Racism and Hunger

My local newspaper carried a story last week about the Vermont Food Bank finding new ways to address hunger and food insecurity in our state.

The Food Bank has started the Food Security Innovation Lab that will hire an expert and spend $3 million to research ways to get food to the people who need it. As usual, it is a problem that sounds simple but is very complicated. I was prepared to move on to the next when I came upon this quote from Foodbank CEO John Sayles in discussing the new program.

“In the past, ending hunger meant making sure food was accessible and affordable. (But we soon) ... realized as an organization that it really is equity … solving for ending racial oppression and changing structures and systems in our society that’s going to be a long-term solution to hunger.”

Whoa!

So the CEO of the Vermont Food Bank, who has served at various high levels in state government agencies that oversee the energy and the environment, just said that racism causes hunger. I can hear my conservative family members blanching and urging these folks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and force Sayles to stick to providing food to the hungry. 

So I texted Sayles, who is a friend, and here is what he texted back.. 

There you have it. The CEO of a major non-profit organization has called out racism as the chief cause of hunger in the world because it causes poverty and trauma. That trauma leads to behavior deemed as “bad’’ by the system we, the empowered, have created which in turn leads to a never-ending cycle of marginalization.

Sayles is really calling for a massive change in the way our society is designed. It’s a call we’re not hearing at the national level or at the state level. It is radical. It is ground-breaking. Of course it makes sense to me. But to see it in print, quoted to a CEO of a major organization, took a bit to understand. 

“The sustainable solution is to pull hunger out by its roots and the deepest roots are racism, the systems we have created to sustain it and the trauma it inflicts.”

John Sayles is no radical. In addition to government service under Democrats and Republicans, he sits on the board of the Vermont Business Roundtable - hardly a collection of the radical left. He is also a lawyer. 

Under Sayles’ leadership since 2009, the Foodbank has become a dominant hunger relief organization with an operating budget of more than $20 million - in a state that really cares about these hardships. 

How did he go from being a government official under Democrats and Republicans to such a radical view?

“It’s not radical,’’ he told me, “it’s opening your eyes and looking at what’s happening in the world.’’

Sayles says that his colleagues across the country who deal with hunger are all saying the same thing. So it’s not a radical notion anymore. 

I asked John, as a white man who has benefited from this unjust system, is there a lament for him? 

“We thought we were doing the right thing and we look back and say - “I missed a lot.’’”

I pressed harder.

But how do you get up every day and face a society where so many don’t care enough about poverty and a federal government on the cusp of being taken over by a political party still contesting the last election?

“We can do better,’’ he says simply. 

Sounds like the Vermont Food Bank Innovation Lab is going to examine a lot more than just food. 

Yes We Can.