and are privately financed. Since the school itself is integrated, they apparently hold two proms, hell they even hold two homecoming dances. Though in a nod to modernity this past year they apparently had one homecoming court but the dances were separate because heaven help us if the whites and the blacks dance together!

The girls who are spearheading this change are simply kids who have known each other since the 4th grade but since they are a mixed race group, sorry…you cannot mark this big moment in your lives together.

Well, this story is gaining traction and the girls are trying to raise cash to put on a dance where they can all be together. Though from news reports, it seems even amongst their peers, not everyone is keen on change. One of the young ladies was quoted as saying
“We need to stick with the tradition,” Quanesha said mockingly. “This is a traditional thing we don’t need to change and stuff like that, but why? No one can answer my question.”

Quanesha, sometimes people are clueless and you do have to create your own change. So from a Black Girl in Maine who could be your Mama, I am going to help you and your girls out by making sure your story is heard near and far. I want y’all to have the best damn prom ever and it is my hope that one day you can tell your kiddos about how silly things used to be.

All it takes is a few brave and willing souls to affect change. To the grown-ups in charge, I say poo on you; change is the only constant in life other than taxes and death.  The time has come to let go of irrational fears and end this tradition of a white’s only prom, it is bigoted and hateful.

Who’s the real scammer?

From a brief glance it would be easy to assume that the economic catastrophe of 2008 is nothing but a distant memory, a bad dream that we have all recovered from. After all, the stock market is up, business profits are up, CEO’s are taking home ginormous bonuses and it seems every man, woman and child in America is walking around the either the latest iPhone or a tablet computer. Clearly we are all basking in the joys of economic stability or maybe it’s all an illusion?

I work in social services, granted as the executive director I do a lot less working with people than I used to. But I still analyze the data and talk to professional colleagues and the one thing we all agree on is that things aren’t getting better. We are all continuing to see staggering numbers of people in need of essentials such as food, shelter and childcare. (sometimes even school supplies, coats and shoes too) The spigot was turned on in 2008 and frankly the basin is overflowing with people in need. At my agency, I am facing record growth which if I were the CEO of a profit making venture would be awesome but in my line of work, record growth means I spend a lot of time making hard decisions since record growth doesn’t mean record revenue to meet the needs of that record growth but that is an entirely different post.

What I am seeing more and more of is stories like this, national publications are actually starting to take notice of those folks that I have been talking about since 2009-the formerly middle class. Folks who might look a lot like you; they used to own the house, two cars, and a few fancy gadgets and even had a nest egg. Many of those folks are now living in ways they never dreamed of, mired in the hardscrabble new world of poverty. They often still cling to their middle class fantasies and dreams that they will turn their ships around but make no mistake, once you have entered a world of living in the pay by the week hotels and frequenting food pantries, your odds of taking the elevator back to the middle class are only slightly better than a winning Powerball ticket. Especially in this brave new world where permanent well-paying employment opportunities elude even the college educated. This brave new world is a place where we are all the captains of our fate, using fancy euphemisms to hide the fact that we lack the stability that was the norm only a generation ago. Consulting, freelancing, self-employed are all valid options but too many of us aren’t doing these things because we want to, we are doing them because they are our only opportunities for employment. After all, some money beats no money.

Funny thing is that despite this economic tsunami and its victims, we Americans are a proud lot; refusing to accept that the jobs are gone and that going out and getting a job is a lot easier said than done. Instead we turn on one another and destroy our own, lashing out at the man down the street who decides to apply for permanent disability status which will ensure him a permanent though meager paycheck, access to healthcare via the government funded Medicaid program and access to subsidized housing rather than continue to suffer the indignities of a job search that is futile.

We eat our own for lunch and feel disgust for the moochers and the scammers, eager to cut people off from the dribs and drabs of the economic safety net rather than turning our anger on the corporate overlords who truly own our asses and have made us their wage slaves. But hey who’s the moocher?

 

Ending Childhood Hunger or not…thoughts from the frontlines

Like many people, I have a complicated relationship with food. Our relationship for the past decade has been especially tenuous as I have worked hard to unlearn a lifetime of bad eating habits and adjust to the metabolism that I really have and not the one I wish I had. As a result, I buy very little of my food at the grocery store instead opting to buy as much as possible at the local farmers market and direct from local farmers. As much as I would prefer to nosh on unlimited bags of Ruffles Sour Cream and Cheddar Chips and follow it up with swigs of ice cold RC, I know that such eating habits simply don’t work for me. However I am still a work in progress when it comes to food. Of course having an extremely picky eater keeps me humble when it comes to food since her list of what she won’t eat is three times longer than what she will eat. Whenever there is a food that she likes to eat, and will really eat it, I pretty much go with the flow.  I just keep reminding myself that my 21yo vegetarian son used to be the king of ham and chicken wings before he adjusted his views on food several years ago.

In addition to having my own issues with food, I am one of those rare people who literally sees food insecurity daily in my professional life. Currently at the agency I run, 95% of the kids registered in our programs come from food insecure households and on any given day upwards of 20% of the kids that drop into our programs, will not be going home to eat dinner because there is no dinner available to eat.

I started my social services career over 15 years ago in a program that offered meals to women in need and as hard as it was to see adults without food, I struggle deeply seeing so many kids going without. Kids in our center talk as casually about eating at the local soup kitchen with their families as middle class kids speak about the newest apps on their iPads.

Maybe it’s because of my professional background that my interest was piqued when I saw the hashtag #endchildHunger and #ConAgra a few days ago on Twitter. From what I gather there was a conference and attendees were asked to spread awareness about the issue of child hunger and apparently ConAgra would be donating resources to end child hunger. In theory this sounds great and many well-meaning folks were doing their part to spread the word…after all no one wants to think of hungry kids.

The problem is that ConAgra is not exactly going to end childhood hunger and if in this current US economy the idea of childhood hunger is not something you have heard about it, it’s because your head has been in the sand. Food stamp use has been up and while the economy is slowly turning around, for the millions of folks that were already close to the bottom of the economic ladder this supposed growth is about as real as unicorns.

ConAgra partners with Feeding America which is the largest hunger relief charity in the US and they do awesome work. They have a lot of great programs; some that I have worked with directly through my work and they make a huge difference in the lives of a lot of kids. They are also a supplier to a fair number of food banks in the US.

So what is the problem you may ask? ConAgra is helping out Feeding America and Feeding America is helping feed folks including kids, so how are they not ending child hunger? See, this is where it gets tricky. In most communities no matter how small they are in the US, there is a local food pantry. A place where people can get a bag or two of food if they have nothing to eat. In theory, the food pantry in your community should be able to get food from the food bank in your area but in many cases that is not the case. Ever notice how food pantries often have food drives? See, the reason they are asking people to donate food is because they can’t afford to buy the food from the food bank. Here in Maine, the food bank is Good Shepherd and if you run a food pantry, if you want to get food from that food bank that is getting support indirectly through ConAgra you have to pay. No money means no food for the hungry people in your town including those hungry kids that Con Agra is using social media to say they will be supporting.

Now I knew from my 1st job back in Chicago a lifetime ago that feeding programs that used the food banks had to pay. Actually part of my job at that agency was overseeing our meal program so I knew there was a cost. However at that time I worked at an agency in Chicago, which is only the 3rd largest city in the US at an agency that had a million dollar plus budget. So for us buying the food was a no brainer and affordable.

I didn’t learn until almost 5 years ago when I took over as the head of a small agency in a rural state that the economics of using the food bank means being poor and hungry in rural America sucks balls. In the county I work in, many agencies use a food rescue service (yep, its exactly what it sounds like) rather than the state’s lone food bank because they cannot afford to pay the food bank for food to give to people who cannot afford to buy groceries at the grocery store. In many small towns and villages in the US, the local food pantry is a volunteer run affair often operating in donated space with donated food and a shit load of good will.

When I learned a few years ago just how skewed social services are in rural states, it was a wake-up call for me. It meant unlearning much of what I understood about poverty and reframing it in a rural framework. In this case, if ConAgra were making direct donations and contributions to small pantry operators across the nation rather than the food bank network that exists through Feeding America, I would say hell yeah they are ending child hunger. The truth is they are nothing more than a band aid solution to ending child hunger on a wide scale in a social services system that favors larger agencies over smaller ones despite the fact that in many communities it’s the small agencies working tirelessly to meet needs in locations that sometimes are untouched by the larger agencies.

Am I saying ConAgra is evil? Not really, though I prefer to buy my food directly from folks who if there are problems with my food, I know where they live. I will say though that campaigns such End Childhood Hunger are not being as honest as they can be and that is what bothers me. Because the sad reality is even in the helping word much like the corporate world, the large folks are the winners. How many resources were spent on a campaign to increase awareness when those same resources could have actually fed folks?

 

PS: If you want to make a difference, donate directly to the food pantries in your community. Call them and ask them what they need, and if you have the means donate often. Real change only requires real people making a difference.