'Living hungry' in the land of plenty

Scan page 16

B0OD Living Hungry in America by Dr. J. Larry Brown and H. F. Pizer. Macmillan Publishing Co. 212 pages. $18.95 Hunger in Africa arouses concern and compassion in thousands of Americans. But hunger in America, real hunger with children slowly wasting away, arouses skepticism. Surely, in a country with such productive farms and such material wealth—no one actually goes hungry!

"Yes they do." says Dr. J. Larry Brown and H. F. Pizer. Their book "Living Hungry in America" brings the hungry right into our living room.

Dr. Brown, a member of the faculty of the Harvard School of Public Health, was approached in the spring of 1983 by the staff of Project Bread Hunger Hotline. They wanted help in responding to the growing number of Boston families running out of food each month.

This led to a task force of physicians, social workers, and others embarking on a three-year expedition to the North, South, and Midwest regions of the United States. Their mission was to find the hungry and learn what was being done for them.

The Physicians Task Force held hearings in cities and towns and interviewed welfare workers and their clients. They also roamed the urban slums and the back-country roads seeking the hungry where they live. They entered their kitchens, and peered into their refrigerators.

What they found is documented in their book. It is a powerful indictment of a government that has abandoned millions of needy Americans to malnutrition and sometimes to slow starvation.

Hunger around the country From Alabama, the doctors filed this report: "Alicia Jones had recently moved from Georgia with her three-year-old son. The mother opened her refrigerator at my request. It contained three eggs, a slice of cheese, a container of water.

"I asked if her son ate the corn flakes I saw atop the refrigerator. 'Yes sir, sometimes,' she answered, 'but he don't much like them with water.' How long, I inquired, since he had milk to drink? Three weeks.' she answered."

In the Midwest, the nation's breadbasket, the physicians met 86-year-old Effie Alsop. "Her husband took us into the kitchen. I looked into the refrigerator, finding some dried beans and several pieces of bread. Do you and your wife ever go a day without eating?' I asked. The response: 'Yes sir, I'd say several days every month.

Why do 80-year-olds have to stop eating several days in each month? The reason is simple. Their social-security checks are too small to cover basic necessities.

Laura MacAfee and her retired son, who live in the Southern Piedmont region, have a combined income of $315 a month, plus $28 a month in food stamps. "We live kind'er hard, but we ain't hungry." Laura told the investigator as he looked into the kitchen to find some white beans and potatoes.

When he pursued the matter, she conceded there were times when she had nothing to eat. "I been thinking," she said, "that maybe I could get myself some sort of job to help make things stretch." Mrs. Mac Afee is 93 years old!

This is the plight of citizens who have contributed 40 years of productive labor to the nation. Those thrown on the industrial scrap heap before their retirement years fare 16 SOCIALIST ACTION little better. In 1986, only 25 percent of jobless Americans received any unemployment compensation-or any other aid.

Inadequate relief programs

Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) is the major federal relief program for financially distressed families. In half the states (which administer the program) it is illegal to hand out these funds if the father is living with his family, even if he has no income at all. A government that extolls the virtues of the family, destroys it by forcing the father to leave home!

A father has to leave home so that his family can get as little as $91 a month in Mississippi, or $177 in North Carolina. In California, a family of four may get $660, but rent can eat up over $400 of that. AFDC real income continually drops as it is not indexed for inflation.

Inadequate AFDC payments are sometimes supplemented by food stamps. This is part of the safety net that is supposed to guarantee every citizen an adequate diet. "All recipients have to do is MAY 1988 George Cohen/Impact Visuals to fill out a simple little form." a government spokesman has declared.

Far from being a "simple little form," food-stamp applicants are confronted with a stack of forms that even state legislators cannot fill out correctly. They tried in California.

The Task Force cites a North Carolina applicant who was given 11 forms to fill out. She turned to her minister for help. He could not complete them correctly, and the poor woman was refused stamps because her application was faulty.

Another applicant made innumerable trips to the welfare office, 14 miles away, only to be told each time that she had to fill out another form or turn in yet another document. Finally, after two months of hassle, she was awarded food stamps—at the rate of $10 a month.

Even if all the forms are filled out correctly, other regulations keep hungry people from getting food. One desperate woman sold her grave plot for money to eat on. When she exhausted that income, she was denied food stamps because, they said, she had sold assets in order to qualify.

Food programs slashed

Hurdles to getting food stamps have been raised ever higher because the government wants to cut the number of people on the program. They have succeeded all too well.

Starting in 1982, $12 million has been slashed from food-stamp programs and school meals. Three million children were dropped from lunch programs. A million adults lost their foodstamps.

Another source of food is the federal surplus-food program. This was started in the 1930s to dispose of excess farm crops. Over the years tons of surplus butter, cheese, dried milk, and other products have been given to the poor.

While this has improved the diet of many needy families, delivery of the food has been erratic. This is because the program has been run by the Agricultural Department, which is concerned with the interests of the big farmers—not the hungry poor.

In March, the Department of Agriculture announced that distribution of dried milk would be halted for the month of May, and that rice and honey were no longer in surplus. Few can predict what products will be available next winter. Basing a diet on America's left-over farm crops seems a sure road to malnutrition.

All these programs are cut at a time when some 6 million newly impoverished Americans are looking for help. The Task Force estimates that from 10 million to 15 million needy and eligible Americans are denied food stamps, resulting in as many as 20 million men, women, and children going hungry at some time each month.

The government counterattacks When the Physicians Task Force made its preliminary report public in 1985, it received wide publicity. Major TV networks made documentaries on the problem. The White House then counterattacked.

Reagan said people were hungry only because they were too ignorant to find the food programs. At the same time, he barred the use of any federal funds for outreach programs for the poor. He suggested that private citizens, with help from generous corporations, could feed their hungry neighbors.

Important sections of corporate America do not agree. William Woodside, President of American Can Co., said it is ridiculous to expect industry to do the job. Industry exists to make a profit, he concluded, whereas the government exists to help people. The government created hunger, and only the government can solve it.

But the government refuses to acknowlege that the problem exists. Instead, it offers false statistics and outrageous comments like that of Attorney General Edwin Meese: "People are in soup lines because the food is free."

The Physicians properly indict the Reagan administration. But they put too much reliance on the Democrats to put things right. More food stamps and adequate levels of AFDC may make poverty more bearable-and this must be done. But eradicating poverty itself involves the most fundamental overturn of our exploitative society.

This is beyond the scope of "Living Hungry in America," but it remains a valuable documentation of the problem. After reading this book, no one can claim there is no hunger in America.