Strategic Acts of Kindness

Last week was “Random Acts of Kindness Week,” a time to encourage people to make life more pleasant for everyone. Organizers at randomactsofkindness.org encouraged actions like leaving positive notes around town and feeding meters for strangers. I would never argue with that notion. The world needs more kindness! But now that the week for random acts is over, I think it’s time to also embrace “strategic acts of kindness.”

Random acts of hatred have risen dramatically in the United States. Our country has seen repeated damage to Jewish cemeteries and bomb threats to Jewish community centers. The highest office of the U.S. has issued unconstitutional travel bans targeting Muslims. People of all kinds of skin tones other than the old Crayola crayon "flesh" color are shouted at to "Go home!" when they've lived in the U.S. their whole lives. Racism, sexism, and xenophobia are becoming increasingly normalized in political discussions and in everyday conversations. 

In the face of such a disturbing reality, we must take powerful actions to protect those who suffer disproportionately in this world because of religion, race, gender, or any number of factors. People of every political stripe are waking up and wanting to have a voice in the direction our country is heading. However, many regular folks don’t have the first idea about how to reach our nation’s decision makers.

That’s where strategic acts of kindness come in. In my former career as an engineer, I found random actions led to random results. Intentional strategy is needed to combat random acts of hatred or – even worse – systematic acts of oppression in our country and around the world.

Bread for the World volunteers handwrite letters to Congress
at church after a Sunday worship service.

What could this sort of organized love look like? Setting aside time each day to call members of Congress to voice your opinion. Holding a meeting with friends to write letters to elected officials. Submitting a letter to the editor. Sitting down with a senator or representative face to face to voice your opinion with respect. In fact, these are the very actions that U.S. representatives and senators consistently report as the most influential ways a constituent can sway their opinion.

If you don’t know how to do these things right now, that’s not a problem. Before I learned how to raise my voice, I was a stay-at-home mom who didn’t even know the names of my senators. I only knew that my community and my world allowed babies in poverty to suffer from poor health and I wanted to help. By getting involved with reputable advocacy organizations like RESULTS, I was able to receive training, support, and inspiration to become a skilled advocate. In time, I learned to effectively advise policy makers, guiding them towards decisions that improve access to education, health, and economic opportunity.

Richard Smiley and I meet with Senator Durbin about
microfinance to help the poorest families of the world.

What could we accomplish together if we could channel outrage and dissent into deliberate actions to change the future in positive ways? The possibilities are endless. Look at the massive problem of global poverty, widely regarded as unsolvable. Years of coordinated volunteer advocacy have pressured the U.S. to partner with other countries on global health, nutrition, and education programs. Since 1990, the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide has been cut by more than half! With enough engaged citizens creating the political will to stand up for ourselves and people in need, there is no limit to the good we could do.

It is critical that we empower ourselves with the skills needed to speak out to the presidential administration and our members of Congress. Compassionate civic engagement is what our situation demands of us today. Together, we can navigate the combative ugliness of our time by rising above it. It’s time to move beyond the random. We can shape the future by committing to strategic acts of kindness.

Letters to the Editor: Got Patience?

I want to get down a few words about writing letters to the editor (LTE's). I've been in this game now coming up on a year soon and sometimes it seems like forever. Most of the work is reading, skimming, searching for poverty news and op-eds to respond to...which can be few and far between when it has to compete with Britney (although it is picking up lately). Some of us in Bread for the World keep in touch with each other through email and breadblog.org, notifying each other when something juicy comes up to be responded to. We view ourselves as being part of a movement. We write so that many letters- ours combined with with those of members of ONE, Results and other advocacy orgs- will convince the editors of the newspapers that the issue is important enough to run a letter about it. On any given issue, my letter may not and probably will not run, but if I see someone else's anti-poverty message get in, I know that's because all of us helped put it there.

But what about getting my own voice in the national conversation? It can be pretty depressing and lonely work trying to get something printed in a national publication. A while ago, I was celebrating a printed letter to the editor of mine in the New York Times on-line. That was a really big deal to me. That came about after about 8 months of writing, 40 submitted LTE's, and I don't even know how many 1/2 written and abandoned ones. But it got in and that was a thrill! One that I owe to all the other writers who said about the same thing that I did that week.

In a way, I think this is the perfect kind of service work for me to be doing. Only when I consider myself as part of a movement does any of this make sense. This work has been for me a social justice outlet, a hobby, a writing exercise, and a lesson. A lesson in patience and humility. One that I could have benefitted from many years ago, but I gladly accept now.

Presidential campaign=gamble for Social Justice

My letter to the editor of the Morton Grove Champion ran today in response to a columnist that proposed that Obama, Clinton and McCain should stop campaigning now and give all their campaign money to the homeless. He gave a lot of good facts about domestic poverty and I felt I should give a response to let the Champion know that people care about poverty issues, no matter how outrageous the premise of the column was originally :)
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Morton Grove Champion
Feb 28, 2008

"Thanks for attention to poverty issues"

Thanks to Paul Sassone for giving space to poverty issues on February 14th. I am all for increased donations to help the homeless. The numbers he mentioned from campaign spending would do much for people at risk for basic needs. Yet this is a gamble for stakes far larger than that. A half-billion is relatively small compared to the good that could come of policy changes that fight global and domestic poverty. For starters, under consideration this year will be a $5 billion dollar increase for more and better poverty-focused development aid to help people living on less than $1 a day. Healthcare reform, better education for urban poor, funding for food stamps
these are all domestic changes which can save wasteful spending and use tax money for the most good. When candidates and their supporters put their money on the line for a social justice gamble of this scale, it puts spending in perspective. If someone doesn’t feel his or her candidate is involved in this, it’s probably time to look for another candidate.

-ccyl

I am in the New York Times! (online)

Yahoo! It ran on the website! Now, the printed version did not run it, but the 2 well-written letters in the paper are right beside mine on the web. I feel there is no shame in having to cede print space to Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi! In fact, it may well be _because_ she wrote that the NY Times chose to run responses to this particular op-ed. Despite how she behaved on the Farm Bill, I am still honored to share space with her on this issue. Here are the 5 letters that ran on the web, including mine...

To the Editor:

“Poverty Is Poison,” by Paul Krugman (column, Feb. 18), echoes what members of Congress heard at a national summit meeting about child development that Democrats convened last year. Children who grow up in poverty have a much lower chance of success in school and in life, but investments in early childhood development help to even the odds, offering hope and opportunity where little existed before.

The despair that poverty brings to millions of American children compels us to take a serious and sustained national approach. Last year’s bipartisan revamping of the Head Start program to focus on early intervention was huge progress; now we need to do the hard work of making sure this important initiative is financed.

Other solutions can be found in our tax policy — we can reward parents struggling to lift their families out of poverty.

Democrats insisted that the recent economic stimulus package include rebate checks for 35 million families who work but earn too little to pay federal income tax, and we included additional benefits for families with children. The approach of these recovery rebates is similar to that of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is widely recognized as one of America’s most effective anti-poverty policies.

Poverty is indeed poison — to the children who fall prey to it, and to the future strength of our nation. With a singularity of purpose, America can develop an antidote.

Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
Washington, Feb. 20, 2008

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To the Editor:

Paul Krugman is right that the “War on Poverty” 44 years ago had a positive effect by reducing poverty, particularly among children. That this effort to improve the lives of millions of Americans was derailed by reactionary politics couldn’t be more true.

In the late 1960s, I was responsible for coordinating federal antipoverty programs for the six states of the Northeast at the United States Office of Economic Opportunity. I saw firsthand the positive effects of programs like Head Start, the Job Corps and the Neighborhood Youth Corps — designed to help children and teenagers.

I also witnessed the cynical, systematic attacks on these programs by Richard M. Nixon and his point man, Spiro T. Agnew. The phony rhetoric they used to stigmatize the programs was passed along by the media. Thus, “economic opportunity” programs became “minority” and then “welfare dependency” ones. The reality was that two-thirds of the poor being served were white.

Nixon severely weakened the national initiatives, and then Ronald Reagan abolished the coordinated federal effort altogether in 1981. (At the time I was chairman of the president’s National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity.) The consequence: four million Americans were driven into poverty, most of whom were women and children.

Poverty is poison, and politics can be toxic.

Arthur I. Blaustein
Berkeley, Calif., Feb. 18, 2008

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To the Editor:

Paul Krugman helps shatter the myth that there is nothing we can do about poverty. Too many people think that the state of poverty in America is inevitable, never questioning what we can do to change it nor looking at the inspiring progress of other industrialized nations.

I believe that it is possible not only to end poverty in the United States, but also to end extreme poverty around the globe within our lifetime. Our country can help make this happen by passing the Global Poverty Act and holding ourselves accountable for our part in achieving the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

ccyl


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To the Editor:

Having worked in Newark for over a decade, I am bewildered that people could believe that poor Americans are not that poor.

Poverty anywhere is not a fixed notion but a relationship between the resources available to the general public and the resources available to the poor. From health care and nutrition to transportation and access to good schools, poor children and their families struggle every minute of every day. Those who do climb out of poverty have done so with immense and uncommon personal effort. Not everyone is so gifted.

John Edwards did indeed set the stage for Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton to follow on this matter.

Jo Ann Joseph
Glen Ridge, N.J., Feb. 18, 2008

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To the Editor:

In a new study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania, cognitive neuroscientists found that while stories were being read to children of poverty, they were “less able to screen out noises embedded in the stories” than were children from more affluent families. Such evidence suggests that cognitive skills are strongly influenced by environment.

Since distractions of all kinds, including those that stem from difficult home environments and antisocial street behaviors, are a constant in the lives or many poor children, it is no wonder that their reading test scores suffer. Nor is it then surprising that as a consequence, dropouts and suspensions are disproportionate among minority children, especially black boys.

Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, now all but forgotten, needs to be revived by our next president.

Jerrold Ross
Jamaica, Queens, Feb. 18, 2008

Getting Closer: Could I be in the NY TImes soon?

I got an email that the NY Times is considering a letter of mine today! It might be published in the paper, on the web, both, or neither. My letter to the editor was in response to the "Poverty is Poison" op-ed that ran this week (see earlier post to read about that) and here is my response that may run. Whee!

To the Editor:
Paul Krugman helps shatter the myth that there is nothing we can do about poverty. Too many people think that the state of poverty in America is inevitable, never questioning what we can do to change it nor looking at the inspiring progress of other industrialized nations.
I believe that it is possible not only to end poverty in the United States, but also to end extreme poverty around the globe within our lifetime. Our country can help make this happen by passing the Global Poverty Act and holding ourselves accountable for our part in achieving the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

"Weed it and Reap" response

Yay! The NY Times posted a letter to the editor in response to Michael Pollan's op-ed. It wasn't mine, but that's how advocates work together. If we all send in enough letters, it proves there is enough interest in a topic to print even one. This one had a very clever NY baseball analogy and was written by the Exec Director of the NYC Coalition of Hunger, so it's fitting the NY Times chose his.
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Hunger and the Farm Bill
Published: November 12, 2007
To the Editor:

In “Weed It and Reap” (Op-Ed, Nov. 4), Michael Pollan claims that environmentalists and the “hunger lobby” were bought off on the farm bill, giving our support to the harmful “elephant in the room” — agribusiness subsidies — in exchange for financing for conservation programs and food stamps, which he derides as merely “fleas.”

But blaming us for bad farm bills is like blaming long-suffering Mets fans seated in the far upper deck at Shea Stadium for the team’s overpaid players and year-end collapse.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, agribusinesses contributed more than $399 million to federal political campaigns between 1990 and 2006. In contrast, even when some antihunger groups (like mine) risk alienating donors by opposing corporate farm welfare, we hardly have an impact on this big-money debate.

Considering that the food stamp program helps more than 26 million Americans each month, it is no mere “flea.” Fighting to help millions avoid starvation, antihunger advocates take what we can get.

Joel Berg
Executive Director, New York City Coalition Against Hunger
New York, Nov. 4, 2007

Michael Pollan gets an LTE from me (if the NYTimes would print it)

Michael Pollan wrote another stellar article about the state of the Farm Bill and why it affects every single American. Man, I love that guy! Here's the link...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/opinion/04pollan.html?ex=1194843600&en=5c0cb0a3e48e7c8e&ei=5070&emc=eta1
Yet there was one part that I had trouble with: "And then the farm lobby did what it has always done: bought off its critics with “programs.” For that reason “Americans who eat” can expect some nutritious crumbs from the farm bill, just enough to ensure that reform-minded legislators will hold their noses and support it. It’s an old story: the “hunger lobby” gets its food stamps so long as the farm lobby can have its subsidies. " Hey now! Mr Pollan, you are the Dude, but let's not be hasty. I don't have a direct Pollan hot-line to talk to him, but I am a media activist. So here's my letter-to-the-editor for him, though it may never be printed:
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Michael Pollan is a hero of mine. He gave us another splendid piece in “Weed it and Reap” on 11/4. However, I take issue with his insinuation that the “hunger lobby” was bought off by food stamp funding. As an active member of an anti-poverty advocacy group, I do not feel in any way satisfied with the current state of Farm Bill negotiations. ‘Irritated,’ ‘dismayed,’ ‘angered,’ or ‘betrayed’ could all accurately describe how I personally feel about it. Even if many democratic representatives were bought off, the grassroots hunger lobby wasn’t. Bread for the World sent out a call to action last week for members to urge their senators to support the Lugar/Lautenberg and Grassley/Dorgan amendments, the same amendments Pollan cites as opportunities for improvement. We stand together on this, Mr. Pollan. We are for eating and eating well.

Greater Chicago Food Depository letter to Chicago Trib

This is a letter to the editor in the Chicago Trib today from Kate Maehr and H Dennis Smith of the Greater Chicago Food Depository and the Northern Illinois Food Bank Association, respectively.
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Fighting hunger

Hunger is one of the most pressing-and solvable-problems facing Illinois and our nation.

One in 10 Americans is hungry or at risk of hunger, and more than 1 million people in Illinois are hungry. The Illinois Food Bank Association, a coalition of eight America's Second Harvest food banks covering every part of our state, is working every day to provide food for hungry people. Each year, the members of the association provide approximately 80 million pounds of food to those in need. We feed nearly 1 million people each year and many are surprised to learn that nearly 40 percent of the families we serve are working households.

Yet more help is still needed and combating hunger effectively is a mission that needs involvement and commitment from all of us. In addition to the many individual donors, foundations and corporations that support food assistance efforts, the federal government also has an important role to play in ending hunger.

Legislation introduced by U.S. Reps. James McGovern (D-Mass.) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), the Feeding America's Families Act, is an important step forward. This bill would provide a much needed boost for federal nutrition programs over the next five years.

The nutrition title of the 2007 Farm Bill recently passed out of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Nutrition with many of the important improvements outlined in the act. We applaud this first step toward a stronger response to hunger.

We encourage everyone to think about what he or she can do to end hunger. Individuals can hold a food drive, donate or volunteer. Together we can end hunger in our community.

Katherine R. Maehr

Executive director

Greater Chicago Food Depository

President

Illinois Food Bank Association

H. Dennis Smith

Executive director

Northern Illinois Food Bank

Director

Illinois Food Bank Association

Chicago