Letters of Hope, October 15, 2010

By Bob Giuliano

(retired United Church minister turned writer)

"How much do you make?" I asked the young man. "Eleven dollars an hour," he grinned. "Bonuses if I’m lucky. Not many." "How do you live on that?" "Very carefully’" he replied. "Very carefully !" "Do you ever use the food bank?" "I use everything !" he said.

I didn’t pursue the questioning. I know that he lives with some friends who share rent and try to save enough to go to school. He has registered twice for Georgian, but can’t get enough together to get going. He has an eleven dollar an hour job, ‘part time’ so that his employer doesn’t pay benefits. He gets discouraged.
He is just one of the working poor who use the free lunches in town, and the food bank. College age kids with hopes, some skills and ambitions, struggling along.

There are families where both dad and mom have low paying jobs in retail or labor. Lucky if they both can stay well enough to keep their jobs. The kids are in school. But they are often hungry. They use the food bank.

Most of the working poor do not read the newspapers. They can’t afford them. They don’t keep up on the municipal elections. The poor don’t go to candidates meetings or meetings with mayors. They haven’t the energy or the hope that things might be different.

The poor don’t vote. They see these municipal elections as being about privileged folks, special interest groups, like the Down Town Improvement Association, business people, the Police and Firemen, the builders and developers and real estate folks. These elections, to the poor, are for the rich and the shrinking middle class, the folks who own their homes, who have a voice.

The issues people are arguing about don’t affect the working poor much. They can’t see how all the talk will improve their state of mind. Democracy is not about the common wealth, the common good. Democracy is about special interest groups lobbying for policy that will continue to keep them at the money river.

Funny thing happened in the municipal and county elections down in Oxford County. Candidates for the job of mayor in Ingersoll and Woodstock as well as candidates for various municipal and county councils agreed to buy and live on Food Bank food. Their commitment was to eat nothing but the box of Food Bank food for five full days. No supplements. No alcohol. No snacks at Tim’s.
Several candidates begged off for a variety of reasons. Some said they couldn’t do it because they were diabetic or had special health problems. Of course that is precisely the issue. The poor, having to use the Food Bank, have multiple health problems too that cannot be addressed by a box of food packed without awareness of their particular needs. They get sicker.

The mayors and candidates in Oxford County have accepted the challenge and entered the trial with courage and willingness to learn. It is not easy for them, but they are learning about dried soups so full of salt that the blood pressure goes sky high and out of date foods that are sometimes too dry and hard to dissolve or be eaten.

No one wants it to be that way, but the bent cans and the out of date food is what the grocery stores dump into the Food Bank system. Folks at the Food Bank do a magnificent job, collecting and distributing the best of what they get and try to balance things, giving folks as much variety as possible. It is a matter of hunger once every four to six weeks, when the money has run out and there is no food in the house. The children are crying.
The courage of the Oxford County politicians to eat Food Bank food for five days is meant to alert politicians who may forget the needs of those who don’t vote. If the Mayor and council have survived on beans that could not be shaken from the can it may give hope that someone understands.

Will our candidates consider the common wealth and the need of those who can’t get access to the money river in our community? Have they tasted hunger, economic despair, ill health acerbated by bad nutrition and discouragement themselves? It would be good to hear about that.

Fred Wallace Sports Director of Bayshore Broadcasting radio has proposed a Friday night foot ball game between the two high schools in town. He wants it to be a food drive. I wonder if he would consider that all the players on both teams eat nothing but the box of food purchased from the Food Bank for the five days before the game.

Let Fred lead the way !

Note: Reprint permission by author.

HEAD SHAVING CONTEST FOR THE FOOD BANK

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