Last night NBC Nightly
News used a newly released Feeding America report on hunger in America in 2014
as a jumping off point to report on the need of many military families to
subsidize their income through visits to food banks. See
the story here @ ow.ly/AqR2R
The Feeding America report
covered a lot of additional ground, showing that Feeding America’s network of
emergency food assistance providers serves 5.4 million Americans each week and
a total of 46.5 million over a year. It describes the choices that many have to
make between food and medical, rent, utilities and transportation costs.
But NBC focused on one
of the more surprising aspects of hunger in America which is the number of
enlisted military families, defending our freedom, who are not free themselves
from hunger and want. You can’t watch
the NBC report without feeling that something has gone terribly wrong not only
for the families involved but for our entire society if we are not able to provide
a basic level of support for even the soldiers who have volunteered to protect
and defend us.
The NBC report reminded
me of the way Martin Luther King advanced the struggle for civil rights by highlighting
the gap between our ideals and our reality, by shaming once indifferent
Americans for not living up to their own ideals.
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