On the 50th anniversary of LBJ's "war on poverty" bill

This week makes the 50^th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson signing the legislation that enacted his “war on poverty” into law.  During his remarks in the Rose Garden on that morning of August 20, 1964, LBJ said: “we will reach into all the pockets of poverty and help our people find their footing for a long climb toward a better way of life.”  That climb has turned out to be steeper than LBJ or anyone else might have imagined.  Today 46 million Americans live below the poverty line compared to 30 million Americans when Johnson was in office. Renewed presidential leadership is needed and awaited to complete the journey.

From last night's wreath laying ceremony at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on 70th anniversary of D-Day

            Today is the 70^th anniversary of D-Day, one of those rare world-changing events that actually live up to such a phrase.  Last night, 70 years to the moment that our transports were approaching Normandy and paratroopers were dropping behind enemy lines; Share Our Strength was part of a small group participating in a wreath laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. 

We were the only nonprofit included among Washington’s most prominent business leaders. We’d been invited by the Greater Washington Board of Trade, in no small part due to their great respect for our colleague Tamra McGraw.  I like to also think they recognize Share Our Strength for a different but important form of service to our nation. Our host was Major General Jeffrey Buchanan who served with both the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101 Airborne and is currently Commanding General of the Military District of Washington DC.

 

General Buchanan and his colleagues explained the rigorous commitment of the “tomb sentinels” who comprise the 24 hour a day honor guard. They volunteer for the assignment despite being held to almost impossibly high standards.  They are measured on more than 100 criteria from the crease in their slacks to the alignment of their eyes. If anything is more than 1/64^th of an inch off they are cited for a deficiency. Two deficiencies means being taken off honor guard duty.

 

In 1984, on the 40^th anniversary of D-Day, General Buchanan was then a young soldier selected to parachute on to Omaha beach in commemoration of the Americans who gave their lives to liberate France and turn the tide of World War II.  He paused to gaze at Arlington’s 400,000 graves behind him. “This really is sacred ground” he said with a sweep of his hand. He asked that we think about those men today.  And he reminded us that from General Eisenhower on down, no one had any idea or guarantee, how things would turn out.

When the ceremony ended around 6:00, I excused myself from dinner with General Buchanan and the Board of Trade and instead walked the deserted roads to Section 60 which is reserved for those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.  On the other wide of the cemetery, far from the crowd of veterans, tourists and others who had gathered at our wreath laying ceremony, only two small families of four or five huddled together around gravestones about 50 yards apart.

From a distance they could barely be distinguished among the field of white headstones, but as one got closer you could see their arms around each other’s shoulders and heads bowed.   Sacrifice and faith and honoring memory were not history lessons for them, so much as the oxygen they breathe. I had walked over to visit one grave in particular, the son of a family friend, but two hours later as the sun set I was still standing among them all.

 

 

A Pulitzer Prize for Giving Voice to the Voiceless

 I sent a note of congratulations last week to Eli Saslow of the Washington Post after he won a Pulitzer Prize for “Explanatory Reporting” for a series he wrote about people and communities struggling with hunger and utilizing food stamps.   http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2014-Explanatory-Reporting  

 

His response to my email was characterized by both humility and genuine appreciation for what we have worked so hard to achieve through our No Kid Hungry campaign:  “If, in some small way, the stories have helped advance your great, important work, then that is worth far more than any prize. I'm grateful to get to write about the problems you all are working to solve.”

 

If you don’t have time to read the series you can get a good sense for its power from The Washington Post’s one page letter to the Pulitzer committee nominating Saslow.  See @ http://www.pulitzer.org/files/2014/explanatory-reporting/saslow/saslowletter.pdf

 

In talking to his Post colleagues about the people he wrote about and who “I owe the most to” he explained: “They’re the ones who take the huge risk. It’s a huge act of courage to have somebody call, who you don’t know, from out of town, and say that they want to come be with you constantly in sort of, you know, every corner of your life in this moment where things are usually not going well and there’s a lot at stake. That’s an incredible thing to ask of people, and yet they say yes, and I wonder a lot about that because I’m not sure I’d be the person who said yes. And I think it’s because people are so — they really crave to be understood and they want to know that what they’re dealing with matters. And I think our journalism should validate that and it should take good care of the trust they’re giving us to come into their lives.”

 

Saslow is 31 years old and hopefully represents a new generation of reporters committed to bearing witness and giving voice to the voiceless. 

“The key to the future is finding the positive stories and getting people to tell them to each other.”

Last week I was in New York to speak at a social entrepreneurship forum that took its name, Go Big or Go Home, from one of the articles I’d written about our No Kid Hungry strategy.  As I was walking toward the event at an NYU auditorium on Washington Square I passed another building, the Judson Memorial Church that had a quote on the wall that caught my eye. It was from Pete Seeger, the folk singer who died earlier this year at the age of 94, and one of my long-time heroes.  It said: “The key to the future is finding the positive stories and getting people to tell them to each other.” 

 

The nature of songwriting is to take an experience or idea and boil it down to its essence and Seeger’s words did exactly that. I stopped and scribbled them down because his sentiments felt like a wonderful reinforcement of exactly what we’ve been doing: at the NGA summit in Detroit, with our new partner Good Housekeeping, in our videos about school breakfast, in our recruiting for Dine Out at the Restaurant Leadership Conference in Arizona, on our Facebook page and Twitter feed, in the best practices that Community Wealth Partners share with clients, and in so many other ways.

 

We’re not just finding the positive stories, we’re creating them. But Seeger’s point is that is not enough. People are inspired by learning of positive outcomes, what works, knowing a problem is solvable, and by those who hold themselves accountable for solving it. Small steps forward play as valuable a role as the large. And so we must continue to find ways to not just create or find the positive stories but also be about “getting people to tell them to each other.”

 

  By the way, Judson Memorial Church is worth checking out whenever you are in NY. It was built in 1892 and financed by John D Rockefeller, designed by legendary architect Stanford White and includes 17 spectacular stained glass windows by the master of that art form, John LaFarge.  It pursues a comprehensive social justice agenda. And it quotes Pete Seeger.

Goose Rocks Beach at First Light on New Year's Day

 

There’s nothing like watching dawn break over Goose Rocks Beach in Maine.  The first sign of light on the horizon is as thin as the white line you see in the crack under a door. Darkness and desolation yield to the emerging outlines of an ocean teeming with life and alive in its own right, coming into focus like an old TV only our parents would remember. This morning the clouds seem to rise out of the ocean toward the sky: fierce, dark and with the jagged edges of uncombed hair.

 The seals are happy to have the place to themselves. They bob in front of the house, venturing closer than we ever see in summer. 

 We took a walk yesterday during the brief period when the mercury made it to 34 degrees. The sun was out and it was pleasant so long as the wind was at our backs. Rosemary and I were bundled from head to toe.  Nate frolicked as joyfully as the seals, wearing only a t-shirt and relishing the sensation.

 The wrack line of dried seaweed was filled with moon snail shells and we collected half a dozen for the bowl that serves as our dining table’s centerpiece.  

 The moon snail has always fascinated me, for the meticulous manner in which it deposits and protects its eggs, and for the brutality of its predatory behavior, all but invisible above the surface of the sand.  It’s able to wrap its expandable foot around a clam and then use its radula, a kind of biological Swiss army knife, to drill a hole into the bivalve’s shell, and insert a tube to suck out and digest the clam. (To see them in all their grandeur go to @ http://ow.ly/say4B )

 A nature writer named Barbara Hurd who teaches at the University of Southern Maine writes about the moon snail as an example of how “beauty recedes when hunger intensifies.”  I like this discovery of a new way of thinking for the New Year: the work of Share Our Strength as protecting and preserving nature’s beauty.  Recalling the faces of first graders we’ve seen eating breakfast from Baltimore to Los Angeles, I can’t think of a better way to describe what we do.

A New Year ritual of renewal

It is the season of both ritual and renewal. While our family is not especially observant when it comes to religion we do adhere to ritual:

-          Every Sunday we read aloud and discuss the NY Times wedding of the week

-          Each Thanksgiving Day we watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles with John Candy and Steve Martin

-          At every meal Nate and my niece Sofie try to sneak some ketchup onto whatever I am eating

-          Every December we take Nate to New York for two days of Rockefeller Center, FAO Swartz, art museums, Share Our Strength restaurants, etc.

-          Every December 28 we eat dinner at Rialto on the anniversary of our wedding reception there and every December 29 we drive to Maine for three quiet, cold days at the beach to see in the new year.

There is comfort in ritual.  But to ensure against too much comfort, one of my personal rituals on the cusp of each new year is to re-read a speech that John Gardner delivered to McKinsey and Co in Phoenix, Arizona in November of 1990.  Gardner was Secretary of Health Education and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, and later a co-founder of Independent Sector as well as Common Cause. He wrote several books on leadership and human potential.

Gardner’s speaks about the need to push oneself beyond the familiar, beyond conventional thinking, and to instead constantly renew.  A few favorite excepts follow below:

-          “Everyone wants to be interesting -- but the vitalizing thing is to be interested. Keep a sense of curiosity. Discover new things. Care. Risk failure. Reach out.”

-          “Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt…You have to build meaning into your life, and you build it through your commitments -- whether to your religion, to an ethical order as you conceive it, to your life's work, to loved ones, to your fellow humans. Your identity is what you've committed yourself to.”

-          “There are men and women who make the world better just by being the kind of people they are --and that too is a kind of commitment. They have the gift of kindness or courage or loyalty or integrity. It matters very little whether they're behind the wheel of a truck or running a country store or bringing up a family.”

-          “Someone defined horse sense as the good judgment horses have that prevents them from betting on people. But we have to bet on people -- and I place my bets more often on high motivation than on any other quality except judgment. There is no perfection of techniques that will substitute for the lift of spirit and heightened performance that comes from strong motivation. The world is moved by highly motivated people, by enthusiasts, by men and women who want something very much or believe very much.”

-          “We … must not suppose that the path will be easy, it's tough. Life is painful, and rain falls on the just, and Mr. Churchill was not being a pessimist when he said "I have nothing to offer, but blood, toil, tears and sweat." He had a great deal more to offer, but as a good leader he was saying it wasn't going to be easy, and he was also saying something that all great leaders say constantly -- that failure is simply a reason to strengthen resolve.”

-          “Nothing is ever finally safe. Every important battle is fought and re-fought. We need to develop a resilient, indomitable morale that enables us to face those realities and still strive with every ounce of energy to prevail. You may wonder if such a struggle -- endless and of uncertain outcome -- isn't more than humans can bear. But all of history suggests that the human spirit is well fitted to cope with just that kind of world.”

-           “I can tell you that for renewal, a tough-minded optimism is best. The future is not shaped by people who don't really believe in the future. Men and women of vitality have always been prepared to bet their futures, even their lives, on ventures of unknown outcome. If they had all looked before they leaped, we would still be crouched in caves sketching animal pictures on the wall.”

I find much in here that resonates personally and much that applies to our No Kid Hungry campaign. You will find the entire speech @ http://www.pbs.org/johngardner/sections/writings_speech_1.html  There is obvious paradox in the idea of ritual and renewal, just as there is in the fact that I can’t wait for the holiday break, but also can’t wait to get started again in 2014.  We have an amazing new year ahead of us. Thanks again for the support and generosity that got us here. My best to you and your family for the holidays.

Letter From Zavala County

           Greetings from Zavala County in southwest Texas, “the spinach capital of the world”, replete with an annual spinach festival and two statues of Popeye by the town square. You might expect a place where all children eat healthy and grow strong, but  instead the child poverty rate is close to 50%, more than twice the national average and the L.A. Times reports that “The highest rate of food-insecure children (in the nation) is in Zavala County, Texas, where 83% of youths are in some jeopardy.”   

 Thanks to Chuck and Katie Dooley, and our partners at The Texas Hunger Initiative and the San Antonio Food Bank, I came down a day before a scheduled speech in Austin to visit schools, teachers and social workers. Our agenda was to learn and bear witness, and explore whether we can bring back a larger group of leaders in 2014. We flew into San Antonio, and drove a couple of hours through semi-arid brush land of mesquite trees and cacti, to Crystal City, the county seat.

            Maggie Flores runs school food service for 2000 students in four schools.  She sees hunger through the eyes of “the ladies” who work for her.  They struggle to feed their own kids, taking home only $800 a month after taxes. Many work a second job after their 6:00 a.m. to 2;00 p.m. shift. The raise they are expecting will be their first in seven years. Jobs are scarce and mostly at the Corrections Center, and the Del Monte canning factory paying a low hourly wage. Some find work in new oil fields 12 miles away, where fracking turned Carrizo Springs into a boom town a few years ago.  The result is enormous  wealth for a few far-away corporations, but a higher cost of living for all who actually live here, with rents increasing from $400 a month to the $1200 a month that oil company employees can afford.

            School breakfast participation is low across the county for the usual reasons. Four years ago Flores tried breakfast in the classroom but teachers mishandled the paperwork. That put reimbursement at risk. The experiment was cancelled.

            There is no food bank in town, although the San Antonio Food Bank holds a mobile food distribution once a month. Cars  lined up there as far as we could see. Summer school includes meals for 30 days but otherwise there’s no rec center, Boys and Girls Club, or other facility to serve as a summer meals site. We asked where families turn for help. “They bunk up together”, state rep Tracy King said, “doubling up to save on rent is their only option.”

            On our way to the elementary school cafeteria, Principal Sonia Zyla told us how she’d reversed poor attendance rates, and tried to get the faculty to model behavior of good attendance and punctuality. “My mantra is Honor Our Time whether it’s the time we set for meetings, or the time we have to do this important work together.”

            We learned of the impact of HeadStart cuts, children “strategically failing” so that they could attend summer school for the meals, and one social worker’s lament with regard to obesity and poor nutrition: “I wish they would teach them how to shop.”

            So close to the newly booming oil fields, but so far from benefitting directly or indirectly, Zavala County is but an isolated example of an increasingly dominant aspect of American life: economic growth that benefits a relative few, while the struggle of hard working families persists. This week a new study from UC Berkeley reported that in 2012 the top ten percent of earners took home more than half of the country’s total income – the highest recorded level ever.  The top one percent took more than one-fifth of the income earned by Americans.

There is a price for such inequality, and in the short-term that price gets paid by those most vulnerable, least able to afford it, and least responsible for their plight– children like those  we visited at Zavala Elementary. They pay for it through compromised health, poor literacy, and lack of opportunity. In the long run we all pay –  because we can’t have a strong America with weak kids.

After decades of bearing witness, not much surprises any more, But there was one thing: no one we met asked us for support, grants, or assistance of any kind.  It was as if decades of struggling on their own had conditioned them not to expect it. We saw the hope and determination that always characterizes places we think of as Hinges of Hope.  But imagination in Zavala County has been depleted by the oppressive heat of a scorching sun combined with the cold indifference of America’s new Gilded Age.

            And that’s why we went: to learn, to bear witness, and to make sure they knew that others cared and hoped to help make a difference.