my fellow americans

Last year, in this our Valley of Heart's Delight, a total of 90 million meals were provided to those neighbors of ours who were struggling to feed themselves. 90 million meals. Can you imagine? This is truly a remarkable feat … but not because of how much food was made available.

In order to have fed all those in need—the children and adults, the seniors, the disabled, those working two and three jobs without a living wage—238 million meals were required. 90 million were provided. The additional food that was needed, food that was stored in warehouses and piled high on the shelves of grocery stores but not made available to the hungry, is enough to feed the full population of Sunnyvale for an entire year.

We have long thought of America as the most bounteous of nations … [t]hat hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable. More is at stake here than the health and well being of [millions of] American children…. Something like the very honor of American democracy is involved.

(President Richard Nixon, May 6, 1969)

I am not in the habit of invoking President Nixon for moral authority, but there it is. And I find it extremely discomfiting to be put into ethical defensiveness by his words … yet I can’t dispute them.

So where did the 90 million meals that our community provided come from?

· 41% came from food stamps

· 21% came from soup kitchens and pantries

· 19% came from school nutrition programs

· 15% came from Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)

· 4% came from other sources

Over the course of 2009, an average of 2500 Californians lost their jobs each day. At Sacred Heart we have gone from serving 15,000 people per month to 26,000. The needs are crushing, and there is no way we could continue to provide for these burgeoning numbers without the support of our community. But the needs have outstripped what our traditional sources of support are able to provide.

Our pantry program is now relying on the temporary influx of federal stimulus resources to augment our established food sources. Nearly 10,000 of those we now serve each month are receiving food provided specifically from the federal stimulus program. However, this source of supplemental nutrition is scheduled to end abruptly on September 30th of this year. The hunger of those who are coming to us with nowhere else to turn knows no such abrupt cessation.

Ultimately, we must recognize that neither we, nor all the non-profit feeding programs in the valley combined, can come close to ending hunger in our community. Food stamps, school meals, and WIC all play critical roles in providing nourishment to some of the most vulnerable members of our society. If we can agree with President Nixon that the hunger of our children, the elderly, the disabled—of anyone—is intolerable, then we need to strengthen the entire safety net, not merely one strand.