PICAYUNE —
More than $6 billion dollars were spent in the 2012 campaign season — making it the most expensive in our nation’s history. If you live in one of the battleground or swing states or had a competitive race for Congress, you had a steady diet of negative advertising, phone calls and mail.
Even if you lived in the reddest of red states or the bluest of blue, you were fed four nationally televised debates and could nosh on daily news and cable coverage of the election. And if you were a glutton, you could feast on the blogs and websites and discussion forums offered by the Internet.
Now think back over the past few months and try to remember hearing any of the candidates mention this word: hunger. Or even addressing the issue of poverty.
There was a lot of talk about deficits and debt and economic indicators and rates of this or that. There was talk of taxes and spending and revenue.
Those are abstract words. It’s easy to toss them around. It’s easy to work them into a debate, to use them to stir up an attack or cook up applause.
But hunger is real and physical. It’s the knot in the pit of your stomach and the gnawing away of hope and joy. Hunger shakes our bodies and our minds; it saps our strength and our confidence.
We did hear the words “economy” and “jobs,” the latter in all kinds of contexts — “job creators” and “shipping jobs overseas” and “manufacturing jobs,” etc.
The hunger crisis is undeniable, and it’s made worse by a fragile economy. In 2010, 17.2 million households — about one in seven — were “food insecure” — a fancy way of saying they went hungry. Last year, 50.1 million Americans lived in “food insecure households.” Well, let’s use the word! Last year, 16.7 million children went hungry. Here. In the United States of America.
Yes, new and more and better jobs will help. Millions of unemployed corresponds with millions who are hungry. Poverty and hunger are partners, or at least cousins.
But millions of those who experience hunger, and whose children experience it, work regular jobs. They just don’t earn enough to make ends meet. The working poor — living in poverty and ashamed because they rely on food stamps and Women, Infants and Children, and other programs. Maybe the shame is misplaced.
As Americans, we take pride in our nation’s capacity to come together in a crisis. I know this first hand. After Katrina, my family and I benefited from the generosity of friends and strangers. Hurricane Sandy affected about two dozen states, devastating large areas of the Northeast. But all of America felt the loss, aching for those who lost loved ones in the storm, or property in the flooding. We chipped in through the Red Cross and other charities. The retiree in Phoenix doesn’t bump into the Staten Island mailman when she takes a walk through her neighborhood, but they share a bond. They’re Americans.
As we celebrated Thanksgiving, millions of our fellow citizens were still picking up the pieces of their scattered lives, struggling to return to normal. As best we can, each of us will perform an act of goodness and kindness, making the word “thanksgiving” real and meaningful.
And, surely, the same part of our heart is touched by the escalating number of people now living in poverty and those who lack the resources to provide for their families. The growth of hunger hasn’t been swift, but it has been steady. And its results are having an impact on families, children, elderly, poor, working and unemployed. It affects everyone — white, black, Latino, Asian — in every region of this land.
They deserve to be in our prayers and they should also be in our minds as we consider how we want to help our neighbors during the holiday season. Through our generosity, our donations, our volunteer time and other efforts, we can provide more than sustenance to those without. We can rekindle hope in a land with so many opportunities still available to all.
President Obama and Gov. Romney were fortunate enough to have armies of volunteers and donors for the campaigns. Theirs was important work, as civic participation makes our country stronger. It warms the heart to see so many young people care enough about their government to become involved.
With the campaign over, I sincerely ask each of them to take another piece of their time to volunteer at the soup kitchen or food bank in their town, donate food or money, or organize a group of their friends to do the same.
Hunger may not have been addressed directly during the presidential campaign, but it is no less a pressing issue. It is an issue that can bring us together, whether we’re in Phoenix or Staten Island.
(Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News.)
Columns
Be mindful of those in need
- Columns
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Hood’s ‘open carry’ ruling strikes important balances
Attorney General Jim Hood’s office issued an opinion this week that went a long way toward establishing some order and applying some common sense to what has become a contentious and confusing debate both for proponents and opponents of free exercise of the Second Amendment.
House Bill 2, which becomes law July 1, was authored and led to passage by state Rep. Andy Gipson, R-Braxton. Gipson has told the press that he believed the legislation was necessary to clearly define what a concealed weapon is under the law and to distinguish between “concealed carry” and “open carry” rights. But many law enforcement officers charged with enforcing the state’s “concealed carry” law and other contradictory statutes, the bill created some confusion and Hood’s AG opinion brought some clarity to the ongoing debate. -
The Loss of Trust
Amid all the heated cross-currents of debate about the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance program, there is a growing distrust of the Obama administration that makes weighing the costs and benefits of the NSA program itself hard to assess. The belated recognition of this administration’s contempt for the truth, for the American people and for the Constitution of the United States, has been long overdue.
- Vocability Words can be both familiar and extremely confusing when taken from their usual context. Ask any wine enthusiast about legs, fat or bricks and they may assume you are speaking “Vinonese.” Ok — I made that word up; but the language of wine does indeed include legs, fat and brix which have entirely different meanings from what you might assume. Working with definitions from http://www.wineschool.com/vocabulary.html, try your basic knowledge of “Vinonese.”
- Vocability Words can set a tone for a situation, alter someone’s perception of an individual or group — in short, there is power in them. The Bible cautions, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue...” — Proverbs in 18:21, ASB. With that in mind, I will be focusing on words, some recently used and some obscure, to test the readers and build on what you already know. There will be theme weeks, for instance next week will focus on words involving wine — for no particular reason! So try your vocabulary skills with the following and see how you score. I’m always open to suggestions for material.
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A hard rain is gonna fall...
By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist
After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress. And that’s far from the worst story reflecting the current character of our nation.
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.” -
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist
Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.
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VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. - More Columns Headlines
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