From the Intern Desk: Hunger Action Day

By Florence, St. Anthony Foundation intern with the Social Work Center and the Justice Education, Volunteer and Advocacy program.

Last Wednesday was a day to remember. Partially because I had to get up at 5:30 am during my first week of summer vacation but mostly because I had the privilege of fighting for a meaningful cause alongside some of the most passionate and inspiring individuals I had ever met. It was the much-anticipated Hunger Action Day in Sacramento.

During the hearing held in the Capitol Building, testimonies were heard from youths, single-mothers, former addicts, homeless individuals, and other voices that were united on that day in a fight for a basic necessity and human right: food. In fact, two of the members from our very own Father Alfred Center delivered very powerful and insightful testimonies drawn from their personal experiences with addiction and recovery. I think a lot of us, and many of the legislators as well, were humbled by these stories, from those who have experienced first-hand, or are in imminent risk of, hunger. The testimonies were personal and touching, but most importantly, they were strong and demanding.

So were our messages during meetings with individual legislators. But it was during that time I began questioning about our effectiveness at conveying those very messages—ones about advocating for the extension of food stamp privileges to individuals with drug-related felonies and the expansion of food stamp/EBT acceptance in farmer’s markets, among others. I don’t know if it was from my frustration with the knowledge about the failure of those bills passing in the state legislature year after year or the seeming nonchalance of legislators about our presence and the issues at hand, but I felt that the gulf between the bureaucracy and the constituency is too enormous for our voices to fill.

But even more puzzling was how I went back home feeling hopeful and certain that we left an impression that day. Was it the pitch of desperation I heard in people’s testimonies? The hint of compassion in an otherwise cold bureaucracy? Or was it everyone’s exhausted but smiling faces on the bus ride back? The more I reflect the more I’m certain it was the spirit of everyone who was there that made the day so worthwhile. Just as Katie wrote in her January reflection on the “Homelessness Ends with a Home” march, I realize how much the opportunity to voice their opinions mean to so many people, and how much of an honor it had been for me to be in the same fight with them.

We made a lot of noise that day. I am sure that we were heard.