Fixing the Food System by Steve Clapp

Author:Steve Clapp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO

CHAPTER NINE

Churches, Newspapers, and Universities Get Involved

Churches, newspapers, and universities joined other institutions in making major changes in the food policy landscape.

Bread for the World

Arthur Simon and his famous older brother, the late senator Paul Simon (D-Ill.), were sons of a Lutheran minister in Eugene, Oregon. Arthur, the shy son, was overshadowed by his ambitious brother. However, he eventually found his way to a Lutheran parish ministry in New York’s Lower East Side. His encounter with hunger there led him to coauthor a book in 1973 with his brother, The Politics of World Hunger.1 The book acknowledged the importance of private enterprise, voluntary assistance, and government policy. But the coauthors were struck by the neglect of government policy in addressing the hunger issue.

In his own memoir, The Rising of Bread for the World: An Outcry of Citizens against Hunger, Art Simon recalled asking, “What could the churches do that they are not doing? Like many congregations, ours gave direct assistance locally and participated in supporting relief and development abroad.

“But it struck me that Christians were not being challenged to weigh in as citizens to help shape decisions by the government that have a huge bearing on hungry people. The nation was paying scant attention to hunger, and many of its policies were woefully inadequate. By doing little or nothing about this, Christians were silently approving those policies and reinforcing hunger.”2

Taking his cue from the civil rights movement, Simon decided to start a citizens’ movement to combat hunger in the public policy arena. He pulled together a citizens’ committee of seven Protestants and seven Catholics. Bread for the World, as they eventually called themselves, began as a pilot project in New York City before moving to Washington, D.C.

From time to time, Bread has debated whether to describe itself as an interfaith organization rather than a Christian organization. While it remains open to non-Christian members and participating congregations, it retains its Christian identity as a strong selling point to church members.

In 1973, Bread promoted its first campaign urging its several hundred members and local churches to send letters to members of Congress. The letters supported U.S. funding for the “soft loan” window of the World Bank, which lends money at almost no interest to the poorest countries. When the House soundly defeated the bill, Bread testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March 1974.3

Bread began growing at a healthy pace. It had nearly 6,000 paid members by the end of 1974 and close to 10,000 by May 1975. The Simon brothers revised their earlier book on world hunger, and it won a National Religious Book Award the following year. As Bread’s membership grew, it set a goal to recruit and train 500 leaders to spearhead its work in congressional districts across the nation.

In 1975, Bread published a manifesto titled “The Right to Food,” with nine objectives, which included “an end to hunger in the United States” and “control of multinational corporations, with particular attention to agribusiness.”4

Congress paid no attention when the nonbinding Right to Food resolution was introduced in the fall of 1975.

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