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Time To Use Your Writing Skills to Advocate for Feeding the Hungry

Martin Luther King (center), one of many 20th century political figures who considered it important to fight hunger: “When I die, don’t build a monument to me. Don’t bestow me degrees from great universities. Just clothe the naked. Say that I tried to house the homeless. Let people say that I tried to feed the hungry. / Public Domain Photograph

*

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”  Mahatma Gandhi

“For I was hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in . . . Matthew 

For several reasons, I’m not particularly a fan of dairy products; however, just like  you, I’m sure, I am appalled to read about the dairy and produce that is being destroyed during the pandemic because it can no longer be delivered to restaurants, hotels, and schools. Destroyed! – while people go hungry in the U.S. and around the world.  

I do recognize that supply chains are a challenge and the packaging for consumer consumption requires different factory production operations and equipment from  those used for commercial distribution. Nonetheless, this issue is not insurmountable. Apparently Publix has done the job with milk and produce in its region. We need more to step forward and address this unconscionable situation throughout the United States.

If we have time – and in lockdown, I’m sure we do, it would be a good thing to use our writing skills to advocate conscientious distribution of food via letters to the editor, letters to legislations (national, regional, and local), letters to corporate farming, local family farms, and food production companies. Now would be the perfect time to publish blog posts and to write feature articles, creative nonfiction, and poems that highlight hunger and food production and distribution issues and solutions. 

Announcement from Publix:

More than 150,000 pounds of produce, 43,500 gallons of milk to be donated to Feeding America food banks during the first week of the initiative

LAKELAND, Fla., April 22, 2020 — Publix announced today a new initiative to purchase fresh produce and milk to assist farmers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. Publix will donate these products directly to Feeding America member food banks in its operating area. The initiative will support Florida produce farmers, southeastern dairy farmers and the growing number of families looking to Feeding America for fresh fruits, vegetables and milk during the coronavirus pandemic. Kicking off today, the initiative is expected to run for several weeks.

“As a food retailer, we have the unique opportunity to bridge the gap between the needs of families and farmers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic,” said Publix CEO Todd Jones. “In this time of uncertainty, we are grateful to be able to help Florida’s produce farmers, southeastern dairies and families in our communities.”

According to Feeding America, an estimated 17.1 million additional people will experience food insecurity due to school closures and rising unemployment during the pandemic.

“As we respond to the coronavirus pandemic, Publix understands that more families are turning to us to help put food, especially fresh produce and milk, on their tables,” said Feeding South Florida President & CEO Paco Velez. “We’re grateful to Publix for not only supporting growers, but also for their years of support of Feeding South Florida.”

With numerous reports of farmers discarding produce and milk that isn’t being sold — mostly as a result of school, restaurant and hotel closures — Publix hopes to address the needs of both the farming community and its local partner food banks through this initiative.

“We are thrilled about Publix’s initiative to buy additional milk from Southeast Milk for processing and donation to Feeding America member food banks,” said Southeast Milk Inc. President Joe Wright. “It’s a win-win for our farmers who are feeling the impact of decreased demand and the families who are in need of nutrient rich milk during this pandemic.”

“Like so many others right now, Florida farmers are in a time of need. We are humbled Publix is purchasing additional fresh vegetables from us and other local farms to donate to food banks throughout the Southeast,” said Pero Family Farms Food Co. CEO Peter F. Pero IV. “Thank you to Publix, the participating food banks and their volunteers for making this initiative possible for those less fortunate while supporting local farms.”

“In addition to providing much needed produce and milk to food banks, this initiative provides financial support to farmers during this challenging time,” Publix’s Jones said. “We’re honored to be able to work with these groups and do good together for our communities.”

Throughout the company’s history, Publix has supported organizations working toward alleviating hunger in our neighborhoods. Since 2009, Publix has donated more than $2 billion in food to people in need and has pledged an additional $2 billion in food donations over the next 10 years.

Publix Super Markets Charities recently made donations totaling $2 million to support Feeding America member food banks during the pandemic.

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Jamie Dedes:

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New York City Must Include Writers in Its Support for the Arts

Photograph of Central Park Lake (NYC) courtesy of Nkon21 under CC BY-SA 4.0

“The City Council has already shown an incredible commitment to ensuring the broader artistic economy is supported during this disastrous time,” said PEN America’s COO Dru Menaker. “But we’re alarmed that writers have not been explicitly included in calls for support . . . “

A citywide coalition of literary arts organizations sent a letter to the New York City Council insisting that council members consider writers and literary arts organizations as a vital part of the city’s artistic infrastructure in its upcoming budget. The letter asks that the council ensure writers and the organizations that support them are included in any relief package designed to revive the arts community amid the coronavirus crisis.

“In times of national crisis, we have long turned to writers for inspiration, understanding, comfort, and enlightenment. Writers who call New York City home have helped this country and the world make sense of global depression, war, and the societal impact of racism, inequity, and hatred,” the letter reads. “Our city cannot afford to let this literary legacy lapse by ignoring the needs of our writers at this critical juncture.”

The letter – addressed to council members Van Bramer, Gjonaj, Moya, Cumbo, and Borelli of the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Intergroup Relations – says that the impacts of the coronavirus crisis on the arts has been clear, and the City Council has already called on the mayor to ensure federal relief funds are directed in part to artists or arts organizations. But those calls have omitted novelists, nonfiction authors, poets, essayists, playwrights, translators, and other writers. Writers have lost significant income, facing canceled speaking engagements, declines in book sales, loss of teaching, and publishers failing to pay royalties and advances, creating acute financial need.

“The City Council has already shown an incredible commitment to ensuring the broader artistic economy is supported during this disastrous time,” said PEN America’s COO Dru Menaker. “But we’re alarmed that writers have not been explicitly included in calls for support. PEN America, as a literary organization but also as a membership organization representing nearly 3,000 writers across the city, believes that the City Council can do the right thing here. Writers, now more than ever, are essential to the life of the city. And their livelihoods are imperiled by the loss of part time and gig work that often keeps writers financially afloat.”

The letter calls on the city council to include writers as part of the artistic community, as well as the organizations that showcase and support them. That means an explicit mention of writers and writers’ organizations in any legislative language relative to supporting the arts. The letter calls on the Council to provide tax credits to city-based businesses to support literary arts organizations, relief for commercial rents, and a project that would remunerate writers to document the impacts of the pandemic on New York City.

“We hope our representatives in the Council will address the financial and health needs of those who provide the City with its essential services, including our first responders and healthcare professionals, and that they continue to fund programs that provide the sick, homeless, disabled, the undocumented, and marginalized communities and youth with the care and attention they need,” the letter says. “But as you contemplate ensuring how best to use relief funds to shore up the arts, we call upon you to recognize the vital role the literary community writers and the literary organization that showcase and support their work will play in bearing witness to these troubled times.”

This post is courtesy of PEN America.

PEN America runs the Writers Emergency Fund, designed to support writers who are most directly impacted by the COVID-19 crisis. Read more about that fund here.

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.

Jamie Dedes:

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

FEEL THE BERN

For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice

Maintain the movement.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

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The Ebb Tides of Eternity, a poem

Photograph courtesy of Kaitlan Balsam, Unsplash

“A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.” Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

Eternity flows deftly through these pandemic* days
enfolding in her stream the many with whom we
contemplated Knowledge and Mortality

Looking back, we ponder amazed at love among
our relations and friends
……….a love that blossoms still, as fragrant, as gentle
……….as a dewy rose among thorns and thistles

We thrash and crawl and climb
………puzzling over the sea and fire that stalks us
Our hearts are cupped in one another’s hands,
……    talking drums, they communicate across
……… time and space
Our measured moments grave lines
……….in real and phantom fears,
……….they fly, they hover, storm clouds above us

In words of jade, our softest speech is elegiac
Our tears merge into raging rivers
Our smiles mask our grief and yearning
Our laughter is love grown wild and reckless

We see one another in a thousand shapes and dreams
……….and in nameless faces
Our sighs ride the ebb tides of Eternity
…..Another moment:
…..and even the sun will die
…..but our lotus song will echo on ….
……….We have lived! We have loved!

* pandemic days: COVID-19, environmental degradation, hunger and starvation, poverty and lack of healthcare, nuclear proliferation. Will we succumb or evolve to conquer?  Either way, nothing can take away the love we’ve given and received or  the life we’ve had.

© 2020, Jamie Dedes

 

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New House in the Suburbs, an ekphrastic poem . . . and your next Wednesday Writing Prompt

New House in the Suburbs, Paul Klee
1924 – National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

“Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.”  Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

This clapboard suburban house is not like my Sidto’s, a
house with hydrangea blossoming below the front window,
purple and mauve, in a place where big maples gave us
their charming seed pods, those green whirlybirds
that quivered in the wind while determined dandelions
climbed their way to sunshine through breaks between
the cement squares that formed our sidewalks, a kind of
serendipitous geometry from the Office of City Planning

No, this suburban house is not a bit like Sidto’s where
air-raid sirens sounded at noon each day, disturbing
the otherwise peaceful hours of playing out front or
in the tiny kiddie pool on the second floor balcony,
the sun glinting in gold and red sparks off cousin
Linda’s light brown hair, the breezes drawing smoke
from Aunt Mildred’s cigarette to mingle with white
clouds milling above us and a blue sky offsetting
the pale jade waves of the Hudson, no … it’s not

At all like my Sidto’s self-effacing home, this suburban
abode brags and postures with its professionally tended
Kentucky bluegrass lawn, hapless whirlybirds imprisoned,
packed with the cuttings and fallen leaves into bags for
trash collection on Tuesday; this suburban house, painted
In pastels closely approximating the colors of Sidto’s
hydrangea, boasts an in-ground swimming pool out back,
fiberglass and cement, replacing the blue vinyl inflatable,
and here closets stand behind sliding doors, making
armoires unnecessary, an expensive antique indulgence
for those with the bucks and real estate to accommodate

Not at all like my Sidto’s house, no pedestrian chain-link
fences here, poplar trees separate one property line from
the next and dogs are leashed to prevent trampling the
neighbor’s flowers; a huge wall-bracketed television claims
access to three-hundred channels, a technology fallen from
a reasonable seven on a compact Motorola stored in a corner
awaiting special shows in that time before television as lifestyle;
and by day we didn’t have calendars filled with playdates,
we romped by the front stoop with its easy and spontaneous
access by neighbor kids and by adults coffee klatching over
home percolated joe, sipped slowly from six-ounce china cups

The new suburban house has a long drive and three garages,
multiple cars for trips to shops, school, and worship, walking now
a custom of treadmills, health clubs, and routine post-prandial strolls
or weekend hikes in the country; our room-sized closets and other
storage bare witness to our hoarding, which will find its way to
land fill and fish tummies, and our generous pantry is packed with
prefabricated foods and poor canned facsimiles of Sidto’s
cinnamon-scented chicken soup, secretly seasoned with love
and family traditions and I have to ask: Have our lives grown
larger or just our living space and our carbon footprint?

© 2020, Jamie Dedes

* Sidto (Arabic) – grandmother

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

“The New Suburban House” painting featured above triggered for me the memory of my grandmother’s simple economical home and homely customs as compared to many modern-day developed-world extravagances. This week use the painting as the jumping off point for your own poem in whatever way you are inspired and …

  • please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link
  • please submit poems only, no photos, illustrations, essays, stories, or other prose

PLEASE NOTE:

Poems submitted on theme in the comments section here will be published in next Tuesday’s collection. Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published. If you are new to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, be sure to include a link to your website, blog, and/or Amazon page to be published along with your poem. Thank you!

Deadline:  Monday, April 27th by 8 pm Pacific Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.

Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro.  It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

Jamie Dedes:

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

FEEL THE BERN

For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice

The Poet by Day officially endorses Bernie Sanders for President.

The New New Deal

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton