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August 3, 2013
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Here in the richest country on earth, 50 million of us — one in six
Americans — go hungry. More than a third of them are children. Debates
on how to address hunger – in both Congress and the media — are filled
with tired clichés about freeloaders undeserving of government help,
living large at the expense of honest, hardworking taxpayers. But the
documentary
A Place at the Tablepaints a truer picture of America’s poor.
On
an encore broadcast, Kristi Jacobson, one of the film’s directors and
producers, and Mariana Chilton, director of the Center for Hunger-Free
Communities, join Bill to break these stereotypes apart and share how
hunger hits hard at people from every walk of life.
“The cost of
food insecurity, obesity and malnutrition is way larger than it is to
feed kids nutritious food,” Jacobson tells Bill.
“There’s no
opportunity for people who are low-income to really engage in our
democracy,” says Chilton. “I think they’re actively shut out.”
Also
on the show, Bill shares a short film that first aired on Bill Moyers
Journal in 2008, telling the story of an urban garden and farmers market
in the East New York neighborhood of New York City called
East New York Farms! To
this day, the project provides healthy produce to community residents
who must otherwise travel miles to the nearest supermarket, and
addresses food justice by promoting local sustainable agriculture and
community-led economic development.
The following is a transcript of the interview, which originally appeared on BillMoyers.com:
BILL MOYERS: This week on Moyers & Company… “A Place at the Table”
KRISTI
JACOBSON: When we were making this film we traveled all over the
country and again and again met people who were working and trying to
make ends meet but were not able to put food on the table.
MARIANA
CHILTON: There's no opportunity for people who are low income to really
engage in our democracy. And I think that they're actively shut out as
well.
BILL MOYERS: Welcome. The
summer blitz of blockbuster movies has arrived. Super heroes or lesser
mortals with excellent motor skills are here to save the Earth from:
super villains, asteroids, aliens or other disasters, natural in nature
but probably induced by global warming.
Yes, it’s another
summer of excess and escapism with the thrills and chills of Hollywood
scaring us down to our popcorn, yet always with a happy ending.
Meanwhile, back here in the real world, where we actually live, the best
film of the summer isn’t an epic tale of horror or adventure but an
eye-opening, heart-moving and mind-expanding reminder that millions of
people in this richest country in the world, working men and women and
their children, don't have enough to eat. The film’s called “A Place at
the Table” and it's one of the best documentaries I've seen in years.
Almost
fifty million Americans -- one in six -- receive food stamps. And yet
recently, the House of Representatives wrestled over a farm bill because
members of congress continued to fight over how many billions to slash
from the food stamp program. In the end, they got the farm bill through
by stripping food stamps out of it completely, to be voted on some other
day. But once again we heard all the clichés about freeloaders who are
undeserving of government help, playing the system and living large at
the expense of taxpayers. This movie, “A Place At The Table” breaks
those stereotypes apart and shows us that hunger hits hard at people who
work hard to make a living. Don’t miss this one, its real life.
With
me is Kristi Jacobson, one of the film’s directors and producers.
You’ve seen her work on public television, HBO, ABC, Lifetime, and other
TV networks. Mariana Chilton is here too. She teaches public health at
Drexel University and is director of the Center for Hunger-Free
Communities. She’s also founder of Witnesses to Hunger, a group featured
prominently in “A Place at the Table.”
In this excerpt from the
film, we meet a rancher and a police officer in Colorado, each
struggling to make ends meet. Believe it or not, they have to rely on
the charitable food programs sponsored by the church of a local
minister, Pastor Bob Wilson.
ADAM APPELHANZ in A Place at the
Table: About a month ago we had three officers, including myself, but
however, due to budget constraints we’re now down to just me. It was
always kind of a prideful thing that I never needed anybody’s help.
Unfortunately, I haven’t received a pay raise in four years and what I
used to spend on a month in groceries now gets me about two weeks.
I
have utilized Pastor Bob’s food bank. The way it makes me feel, it’s,
it’s very humiliating. Well I correct that; it’s not humiliating, it’s
very grounding. The stereotype of food banks is always for the
unemployed or the disabled, people that can’t go out and get a job.
That’s not always the case. Sometimes in life you just get to points
where you need a little extra help.
JOEL in A Place at the Table:
Ranching is a good part of life. It’s a lot of work but it’s an honest,
actually, it’s an honest trade. But the way the economy and everything
has gone south, I have had to go find another job out of the house. So I
work on the ranch from 7:00 in the morning till 3:00 in the afternoon
and then at 3:00 in the afternoon till 11:00 at night I go down and
clean the school.
It’s a good job. It’s close to home. There’s a
lot that you worry about. Your kids is the main one and that’s part of
the reason I did take a second job, is so I can help buy groceries and
put food on the table for my kids.
Come on dogs…
BILL MOYERS: Welcome to you both.
MARIANA CHILTON: Thank you for having us.
KRISTI JACOBSON: Thank you.
BILL
MOYERS: So, a cop who doesn't make enough money to meet all of his food
needs and a cowboy who has to take two jobs to help feed his children,
are they truly representative or was this just a filmmaker's good luck?
KRISTI
JACOBSON: Sadly they're not the exception, in fact they're very
representative. When we were making this film we traveled all over the
country and again and again met people who were working and trying to
make ends meet but were not able to put food on the table. So I think
what the sort of filmmaker's luck or hard work paid off in that these
are people who might not be willing to share their story.
But we
filmed in Collbran because it was a town where the pastor, Bob, was
working really hard to remove that stigma that people feel around,
around admitting and then getting help. And so that helped us because we
were welcomed into the community.
And you know, I remember the
first time I met the police chief and I met him first on the phone and
then in person and I thought he's probably not going to share this story
on-camera, but it's still important to understand. And then he said,
"Absolutely." And that was really, really I think a victory for the film
in that we were able to show this very important group that are
experiencing hunger and food insecurity but that are not, it's very
hidden.
BILL MOYERS: What do you take from their stories? Because you worked with a totally different population.
MARIANA
CHILTON: I'm not so sure they're that different, that's the thing. I
think that when you were saying before about stereotypes I think that in
the press and our legislators have a certain stereotype about who's
poor and who's not and this concept of the deserving poor. But the women
that I work with through Witnesses to Hunger are very hardworking.
They're
excellent mothers, excellent parents. They want the best for their
kids. They're often working two or three jobs. Sometimes they'll have to
work under the table in order to make ends meet, trying to find side
jobs. They're hustling really hard.
And I see the police chief, I
see the cowboy who's also taking on that second job. What I see is
common among then is a loss of dignity in the work. You can actually
work full time and your family is still hungry? There's a very big
problem in this country that we are not valuing hard work like we used
to.
BILL MOYERS: There's a young woman in the film who says quote,
"Hunger could be right next door and you would never know because
people are too afraid to talk about it." Why are people afraid to talk
about it, Dr. Chilton?
MARIANA CHILTON: Well, I think there's an
enormous amount of shame that goes, especially when… I work with moms of
little children, young children. And there's an enormous amount of
shame that they experience that they, may run out of money before they
can get more food. And it really tests their sense of motherhood, their
sense of citizenship, of belonging. And it's very isolating. And I think
that when the moms that I speak with, they talk about when they were
children they, too, were hungry and they were always told, "Don't talk
about it. Don't let anybody know how hard it is. Always put on a good
face. Always look good," you know, it’s about being able to be in the
world and be treated with a sense of dignity and respect. So they would
often hide their own experiences of hunger or hide the experience that
they can't feed their own children.
BILL MOYERS: Do we sometimes pass hunger down as a legacy to the next generation?
MARIANA
CHILTON: Oh yes, we do. It gets transferred from generation to
generation. Now, it also happens that during an economic downturn when
there are not enough good paying jobs of course hunger will skyrocket.
But I think that when people don't realize that hunger is very damaging
to children, to, especially to young children. Food insecurity affects
the cognitive, social and emotional growth of very young children.
That
means that by the time they arrive to kindergarten they're not ready
for school. That means that when they're in school if they're hungry
they won't be able to concentrate on what they're learning and they
won't do as well on their math and their reading tests. That means they
won't be as successful, won't get a good paying job so that when they
have children they, too, will be poor. So poverty is an experience
that's really seared into the bodies and brains of children.
BILL MOYERS: What happens to someone who gets too little nutrition early in life?
MARIANA
CHILTON: Oh, it's extremely important. If you think about what's
happening in the first three years of life the brain is growing so fast.
They're the most important years of human development. So every moment
those are the building blocks of good cognitive, social and emotional
development. Neurons are growing and pruning and very active. 700
neurons are growing a second for an infant. It’s an important window of
human development.
So any type of nutritional depravation during
this time has a severe impact on the brain even if it's just episodic,
even if it happens once or twice a month those are moments of lost
opportunity to be able to interact with their family and their
environment, to pay attention and to learn something new which helps to
grow more neurons.
So again it affects the cognitive, social and
emotional development. It creates a certain kind of a stress on the
child that's very toxic. And we know that children who experience that
kind of toxic stress can't learn as well, can't learn as fast. And you
can turn that around with food assistance programs, with a program
called WIC, Women, Infants and Children or the food stamp program. The
best investment of our dollars in this country is investing in very
young children and their families because again those are the most
important times when a child’s brain is growing. So for every one dollar
that you spend on a child you make seven dollars back when they become
an adolescent. It's a beautiful investment.
BILL MOYERS: Kristi has a remarkable profile, portrait in the film of a young girl named, I think her name's Rosie…
ROSIE
in A Place at the Table: Okay, mine is about this um goddess or Queen.
Her husband died and he gave half of his kingdom to the Romans and…
LESLIE NICHOLS A Place at the Table: Hunger definitely impacts my
classroom. I have had students come to me upset and it’s definitely a
huge issue in our small community. […]One student in particular, Rosie, I
just really felt she wasn’t really applying herself in the classroom
and I couldn’t figure out where that attitude was coming from. […] And
what I realized when I brought her in one day was the main issue was
that she was hungry.
ROSIE in A Place at the Table: I struggle a
lot and most of the time it’s because my stomach is really hurting. My
teacher tells me to get focused and she told me to write focus on my
little sticker and every time I look at it and I’m like oh I’m supposed
to be focusing. I start yawning and then I zone out and I’m just looking
at the teacher and I look at her and all I think about is food. So I
have these little visions in my eyes. Sometimes when I look at her I
vision her as a banana so she goes like a banana and everybody in the
class is like apples or oranges and then I’m like, oh, great.
BILL MOYERS: Tell me about Rosie.
KRISTI
JACOBSON: Rosie is an incredible young girl. And I think that what
struck me so much about Rosie is that her story sort of embodied,
everything about this issue which is that while she's experiencing this
hunger and food insecurity it's affecting her self-esteem, it's
affecting her ability to learn which is very upsetting. But at the same
time she has this incredible spirit which gives you this, you know some
feeling of hope and inspiration. So she's just an incredible young girl.
BILL MOYERS: And that story is replicated in your experience?
MARIANA
CHILTON: Oh, very much so, very common. I think that-- you know, I
think-- again I work with families that have very young children. And
I've been watching the development of the children over time. And some
are really doing just so beautifully, very dear, full of light and so
much potential. And I think what people forget is that, you think you
can somehow see hunger, you can't look at Rosie and see oh, she's
hungry. So where do you see it? You see it in school performance, their
ability to get along with others, their ability to pay attention for
children of school age.
KRISTI JACOBSON: Attendance.
MARIANA
CHILTON: And attendance. But also for really young children where do
you see it? You see it in the increased hospitalizations, showing up
more to the emergency room when they don't-- with preventable diseases,
or preventable exacerbation of asthma.
This, you know, if we could
think about poverty during childhood as a type of a disease, if we
could pay as much attention to poverty for children as we pay attention
to infectious disease we might be able to do something in this country.
BILL
MOYERS: I was struck again about how important a teacher like Leslie
Nichols is to a child, like Rosie just as you are to the people you work
with. They can make a difference, can't they?
MARIANA CHILTON:
Oh, they can. I think oftentimes they're first responders because
they're the ones who are seeing how well the children are doing. They're
with those kids moment to moment and seeing whether they're taking in
the information or not.
KRISTI JACOBSON: And they're making such--
sorry, they're making such-- a difference. And in-- in the case of
Leslie Nichols, you know, she had this added-- you know, her own
personal experience with hunger enabled her to recognize that it was
hunger that was causing the problems in Rosie.
While other
teachers might think you've got a behavioral problem or you're just--
you know, you're a difficult one. So I think it's important to also
empower teachers who are in a position to really help these young kids
overcome some of these obstacles by recognizing that hunger is something
we need to address.
BILL MOYERS: The film makes dramatically clear the relationship between malnutrition and obesity.
MISS.
CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROJECT NURSE in A Place at the Table: Step up on
there. Step up on the table right there and I’ll be with you in just a
second. What grade you in?
TREMONICA in A Place at the Table: Second.
MISS. CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROJECT NURSE in A Place at the Table: Second? You’re in the second grade? How old are you?
TREMONICA in A Place at the Table: Fixing to be eight.
MISS.
CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROJECT NURSE in A Place at the Table: Fixing to be
eight… Alright. And you’ve got asthma? Okay. Do you ever have problems
with shortness of breath when you’re outside playing or anything?
TREMONICA in A Place at the Table: I have to stop playing to take a deep breath.
MISS. CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROJECT NURSE in A Place at the Table: Okay. What did you eat for breakfast this morning?
TREMONICA in A Place at the Table: I didn’t eat.
MISS.
CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROJECT NURSE in A Place at the Table: You didn’t eat
breakfast this morning? Okay. When you get home in the afternoon do you
eat a snack? What do you eat?
TREMONICA in A Place at the Table: Chips.
MISS. CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROJECT NURSE in A Place at the Table: Chips? What else, baby? What do you drink?
TREMONICA in A Place at the Table: Pop.
MISS.
CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROJECT NURSE in A Place at the Table: Pops. Okay. Do
you have any other snacks besides chips you could eat?
TREMONICA in A Place at the Table: Cookies.
MISS. CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROJECT NURSE in A Place at the Table: Kisses?
TREMONICA in A Place at the Table: Cookies.
MISS.
CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROJECT NURSE in A Place at the Table: Cookies.
Cookies and chips, okay... Well maybe you could ask mom to start buying
you some – some carrots and some celery and maybe some apples. You could
slice some apples up; that’d be good, hm?
RAJ PATEL in A Place at
the Table: A lot of people think there is a yarning gap between hunger
on the one end and obesity on the other. In fact, they’re neighbors and
the reason that they happen often at the same time and often in the same
family, in the same person is because they are both signs of having
insufficient funds to be able to command food that you need to, to stay
healthy.
[…]
MARION NESTLE in A Place at the Table: If you
look at what has happened to the relative price of fresh fruits and
vegetables it’s gone up by 40 percent since 1980 when the obesity
epidemic first began.
In contrast, the relative price of processed
foods has gone down by about 40 percent. So if you only have a limited
amount of money to spend you’re going to spend it on the cheapest
calories you can get and that’s going to be processed foods. This has to
do with our farm policy and what we subsidize and what we don’t.
BILL MOYERS: Help me understand the connection between hunger and obesity.
MARIANA CHILTON: Hunger and obesity are both forms of malnutrition.
BILL MOYERS: Meaning?
MARIANA
CHILTON: Meaning not, it means not getting the right kinds of nutrients
for an active and healthy life. If you go back to the definition of
food insecurity it means having enough food for an active and healthy
life. So when people think about hunger they think, "Oh, it's just not
enough food." But actually food insecurity which is a much broader term,
much more precise, captures that type of experience where families
don't have enough money for healthy and fresh food so they will, in
order to stretch their dollar, they'll spend it on soda or on foods that
have very high calories. Because they know that their kids are hungry,
they have to be able to stretch their dollar in order to fill their own
tummies and the tummies of their children.
They know it's not
healthy, but they're just trying to figure out what the immediate, the
immediacy of hunger. So they eat lots of high calories, salt, sodium.
Those are the kinds of things that are not good for an active and
healthy life. It's another form of hunger. So you can look at people who
are overweight and obese and think maybe they don't have enough money
for food, maybe they're anxious about where their next meal is coming
from.
BILL MOYERS: You say in the film that there are 50 million
people, one in six who are food insecure, who do not have enough good
nutrition to thrive.
KRISTI JACOBSON: It's shocking that here in
the wealthiest nation on earth we have this many people who do not have
either access to healthy foods or nor can they afford it. And you know, I
think that we need to look at-- and what we wanted to do with this film
is not just say, "Look, here's a portrait of hungry people," but to
look at why we have such a large problem, a big problem here in this
country.
BILL MOYERS: What does it say that one out of every two
kids in this country at some point in their childhood as I learned from
your film will be on food assistance, one out of two?
KRISTI
JACOBSON: I see a country in crisis. And it's a crisis that we need to
address and we need political leadership and policies that tackle this
problem dead on. And when we were making the film we looked to a film
that aired on CBS in 1968 called “Hunger in America.”
CBS NARRATOR in Hunger in America: Food is the most basic of human needs.
KRISTI JACOBSON: That showed the nation shocking conditions and children that were starving right.
CBS
NARRATOR in Hunger in America: But man can’t remain alive without food.
We’re talking about ten million Americans. In this country, the most
basic human need must become a human right.
KRISTI JACOBSON: And
citizens reacted. And what they did though and part of this had to do
with the reporting at the time, was they demanded legislative response.
They demanded that their politicians take responsibility and address the
problem. And I think that today we have, you know, every maybe once a
year around the holidays there are portraits of the hungry in America.
But
instead of pointing to political solutions they're often pointing to a
charitable response as the solution. And I think that is a really also
significant cause for how we have gotten to the point where one in six
are food insecure.
BILL MOYERS: You have a sequence in the film
that drives home the reliance on charity and the conclusion that it's
not enough. Let's take a look at that.
JOEL BERG in A Place at the
Table: The 80’s created the myth that A. hungry people deserved it and
B. well we could really fill in the gaps with the charities.
JANET
POPPENDIECK in A Place at the Table: And so we had a proliferation of
emergency responses, soup kitchens, food pantries moving from literally a
shelf in the cupboard of the pastor’s office to an operation with
regular hours.
LARRY BROWN in A Place at the Table: Something
changed during that period of time. There developed this ethos that
government was doing too much and more importantly, the private sector
is wonderful and let’s feed people through charity.
JANET
POPPENDIECK in A Place at the Table: We have basically created a kind of
secondary food system for the poor in this country. Millions and
millions of Americans, as many as 50 million Americans, rely on
charitable food programs for some part of meeting their basic food
needs.
[…]
MARIANA CHILTON in A Place at the Table: That’s
something that’s extremely important. The churches and the community
groups that do hand out food are doing an incredible service to this
country and to the children that are experiencing hunger, but that’s
just a quick fix, that’s for today and tomorrow and maybe for next week.
We call it emergency food? It’s no longer emergency food. This is
called chronic use of a broken system for which people cannot be held
accountable.
[…]
JEFF BRIDGES in A Place at the Table:
Charity is a great thing, but it’s not the way to end hunger. We don’t
fund our Department of Defense through charity, you know. We shouldn’t,
you know, see that our kids are healthy through charity either.
BILL
MOYERS: So Americans responded with "a thousand points of light" in the
first Bush administration. But you say it's not enough?
KRISTI
JACOBSON: Well, it's not enough because despite all of that, despite all
the money that's being raised, despite the food drives, despite the
proliferation of these food banks and soup kitchens we still have 50
million people who are food insecure.
And what we've found both
during the making of the film and in fact since showing the film, you
know, food bank directors repeatedly sharing with us, you know, "We
can't do this alone. We need government to play its role." Because it
should be an emergency food system, as Mariana says in the film. And it
should be complementing government programs that really address the
needs of the most vulnerable.
MARIANA CHILTON: I would like to
really draw your attention to the impact that the emergency food system
has compared to the government food assistance programs. What emergency
food can do is about this much, about 5 percent of dealing with the
problem, this much. What does the federal government do with the
nutrition assistance? Food stamps or SNAP it's called, WIC, Women,
Infants and Children, school breakfast and school lunch, after school
feeding programs.
Those programs we know make a tangible
difference in the health and wellbeing of children and adults. So we
know that if families are receiving food stamps or SNAP Benefits their
cognitive, social and emotional development is better. We know that
they're less likely to be hospitalized.
The same thing goes for
WIC. We also know that WIC can reduce the stress that moms often feel
when they're a new mom and they're very poor. So these programs we know
have a tangible public health impact. There's no research that shows
what kind of impact the emergency food system is having. We know that
when about 30 million children are being fed every day in this country
through school breakfast and school lunch, that is magnificent. And
those kinds of programs need to be protected and to be promoted.
BILL
MOYERS: Our conversation will continue in a moment, but first, this is
pledge time on Public Television and we’re taking a short break so you
can show your support for the programming you see right here on this
station.
[BEGIN SOFT FEED CONTENT]
BILL MOYERS: For those of
you still with us … as we’ve seen, it’s not easy making sure our
neediest get the food their minds and bodies need. Several years ago, we
visited an urban garden and farmers market in the East New York
neighborhood of New York City. It provides nutritious, healthy produce
to community residents who otherwise must travel miles to the nearest
supermarket. And even there the choices may be scarce. Watch and listen…
BILL MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal: The East New York section of Brooklyn is a cornucopia of fast and cheap food. […]
WOMAN on Bill Moyers Journal: The market is open!
BILL MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal: But each Saturday, the East New York farmers market offers some much needed relief.
VENDOR on Bill Moyers Journal: That’s very good. Right?
BILL
MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal: The market’s appetizing array of food
comes from just outside the city and just around corner. From sweet to
savory, land to sea--
DENNIS DAVE CARGILL on Bill Moyers Journal: This is a baby blue fish. This tastes excellent.
BILL MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal: --People say it’s worth the wait.
CLAUDINA WILLIAMS on Bill Moyers Journal: It’s a different taste. When it’s fresh from the tree on the table, it’s delicious!
SARITA
DAFTARY on Bill Moyers Journal: We have a great market, and you know, I
think when people come and visit us, they're surprised that it's here.
They're surprised that it's in East New York.
BILL MOYERS on Bill
Moyers Journal: Sarita Daftary heads up the market, started ten years
ago by the non-profit United Community Centers. It’s been a welcome
source of pride – and nutrients – in a tough neighborhood better known
for its crime stats than its crop yields.
SARITA DAFTARY on Bill
Moyers Journal: Food that comes from the ground that is in its most
whole form is much better for you than food that's processed, or
packaged. And food that's grown by small scale farmers, and especially
organic farmers, tends to be more nutritious.
BILL MOYERS on Bill
Moyers Journal: Some of the freshest vegetables here were picked just
hours ago from land a few short blocks away. Jeanette Ware has been
gardening here for the past two years.
JEANETTE WARE on Bill
Moyers Journal: We’re going to be harvesting some herbs, some oregano,
some collard greens. Some string beans and some beets.
BILL MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal: Jeanette and her husband James start each day in the dirt.
JEANETTE
WARE on Bill Moyers Journal: It’s fun. It’s hard, but it’s fun. It gets
your back hurting, but it’s good for your heart and it’s a good
feeling. You are digging in the natural earth and you are producing
something for everybody to enjoy and be healthy.
These are hot, you want some? These are twelve for a dollar.
BILL
MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal: For the Wares, what started as hobby has
quickly turned into a small business. From their stand, they help fuel
their community with home-grown vitamins, minerals and good cheer.
JEANETTE WARE on Bill Moyers Journal: Hello, I like that hat.
BILL MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal: Hazel Smalls is on the hunt for organic produce.
HAZEL
SMALLS on Bill Moyers Journal: We are pretty healthy eaters, so we are
into a lot of fruits and vegetables. I usually get the frozen because
they last longer, but once I found out about the market here I said, let
me check it out. I can always take the collared greens, clean them, cut
them up and freeze them.
BILL MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal:
Hazel keeps an eye on what her daughter eats. Fortunately, Cheyenne
prefers pears to junk food.
CHEYENNE SMALLS on Bill Moyers
Journal: My mother lets me eat candy only like Saturday, or just
Saturday, because she doesn’t want me to get diabetes, because it’s very
painful so I know that I don’t want to eat too much candy.
BILL
MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal: Many of the chronic diseases that plague
the country today – like diabetes – are linked to diet. Unfortunately,
East New Yorkers know this all too well. […]One in six adults here
suffers from diabetes – that’s nearly twice the New York City average.
Nearly one out of three is obese. The primary cause of premature death
here is heart disease. Over the past ten years, hospitalization for the
condition has increased by 35 percent. So food here can be a simple
matter of life and death, and people like Claudina Williams need the
market for food that won’t make them sick.
CLAUDINA WILLIAMS on Bill Moyers Journal: You have to find it, it doesn’t matter how much it costs because that’s your health.
BILL
MOYERS on Bill Moyers Journal: Claudina uses coupons to help ease the
expense of eating right. A number of states, including New York,
encourage low-income people to shop at farmers markets by accepting food
stamps and distributing free food vouchers to senior citizens and moms.
SARITA
DAFTARY on Bill Moyers Journal: People in low-income communities,
people everywhere deserve the same quality of life, a great quality of
life
[END SOFT FEED CONTENT]
ANNOUNCER: We now continue with Moyers & Company…
BILL
MOYERS: There's a young woman in the film, Barbie Izquierdo. She was a
year looking for a job. She had food stamps while she was doing so. Then
she got work. And yet as a result of getting work she no longer
qualified for food stamps or subsidized childcare and her children could
therefore no longer receive breakfast or lunch at daycare.
BARBIE
IZQUIERDO in A Place at the Table: Anyone can sit there and tell you
I’ve been through this, I’ve been through that, I got through it. Yes,
I’ve been through this, I’ve been through that, I got through it, but if
you’re open my fridge I’m there again. Five days into the month. And
I’m going to be there next month and the month after that. It gets
tiring.
When I was on food stamps I didn’t have to worry about my
kids not eating. It was just how can I make it stretch, you know… I
might have to take a little bit from this day. It was more about
balancing everything where now we have nothing.
I literally have
nothing left. Like I’m going to give them a Hot Pocket for dinner
tomorrow like what am I supposed to do? What do I give them?
BILL MOYERS: What's happening there?
MARIANA
CHILTON: First of all stress. Stress is very damaging to moms and kids.
Secondly, you also see Barbie having the sandwich away from her kids.
So
you have moms that will often scrimp on their own diets in order to
feed their children. But what you see overall, the big picture there is
that Barbie was working full time in those moments and therefore became
ineligible for food assistance.
So what they-- what you see is
what we call in the research world the cliff effect. So if a family
makes just enough money to get themselves over the lip of whatever the
income limit is they'll lose benefits that are actually very helpful to
them and to their own children and to their health. So you can have a
family kind of going up and up and say, "Oh, I'm going to take that
extra-- I'm going to get a raise," or, "I'll work overtime."
They
work just enough to fall over the cliff, lose their benefits and then
they're worse off than where they were before. So we have a really big
problem in this country with the way that we are looking at our wages
and our public assistance programs and how they're interacting with each
other.
KRISTI JACOBSON: And that scene was one of the most
difficult to film. And both because of just, you know, the pain that
Barbie was feeling and allowing us to capture, but also as filmmakers
Barbie had gotten the full time job and so we thought this is the end of
the film and--
BILL MOYERS: The arc of the story.
KRISTI
JACOBSON: Exactly. And when this happened we were devastated for Barbie
and thought what is this going to do to the story? Well, of course as
filmmakers we have to follow the story. And I remember the conversation
that we had with Mariana where we were talking about this and we were
worried that it wasn't representative and then learned this is in fact
so representative and a really important problem to expose. Because we
need for these programs, if we're going to have them and we're going to
fund them which is a different issue, they should be meeting the needs
of the people who are using and benefiting from the programs.
MARIANA
CHILTON: And in our research we know that food stamps do help to
prevent hospitalizations, they do promote health, it does help. But the
type of allotment is called the Thrifty Food Plan. The way that the
government calculates how much an adequate meal or an adequate sort of
thrifty food basket costs is actually inadequate for a healthy diet. So
even if you have families that are receiving the maximum allotment, as
if they had no other income, they still can't make ends meet.
BILL
MOYERS: There's a nice twist in the film. When you're reporting on what
it's like to live on food stamps and you have an interview with
Representative James McGovern of Massachusetts who did his own research,
as you do, into the subject.
REP. JAMES MCGOVERN in A Place at
the Table: I lived on a food stamp diet for a week along with Jo Ann
Emerson from Missouri. We did so because we thought that the food stamp
benefit was inadequate. Most of my colleagues had no idea that the
average food stamp benefit was $3 a day.
I had my budget and I
went to a supermarket and it took me an awful long time because you have
to add up every penny and it has to last you for a week. And so I did
it and I will tell you I, I was tired, I was cranky because I couldn’t
drink coffee because coffee was too expensive. I mean there are people
who are living on that food stamp allocation. And you really can’t. For
us it was an exercise that ended in a week. For millions of other people
in this country that’s their way of life; every day is a struggle just
to eat.
KRISTI JACOBSON: Sadly Representative McGovern is one of
few leaders and voices in Congress pushing to do the right thing here
which is to protect and improve food stamps and other government
programs.
He's an incredible leader, but he is even having trouble
getting his members of his own party to support his efforts to protect
these programs. And that's really troubling and upsetting.
BILL
MOYERS: The road to reform always leads to Washington. And there almost
every reform whether it's the environment or whether it's agriculture or
food hits up against the power of big money to write the laws it wants
and influence the politicians it needs. You found that to be the case,
didn't you?
KRISTI JACOBSON: Yes, I think that, you know, I
believe, and I don't think naively, that we Americans should be able to
influence how our politicians vote on these issues. That's not happening
right now. And the problem with this issue is that you don't always--
it's not so obvious necessarily how a politician is voting when it comes
to programs that address food insecurity.
BILL MOYERS: There was a
poll taken I think in connection with your film that found the majority
of Americans actually were surprised to hear that 50 million people
don't know where their next meal is coming from. And many of those
polled just don't think of hunger as a pressing issue. Given your work
on this how do you explain it?
MARIANA CHILTON: There's this
concept that you can somehow see hunger, that we would know that there
are hungry children if they were fishing around in the garbage can or if
there were flies coming or they had swollen bellies and, you know, limp
on the sidewalk. But that's not what hungry children look like. We
don't see that in the United States. You might see that's severe
starvation when you're dealing in times of war and massive drought.
BILL MOYERS: Somalia, the Congo, Sudan, all…
MARIANA
CHILTON: So in the United States there-- it's children like Rosie who
light up the room when they come in. It's moms like Barbie Izquierdo
who's beautifully spoken, so brilliant. Her children are funny and
enjoyable. And yet they're still experiencing food insecurity and
hunger. So I think people are actually shocked "Well, I don't see it, so
it can't be real." And they don't believe the numbers.
But what
it is happening underneath is a massive crisis in human potential in the
United States. Our kids are showing up to school not ready to learn.
When they're in school they can't concentrate. You have kids who are
food insecure when they're adolescents. They're suffering with stress
and suicidal ideation. That's what we find in our research. How can we--
BILL MOYERS: Suicide ideation?
MARIANA
CHILTON: Suicidal ideation, so it's thinking about, "Oh, what does it
matter that I live?" It's thinking about killing yourself. These are
very depressing and stressful experiences to experience hunger, to see
your parents struggling with that and to struggle yourself.
So
when you-- what's happening is that we are developing a whole half of
the country overall is really left out of the public dialog. They are
underpaid, undervalued, unhealthy. And we can prevent this kind of-- and
we can prevent this.
That's why I think it's so important, what's
so exciting about what Witnesses to Hunger is trying to accomplish is
to make sure that people who know the experience of hunger and poverty
firsthand are a part of the national dialog, that they're not silenced,
they're not short of shamed over off in the corner, that they're
actually front and center. They're the ones who can turn it around.
So
we have to take back our democracy, be more engaged. And I think that a
lot of people sort of in the middle who haven't struggled with hunger
or poverty think, "Oh, we'll just let the government handle it. They
must be doing the right thing," and, "There's no hunger," that's just
called disengagement. We've got a big problem in our country with being
engaged about what our politicians are actually doing for us.
BILL MOYERS: So you've tried to engage them. Let's take a look in the film at a very interesting sequence.
BARBIE IZQUIERDO in A Place at the Table: Everybody say, “Washington.”
WITNESSES TO HUNGER in A Place at the Table: Washington.
MARIANA
CHILTON in A Place at the Table: Here’s the plan; at 11:30 the
reception at the Senate. Senator Casey will speak, I will speak, Tianna
will speak, Barbie will speak and every time that you have an
opportunity give your ideas for change, for what you need for the
success and healthy life of your kids, okay? These guys are the ones who
make it happen.
BARBIE IZQUIERDO in A Place at the Table: I was
the first mother of Witnesses to Hunger and I didn’t think anyone would
take us seriously. But I’m here to let everyone know that just because
we live where we live and come from where we come from doesn’t mean that
we’re not smart. Doesn’t mean that we don’t have potential. Doesn’t
mean that we do not want education. Doesn’t mean that we want to depend
on welfare for the rest of our lives. I want the same hopes and dreams
as everyone in this room for their children. We just need the
opportunity to make it come true.
BILL MOYERS: Did they listen?
MARIANA
CHILTON: I think they listened a little bit. They felt it a little bit.
But it's not long enough, you can't just go to Congress and talk to
legislators one time and they'll get it.
I think it's really hard
to break through the cloud over our legislators. I'm not really sure who
they're listening to except for people who have a lot of money and a
lot of influence. So I think they're very touched by the personal
experiences of a person who's poor, especially from a mom.
So I've
actually seen Senate staffers get very teary-eyed listening to these
stories and they say, "Oh, keep telling your stories, keep telling you
think stories." But then they'll turn around and vote to cut food
stamps. And that doesn't make a lot of sense. So I'm wondering who is it
that's influencing Congress? Who's got their thumb on what Congress can
do? And I think that there's just not enough people who are poor who
have an opportunity to speak out.
I don't think they get enough
press, they don't have, they're sort of shut out, there's no opportunity
for people who are low income to really engage in our democracy. And I
think that they're actively shut out as well.
BILL MOYERS: So bear
with me though as I put on my horns and play devil's advocate. There
are a lot of Americans who think that we're spending too much on food
stamps and that the cost is out of hand. Your poll associated with your
film suggests that last year alone the government spent $81 billion on
this nutritional safety net as you call it, now SNAP, what we used to
know as food stamps. And some folks say that is simply way too much and
that we're creating a culture of dependency.
Here's Representative, Republican Representative Steven King of Iowa.
REP.
STEVE KING: Handing out benefits is not an economic stimulator. But we
want to take care of the people that are needy, the people that are
hungry, and we’ve watched this program grow from a number that I think I
first memorized when I arrived here in Congress, about 19 million
people, now about 49 million people. And it appears to me that the goal
of this administration is to expand the rolls of people that are on SNAP
benefits. And their purpose for doing so in part is because of what the
gentleman has said from Massachusetts. Another purpose for that though
is just to simply expand the dependency class.
MARIANA CHILTON:
All right, well, first of all I'm a researcher, so I like to base things
on empirical evidence.
Let me show you what this congressperson is
doing. Basically they're pinning the problems that we have in this
country on people who are poor. If you think about people who are poor
really-- you have 80 percent of people who are food insecure are
actually working. That means their wages are so low that they're
eligible for food stamps.
So you want to talk about dependency in
this country? Let's talk about corporations and businesses that pay such
low wages that they depend on the United States government to add money
to those wages through the Income Assistance Programs, like SNAP. So
because if you take a company like Walmart, pays their workers so low
that their workers are actually eligible for food stamps. Who's
dependent on the U.S. government? I'd have to say it's Walmart is the
welfare queen here.
BILL MOYERS: But if I were Congressman King
sitting here I might say to you make a very convincing case and I
believe that both of you are genuinely committed to this issue, but you
know, 48 million people are receiving food stamps. Can't you see why
some of my constituents in Iowa would be shocked by that and at that
cost?
KRISTI JACOBSON: Well, I think it's also important to look
at how many corporations and agribusinesses are collecting subsidies out
of the same government bill, the farm bill.
And I think that
there is an ethos in Congress right now that assisting those individuals
who need help via the food stamp program or WIC or school meals is big
government and is going to put us into debt. But providing subsidies to
large agribusinesses and big corporations is just business as usual.
And
I think that we're looking at, you know, investing in our youth and
investing in our future. And if it doesn't get to you, congressman, from
the moral point of view that it's really frankly not okay to have kids
like Rosie and Barbie's kids to the tune of 17 million of them in our
nation-- well, what about the cost of not doing anything? Because the
cost of food insecurity, the cost of obesity and malnutrition is way
larger on the back end and the health care than it is to get these
programs adequately funded and feed kids nutritious foods.
MARIANA
CHILTON: If you think about what government is supposed to be doing,
it's supposed to create the conditions in which people can make healthy
choices and live an active and healthy life.
It's all about creating good conditions for us to prosper, right.
Somehow
when we think about helping people who are poor, many of whom are
working, it's there becomes this type of societal vitriol towards people
who are poor as if they're not us. Well, actually people who are poor
are all around us. Their children are going to the same schools
oftentimes. We need to really rethink about who we are as a country,
what does it mean to be an American. If you think about one in five of
our children living in households that are food insecure, they're just
as American as the rest of us, we need to really invest in our own
country and who we are.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah, I was actually present
when President Johnson signed-- the Food Stamp Act into law in 1964
before your time obviously. It was only-- the whole bill was only eight
pages long and the first year's budget was $75 million. And its purpose
I'm going to quote it for you, was quote, "To raise levels of the
nutrition among low income households and to permit those households
with no incomes to receive a greater share of a nation's food
abundance." But as you make clear in the film it's not doing that job
all these years later although we're spending $81 million on it now. So
what's essentially gone wrong?
KRISTI JACOBSON: We need to look--
as we did then look at the program as it was designed which was as you
stated, as a nutrition program to address the nutritional needs of low
income people who don't have access to healthy foods. That's what this
program should be. And we should be doing everything in our power to
make that program work effectively.
And to do that I think we need
to listen to people like Barbie and the Witnesses to Hunger. We could
listen to Mariana also, but we need to listen to the people who are
experiencing this and we need to revamp and reform the program while
also adequately funding it.
BILL MOYERS: You've been to Washington
with some of your constituents. You've made your case. You're up
against the interlocking power grid of big agriculture, big corporations
and big government. What makes you think you have a chance of turning
them around?
MARIANA CHILTON: The power of the human spirit. When
you have a lot of moms who have had enough we can take over Congress and
say we care about our children just like you care about your children.
But we need more moms, we need more families to be able to speak up. I
think that we need to take over, take back our democracy, take back our
sense of involvement, of belonging, that this is our government.
This
government is supposed to be working for everyone regardless of how you
were born or where you were born or how much money you make. It's
supposed to work for all of us.
We've got to figure out a way to
just help the people who are in power to recognize their own sense of
humanity and recognize that they are no different than Barbie Izquierdo,
no different than Rosie, that their kids are no different than Rosie,
that we're all a part of that same human family. Ultimately that's what
we need to tap into.
BILL MOYERS: On that note thank you, Dr.
Mariana Chilton, for your work and Kristi Jacobson, thank you for an
extraordinary film. And thank you both for being here.
MARIANA CHILTON: Thank you so much.
KRISTI JACOBSON: Thank you.
BILL MOYERS: That’s it for this week. I’ll see you here next time.
Veteran journalist Bill
Moyers is the host of “Moyers & Company,” airing weekly on public
television. Check your local listings. More at
www.billmoyers.com
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