It’s a clear morning in May, and the lobbyists mushrooming on the State Capitol lawn are feeling lucky. Today is Hunger Action Day, an annual event organized by the California Hunger Action Coalition. From all across the state, anti-hunger advocates are converging in Sacramento to speak on behalf of over 5 million Californians who are hungry or who live on the brink of hunger.
For this, I have been awake since a bleary-eyed hour of morning that the sun refuses to dignify with its presence. I arrive in Sacramento mid-morning with a motley crew of advocates from the San Francisco Bay Area. Our group consists of staff and volunteers from the Alameda County Food Bank, the Senior Advocates for Hope and Justice from St. Mary’s Center in West Oakland, high school students from San Leandro, and a smattering of miscellaneous joiners. Our charter bus is the umpteenth to release its travelers face-first into the balmy air. Our uniform, for the half of us who bothered to wear it, is a bright orange t-shirt. (“Orange you gonna do something about hunger?”) We tote paper folders whose contents detail our legislative agenda and instruct us in the art of advocacy.
The first order of the day is a rally. Our group proceeds to an assemblage of folding chairs beneath an expansive white tent. The tent occupies prime real estate on the grassy lawn: it faces the steps of the State Capitol, which serve as our makeshift stage. Nearby, similarly outfitted groups tout their causes: “Say No to Stroke,” “You’re the Cure,” “Action on Water NOW!”
After an opening speaker, the rally is off to a slow start. Our counterparts representing other chunks of the state map are slowly trickling in. To pass the minutes between speakers and cheers, I take inventory of my neighbors. There are the kids from San Leandro high school (not San Diego High School, as they indignantly point out to those who mistake them for a nonexistent SoCal delegation). The girls wear their hair long and their jeans skinny. I recall an old pair of boot-cut jeans and try not to imagine how long it’s been since I was in high school.
I catch a glimpse of a man at the other end of the tent. He wears glasses, arm tattoos, and a beard. His skin is slightly weathered, but his smile makes him youthful. I’ve seen him before, but I can’t remember where. “I knew you right away!” he says brightly when I approach him to bashfully admit that I can’t place him. His name is Paul, and he’s here with a group from St. Anthony’s Foundation in San Francisco, where I used to volunteer. The mystery is solved: I used to banter with him and the other boys in the steam-soaked scullery while wiping down tables and collecting bucketfuls of dirty dishes. “Come back sometime,” he tells me. “Even if it’s just once a month.” His invitation is so warm and full of gladness. I can hardly believe I’m so memorable.
Later that morning, Betsy Edwards from the Alameda County Food Bank kicks off the presentation of Hunger Fighter Awards. Each person recognized is invited to speak, and each tells a story that inspires me. One is a woman who used to receive food stamps. Now she serves as an Americorps volunteer at Lifelong Medical Clinic. Another is a community gardener-turned-farmer who sells the most affordable organic produce you can find in Los Angeles. He expresses disappointment that the government so often fails its people, but he lights up when he begins to enumerate the possibilities for community-based action. His voice rises, ignited.
Let me show you what the people can do, says the fierceness of his tenor.
For me, it’s a young Asian-American Hunger Fighter from the Central Valley who steals the show. She speaks with an accent like my father’s, and her story swells my heart with awe. As a refugee on the Thai-Cambodian border, she and her family experienced the harsh reality of hunger. Once they immigrated to the United States, they started receiving food stamp benefits.
At last! she thought.
Never will my family face hunger again. Her troubles were finally over – or so it seemed until her father fell ill with a chronic health condition that eventually took his life. Her mother was diagnosed with diabetes. It became evident to the young woman that her family couldn’t afford the quality of food they needed to sustain their health. Today she works as a community health advocate in Fresno, California’s poorest county, where she has established a food assistance hotline. She pays special attention to issues of cultural sensitivity.
At the end of the presentation of the Hunger Fighter Awards, we break for bag lunches. Afterwards, the busload of Bay Area advocates breaks into teams to tackle legislative offices. My team has been assigned the office of Joan Buchanan, a member of the State Assembly representing San Ramon. During the office visit, seniors from St. Mary’s Center take turns speaking about food stamps and budget cuts, issues that often translate into real-life choices between necessities: food or utilities, meds or the phone bill. I corroborate their stories with my experience as a case management intern at St. Mary’s Center. Many of the seniors I work with receive disability benefits and depend on their meager monthly checks to survive; cuts would be devastating. Phillis Beltran, the Community Center Supervisor at St. Mary’s Center, speaks more generally about St. Mary’s Center and the Senior Advocates for Hope and Justice. She speaks with an openheartedness that seems to affect our audience, a single member of the staff of Assemblymember Buchanan’s office.
The staff person’s name is Dawn Adler. She used to be a social worker for children with sickle cell anemia. She wears a bright pink button-up shirt tucked beneath a gray suit jacket and thick-rimmed brown glasses. As the seniors who have come from St. Mary’s Center share their stories, she listens with calm professionalism. I watch her with curiosity, attempting to read the reactions written in her face. I wonder what it’s like to be on her side of the desk. I suspect she may be listening better than I would if I were in her position, receiving groups of constituents all day long. I wonder if, like me, she feels helpless sometimes. At one point, she tells us there’s only so much her office can do. It occurs to me that helplessness might be an illusion, an excuse to justify the iniquities of the society we live in. I wonder if part of the reason we’re here today is to blow all excuses apart.
Our visit is brief, twenty minutes quickly spent. We leave a folder of legislative recommendations for Assemblymember Buchanan. I forget to hand over an orange tucked in my messenger bag, a token from the California Hunger Action Coalition on the theme of “Orange you gonna do something about hunger?”
Boarding the bus back to the Bay Area, I feel a sense of relief. I don’t know whether it’s the sunshine or the stories I’ve heard that have healed me, but a hot-blooded hopefulness is coursing through my veins. We came for such a simple, unassuming reason: to speak our truth, and to claim that it matters. Maybe our visit today won’t make a damn bit of difference, and maybe it will. The only thing that’s certain is that our work is far from over.
I close my eyes and allow my mind to rewind through the events of the day. Somewhere in the capital of California, impassioned voices are echoing still in halls of power.
