Anchorage, AK - 03/27/09

Tags:All You Can Eat, hunger, Joel Berg, poverty, Title Wave.

Seattle, WA - 03/22/09

Tags:All You Can Eat, Elliott Bay, hunger, Joel Berg, poverty.

Pasadena, CA - 03/19/09

Tags:All You Can Eat, hunger, Joel Berg, poverty, Vromans.

Plano, TX - 02/24/09

Tags:All You Can Eat, hunger, Joel Berg, Legacy, poverty.

Austin, TX - 02/18/09

Tags:All You Can Eat, BookPeople, hunger, Joel Berg, poverty.

NYT City Room Blog: This Week, Joel Berg Taking Questions

Tags:Brooklyn, Coalition Against Hunger, Health and Hospitals, hunger, Manhattan, People & Neighborhoods, poverty, Queens, Taking Questions, Thanksgiving, The Bronx.

Thanksgiving week, Joel was asked by the New York Times City Room Blog to answer select readers’ questions about what New Yorkers can do to end hunger in the city.   Questions generally fell into the following four categories:  1) how can I volunteer or donate food?; 2) why do poor people eat so badly?; 3) come on now, is there really hunger?; and 4) readers wanting to know the extent and cost to society of hunger.  Joel found it telling that few readers asked him to write about the governmental policies that create and/or sustain hunger.

To read the Intro and comments, click here.

Read Part One of his Q & A  here.

Read Part Two of his Q&A  here.

Presidential Candidates Discuss Domestic Hunger

Tags:2008 elections, Barack Obama, campaigns, hunger, John McCain, poverty, President.

The Obama/Biden campaign issued a detailed (two and a half page) statement this week on how they would end child hunger in the U.S. by 2005. Given that 35.5 million Americans – including more than 12 million children – live in homes that can’t afford enough food, this is a huge issue.

On May 4, 2008, Obama said on Meet the Press: “We’ve got rising food prices here in the United States. My top priority is making sure that people are able to get enough to eat.”

Some highlights of the Obama plan:

• Focusing first on the most vulnerable populations by ensuring that low-income senior citizens, infants, and toddlers have more access to federal nutrition assistance benefits;
• Enacting a serious, multi-pronged plan to slash U.S. poverty, which has soared under the Bush Administration;
• Eliminating child hunger by 2015 by providing all poor children with free school meals and expanding summer meals for low-income children; and
• Increasing support to community-based providers, such as food banks, soup kitchens, and food pantries, both faith-based and secular.

On the same day that Obama issued his statement on domestic hunger, the McCain campaign also issued the following statement: “John McCain supports fully funding food and nutrition programs and carrying out a robust Emergency Food Assistance Program. He supports indexing food stamps to reflect the current cost of living and he would fill shortfalls in the Emergency Food Assistance Program. John McCain also supports providing marketing tools for the fruit and vegetable industry focused on promoting healthier American diets.”

The McCain statement raises a few questions:

1. What does McCain mean by “fully funding?”
2. If McCain is for a “robust Emergency Food Assistance Program” (which aids food banks, soup kitchens and food pantries) why did he vote in 2005 (as part of GOP-sponsored across-the-board cuts) to cut that very program?  Why, in the same 2005 vote, did cut the WIC Program, which provides specially-targeted nutrition assistance and health advice to pregnant women and infants?
3. How in the world does McCain square his position that he is for across-the-board cuts in all non-homeland security domestic spending with his call for “fully funding” nutrition programs and indexing food stamps to inflation? (As an anti-hunger advocate, I certainly support increases in these programs but that could cost billions of dollars extra per year, which would seem to be at odds with “across-the-board cuts”)

I just report. You decide.