HUNGRY BY THE NUMBERS
By David Bacon and Betsy Edwards
East Bay Express
OAKLAND, CA (5/1/10) -- The federal government, in its infinite
wisdom, has tried to define for us what being hungry means. They've
come up with a yardstick, called "food insecurity." It means people
who have less food than they want and need. It includes people who
actually go hungry, but also those who've had to reduce the amount
they eat, skip meals, or eat food they know isn't good for them,
because they can't afford what it really takes to eat.
Late last fall the US Department of Agriculture shocked even those
people who are used to thinking about the problems of hunger, when it
released a report that counted the number of hungry families in this,
the richest country in the world. It turns out we're not so rich
after all, as anyone who's lost a job or a home in the Great
Recession could easily tell you. Still, the numbers are like a sharp
blow upside the head.
Some 16 percent of all families were food insecure - they didn't have
the money to buy enough food at some point duirng 2008, up from 12
percent the year before. That amounted to 49 million people,
including more than 16 million children. That's almost a quarter of
all the children in the United States, and 4 million more than it was
in 2007. This year we know the number is higher - we just don't know
how much higher - yet.
About a third of those families simply didn't get enough food to eat.
That's called, in USDA parlance, very low food security. That means
these families went hungry. That included 12 million adults, and 5
million kids.
The other two thirds of food insecure families only survived because
they had access to federal food programs, or got food at a local food
pantry or soup kitchen. That means they were hungry too, but not
quite as much.
Hunger isn't really spread evenly, as is obvious when you think about
it. More in Oakland. Less in Lafayette. More than a quarter of all
black and Latino households were food insecure - compared to 16
percent in general. And more than 13 percent of all familes made up
of single moms and their children were not just food insecure, but
outright hungry.
Some 42.2 percent of food-insecure households had incomes below the
official poverty line, which is $21,834 for a family of four in 2008.
So more than half of all hungry families actually had incomes above
the poverty line. That poverty line, that official yardstick, is so
low that millions of families not officially "in poverty" still don't
have enough money to buy the food they need.
This was 2008, when the recession was just beginning. Last year, with
unemployment in California reaching more than 12 percent, these
numbers all went up. Again, we don't know yet by exactly how much,
but we can be sure it's going to be a big jump.
We do know that the breadwinners in hundreds of thousands of
California families suddenly lost their jobs. Families that formerly
had no trouble feeding themselves, and even went out to eat in
restaurants, couldn't put enough food on the table at home at some
point to keep everyone from getting up hungry. So people went to food
banks, food pantries, and soup kitchens to try to make up for what
they could no longer buy. Almost five million people went to food
pantries last year, up from 4 million the year before. About 625,000
ate in soup kitchens.
National numbers sometimes don't tell the local story, though. How
many hungry people do we have where we actually live? Alameda County,
with a population of 1.5 million, had probably a quarter of a million
food insecure people in 2008. Contra Costa 160,000. Oakland 64,000.
Berkeley and Richmond 16,000 each. Hayward over 22,000 and Alameda
over 11,000. There were over 20,000 hungry children in Oakland alone.
Do the math for your own neighborhood or city.
These are the numbers. The real question is, in your neighborhood? On
your street? In the house down your block, or next door? Or could we
be talking about you?
Here are a few of our neighbors - people who live around us. Let's
forget the numbers and look at their faces. Hear their stories of how
they've managed to survive - and eat.
Beverly Cherkoff cooks her meals in a tiny kitchen in a van, where
plastic flowers climb the radio aeriel and spill across the
windshield. Cherkoff, who parks the van in the parking lots of a
couple of local factories, says she discovered one day, talking with
the Mexican workers there, that they sometimes came to work hungry.
She got a little extra food from the Davis Street food pantry, and
began cooking for them also, while making her own meals. Today she
fills big bags with lettuce, and carts away boxes of mushrooms.
Shared food, she believes, makes you feel like people can all survive
if they look out for each other. Most of the other people who get
food at Davis Street have jobs too, but often still don't make enough
money to both buy food and pay rent.
Mary Katherine Jones lives with her son Curtis in a single-room
occupancy hotel in downtown Oakland. Jones receives SSDI as a
disabled diabetic, and Curtis is her in-home care provider. The room
has no refrigeration or kitchen, so they have to keep their
perishable foods in a cooler, and buy ice every day or two. Food
doesn't keep well this way, and it's also important to wash the
cooler out every day in the one bathroom all residents on the floor
share, in order to prevent sickness. Mary Katherine sometimes has to
choose between paying for medications and buying food. To get to the
store they have to take a bus and pay $2 round trip. Ms. Jones is a
gospel singer and had been singing in LA with a ministry until they
encouraged her to move to Oakland about a year ago. Now she spends
her time going to bible school, singing, and writing music. She goes
to St. Mary's Center for seniors, located on the Oakland/Emeryville
border. Curtis was an actor in bit parts in LA, and takes classes in
computer repair while looking for similar work in the Bay Area.
Coleen McEneany used to be a private investigator. Her husband worked
for Circuit City as an information technology specialist. But the PI
work dried up in the recession, and Circuit City closed. With their
daughter, they moved into the Fremont home of her mother, a retired
sixth-grade teacher. While the home has a pool in back and
well-tended garden, the family resources were stretched so thin that
they now depend on food and help from Tri-City Volunteers.
Ironically, she knew about the food pantry because she and her
husband were both donors to the program back when they were working.
Nevertheless, with a degree in criminal justice, Coleen has hopes
that she'll somehow find a job. In the meantime, she is taking
courses for a degree in early childhood education.
Nnekia Stevenson was living with her three-year-old son and his
father in Berkeley last fall. Despite holding down two jobs, though,
while her son's father worked in construction, she couldn't make ends
meet and moved in with her mom in an apartment in the Fruitvale.
Neither had much money, and hardly any furniture to fill the vacant
living room. Nnekia works with children at a local agency, ISOP, and
was able to get a few days' work a month on call at the New United
Motors Manufacturing plant in Fremont. But NUMMI closed in April,
however, so Nnekia plans to start school at Laney in the fall to get
a degree in childhood development. Nnekia's mother, Terri, gets SSI
for her disability, which disqualifies them for food stamps. Terri
was homeless off and on for thirty years, but finally moved into a
shelter, Chrysalis, where she participated in rehab and got help
finding a home.
Jim Reagan used to live in Peoples' Park in Berkeley. Last fall he
traded the companionship of sleeping bags under the trees for a room
in a single-room occupancy hotel in Berkeley. Before living in the
park, he worked in homeless shelters, but then became homeless
himself for two years. Now he hopes to become a caterer, while living
month-to-month waiting for SSI checks. We met Jim at "Night on the
Streets - Catholic Worker," a crew of dedicated volunteers, many from
local churches, who bring breakfast to homeless folks in Peoples'
Park and Provo Park every Sunday morning.
Oscar Fernandez, a day laborer from Mexico, lives in Hayward. His
family lives in Merced in the Central Valley, where his wife works in
a large retail store. Oscar can't find work in Merced, however, so
during the week he comes up to Hayward and only sees the family on
the weekend. Once a month Oscar and dozens of other mostly Mexican
families spend the night on the sidewalk, waiting for the food
distribution by Hope for the Heart on Saturday morning.
Thanks to the Alameda County Community Food Bank.
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and
Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border
(University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
--
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David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org
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