Thank you all for being here and special thanks to
the team at Share Our Strength – Derrick, Stephanie, Duke and Courtney and so
many others, as well as Arbys and C&S Wholesale Grocers for sponsoring and
making possible this convening. I am
also so grateful to Secretary Tom Vilsack and Under Secretary Kevin Concannon
not only for being here today, but for the long and compassionate leadership
you’ve provided and which we are going to sorely miss. You’ve made such a
difference in the lives of America’s kids.
The
next few days will be rich in information about how we can be more effective
and successful in ensuring that the vital nutrition kids receive during the
school year is not cruelly and damagingly interrupted over the summer. The expertise that has come together in this
room is unparalleled. If there is any group anywhere that can make it happen,
this is it.
I want to focus my remarks
on what’s at stake in our success, and how we navigate the new political
environment.
I’ll
begin my sharing some words from some young students that made a big impression
on me. Like many of you I spend a lot of time in schools. And recently while I
was speaking to a 6th grade class, I was asked these two questions: “Are
you able to serve the children and families you work with, without embarrassing
them?” and “Do you get to seen and know the children and families you serve and
do they feel seen or do they feel invisible to you?”
It
seems to me that these two questions sum up what we are fighting for and why: Ensuring that every child is visible, every
child knows and sees and feels our commitment to them, and that we make these
investments in ways that don’t discriminate or embarrass, but rather honor and
lift up children and ensure their dignity. That’s the best argument I know for ensuring
that summer meals work for every child that’s eligible – and they are not
wondering whether their food will come from when out of school, nor subject to
the vagaries of emergency food assistance.
Tomorrow
will be a month since the election of Donald Trump as President. Many of us have been asked what the election
results mean for our work and for the goal of achieving No Kid Hungry. And
while a lot is still unknown, I think it means at least the following five things:
First, our focus will
remain where it has been so productively aimed these past few years: on the
states and governors, both Democrat and Republican, who are responsible for
executing programs like school breakfast and summer meals. In a new political
environment where many essential resources are at risk of going away for
children, the public food and nutrition programs which have such a track record
of bipartisan support and effectiveness, may offer states one of the most
economical and impactful way of investing in healthy and well educated kids. And as you and I have seen, at the local level
citizens are less ideological, more pragmatic, more willing to invest and
sacrifice for kids in their community. As much as we hope for shortcuts, we may
have to continue the long hard slog that has led to an increase of tens of
thousands of summer meals sites.
Second, we must
rededicate ourselves to bearing witness, to seeking a better understanding of
our country and its citizens and their needs, to understanding the truth of
America, which includes 31 million kids at or near poverty, and many families
struggling in an economy that does not provide them with good paying jobs. You
are in of the most powerful positions in this country because you can see,
hear, feel and touch what hunger looks like. And you must make it your job to
take others – civic leaders, business leaders, journalists – into the community
to bear witness too.
Third, although the
political pendulum has swung dramatically, Washington can’t get much more
partisan than it has already been these past 8 years, with one side proposing
and the other all but automatically opposing.
But that hasn’t stopped us from working in a bipartisan fashion on
behalf of children and child nutrition, and we will continue to do so.
Fourth, the best
defense is a good offense. Our No Kid Hungry community must do more than
oppose proposed policy changes although oppose them we will when it comes to
threats to children. We must remain on offense, and not be afraid to advocate
for big ideas or even expensive ones, as opposed to retrenching to only focus
on fighting budget cuts or bad proposals. If there is greater economic
growth and massive infrastructure investment, then we will need a strong,
healthy and educated workforce to make it happen and sustain it. An
element of any infrastructure plan should be to pay for school conversions to
breakfast in the classroom, building summer meals sites, revamping WIC clinics,
and investing in early childhood health and education. While our values remain the same, there are
more politically savvy ways to frame our role in the national conversation,
emphasizing Return On Investment, human capital, efficiency, which we should
have been talking about all along.
Fifth
and finally, our political culture has evolved from unpleasantly divided to
unacceptably ugly. It is undeniable that
we’ve seen bigotry, misogyny and racism become more accepted and normalized. Leave
aside where the blame may lie, but make no mistake, this not only stands in the
way of our specific goals, but it also transcends them in importance. We have
an obligation to make the values that have always been implicit in our work,
explicit. We need not and should not do so in a partisan, divisive or finger
pointing way. But we must say out loud
that our values of inclusiveness and diversity mean that when we say No Kid Hungry
we mean No Kid. No city kid and no rural kid. No Baptist child and no Muslim child.
No fifth generation American child and no immigrant American child. No straight
kid and no gay kid. No white or black or
Latino kid. And while we must work with anyone, from any party, from any
Administration who is willing to join us in combatting the politics and
bureaucracy and indifference that too often stand between a hungry child and a
healthy meal, there will be no ambiguity about our values.
I
urge all of our colleagues in the public, nonprofit and civic sectors to do the
same. Whether their work is poverty or climate change, health care or hunger,
We face a new moral imperative. It’s a tough assignment. We’ve succeeded by
sticking to our knitting. And it is tempting to continue to do so. Speaking out against hate speech is the job
of the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center and other
organizations. It’s their core competence, not ours. But when such behavior begins to flourish out
in the open as it has and is, we can’t leave it to others to defend the very
people we seek to serve, and work alongside.
The universal human dignity that
those 6th graders so keenly understood must be the underpinning for
what we do and how we do it.
So
thank you for the experience and wisdom you bring here today. Thank you for the
hard work and commitment that will be required going forward. Remember the words of Poet Gwendolyn Brooks
that are inscribed on the plaque we will be presenting to Secretary Vilsack: “We
are each other’s harvest. We are each other’s business. We are each other’s
magnitude. And bond. “
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