Childhood Hunger

Bill Shore’s Letters

Letter of Invitation to Bear Witness

June 2005

Dear Friend,

I wish you could have been with us toward the end of an extraordinary day last month, when Rick Russo, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls, Nobody's Fool, and other wonderful novels, leaned across the table at a Share Our Strength restaurant in Boston and said: "For me today was about the contrast that is our country. The communities we visited and the programs we saw made me realize how hard we have to work, and how just when you think we've lost, you realize you haven't. I've always thought of myself as a writer but now I know that I am an American writer and today helped me understand just how big this country is and how worth fighting for."

Rick had just participated in his second Hinges of Hope trip, in which we take supporters and community leaders to see people, places, and programs that affirm that the greatest challenges often produce the most inspiring responses. That morning we toured Boston Medical Center, home to Debra Frank's failure-to-thrive clinic, which Share Our Strength funded in the past. Doctors and social workers spoke of the challenges of providing $350 million worth of care to the uninsured, one-third of whom speak no English. The hospital's therapeutic food pantry, designed to meet special nutritional needs of 450 people a month, now struggles to provide food to 3,000 people a month.

As Dr. Frank explained to Congress: "With any acute illness all children lose weight. For the many low-income food insecure families, where food supplies are marginal even for feeding well children, once a nutritional deficit has been established by even a normal childhood illness there is no additional food for repletion. The child is then left malnourished and more susceptible to the next infection, which is likely to be more prolonged and severe, and followed by even greater weight loss."

We also met with Abdul-Tawwab, the principal of Orchard Gardens, a K-8 pilot school where over 90% of the children are eligible for free lunch. The school is a symbol of renewal to those still haunted by the racial turbulence and urban decay that was Orchard Park housing development, formerly one of the most violent in the city. We joined community leaders for lunch at Boston Centers for Youth & Families and visited Citizen Schools, which embodies sharing strength across all professions to discover the opportunities for mentoring students in afterschool programs.

Most riveting of all was our afternoon with the Streetworkers employed by Boston's Center for Youth and Families who work the hot spots frequented by gangs, drug dealers, and at-risk youth. They spend years building relationships with troubled youths "who we're out working with when the probation officers go home." They exude the weariness of fighting uphill battles, the savvy that comes with having at times been on the wrong side of such battles themselves, and the pride of doing something that would be too daunting for most of us.

Chris Byner oversees the program. He is a Brandeis graduate who worked for an investment management firm until realizing that no one he worked with ever talked about the kind of issues confronting the troubled neighborhood where he grew up. He quit his job to return to the streets of his youth. In describing the Streetworkers' work at conflict resolution, mediation, and defusing crises, he revealed its unique nature: "When we go to budget meetings other city employees point to their successes in fixing a street light or paving a road. When they ask what we do I say 'this is going to take awhile.' We're fixing human beings." Rick Russo sympathized: "I'm struck by how little you get to claim. 'Come to this corner and look at where something didn't happen.'"

After each previous Hinges of Hope trip, whether to Ethiopia or the Rio Grande Valley, I've reported what we saw. There is much more I could share about Boston. But there is also something to be said about those who did the seeing. Our delegation included chefs, parents, professors, foundation presidents, corporate executives, lawyers, doctors, and retirees. The simple act of going to see and then telling what you saw, of bearing witness, is one of which each of us is capable.

Bearing witness has always been the essential prerequisite for changing society's most grievous conditions, for righting injustice, for reaching out to those in need. In the 21st century bearing witness is destined to become an even more powerful tool for advancing social change.

Technology today yields information at unprecedented speeds and quantities. But much of it -- delivered via cable news, talk radio, the internet, and other media -- is devoted to faux drama that masquerades as relevant to our lives, like the weekend last month when CNN and other outlets devoted two days of live coverage to the story of a runaway bride. The irony is that real life-and-death dramas of enormous consequence surround us, on our street corners, in public schools, in the homes of new immigrants, and across the globe, where children perish from malaria and other preventable and curable diseases. The more access we have to the travails of Runaway Brides, Martha Stewart, and Michael Jackson, the less access available to the authentic dramas unfolding in our own communities.

The opportunity to bear witness to something true and important has grown so rare as to become a valuable commodity. In our grandparents day, when someone came to visit from a faraway land everyone gathered around to hear and learn about what it was really like. In our grandchildren's day, we will accord such deference to someone who can tell us what it is really like in our own neighborhoods.

The power to create sweeping change is often associated with those who serve in high office or possess great wealth. But our history and culture are also shaped by individuals who find and use power others failed to recognize or even imagine. A generation ago individual civil disobedience transformed public opinion and public policy on civil rights. Citizen protest and dissent led to America's withdrawal from an unpopular war. Each of those means served the moment. But ours is a new moment and what it calls for is bearing witness: to injustice where it is perpetrated; to unequal opportunity where it is tolerated; to hunger and despair where America's children suffer.

We come to our work with a bold ambition to end hunger. If history is a guide, we will experience successes and failures along the way. There will surely be legitimate excuses on those occasions when we fail. But there can be excuses for not seeing or knowing how our fellow citizens live. Take the opportunity to do so in your own way and time. Go somewhere you haven't been and see something you haven't yet seen. Look until you feel something and then tell someone what you've seen and felt. This is what it means to bear witness. This is what it takes to change the world.

Thanks so much for your interest in and support of Share Our Strength's efforts. I look forward to taking a future Hinges of Hope journey together.

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