Politicians, advocacy groups, and even blogs love to use catchphrases such as “empowered citizenry” and “grassroots movement” to engage the public and inspire them to make a difference in their community. And like many others, I become motivated to make my voice heard, but then quickly lose sight of my goals.  I believe that many people have innovative ideas and insights into how to improve their community but never take action because we, quite frankly, just don’t know how.

Although I certainly am not qualified to provide a formal framework for community organizing, I do know that it starts with meeting your neighbors, even if it begins by simply acknowledging them in passing. Get to know the community you live in.  Spend more time outside. Welcome new residents, and attend community events. Join your neighborhood association if you have one, or create one if you don’t. You might be surprised by how many people share similar ideas for the community.

Apart from the social benefits of being active in your community, your opinions will have an outlet to be heard and received. Your voice, by itself, may feel like it is too small to matter. But imagine your voice echoed by an entire community!  Without connecting with others around you, you may never know that other people have the same feelings about an issue. But once you collaborate, you become part of a collective voice. And a collective voice is not easily ignored. You will have the power to influence policies and laws in your area.

So, this summer, I challenge you to invite an unacquainted neighbor to your cook-out or pool party. You will be building a connection that might, just might, enable an empowered citizenry or incite a grassroots movement to truly improve the place you live.

The post Creating a collective voice, one neighbor at a time appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The public health crisis in the United States is typically illustrated with alarming obesity rates and images of super-sized fast food portions. However 50 million Americans, or one in four of the nation’s children, are food insecure, meaning that they do not always have access to healthy foods to sustain them throughout the day. The nation is caught in the crosshairs of obesity and food insecurity, and somehow we have managed to have both too much and too little food at the same time.

As Magnolia Pictures’ A Place at the Table points out, hunger in America is not actually caused by a food shortage. When most people think of hunger they think of utter starvation without realizing that the obesity problem that plagues their nation is another, albeit, different sign of hunger. In the United States, the problem is not that the next meal never comes, but that the meal is often full of a lot of empty calories. Thus food insecurity and obesity are linked because nutritionally weak and high-caloric foods, such as French fries or potato chips, offer the most caloric bang for the buck.

Undoubtedly, children are hit hardest by the plague of food insecurity in the United States. Nutrition deprivation for children under the age of three are at risk for limiting their physical and mental potential as undernutrition in these children can lead to reduced cognition and increased susceptibility to infectious diseases. And regardless of greater school funding and pressure on teachers to improve students’ performance, a hungry child may struggle to focus and succeed in their classes regardless of change in education policy. A nation is only as strong as its youth and hunger is ultimately weakening this nation.

Despite its relative lack of attention, hunger is not a new issue in America. A 1968 CBS documentary, Hunger in America, highlighted the fact that hunger is a basic human need and should also be a human right. The documentary inspired Americans to demand action. Policy makers listened and passed legislation to expand the Food Stamp program, an elderly feeding program, and a the school breakfast program. Regular Americans rose to the challenge and demanded a solution and hunger was greatly eradicated by the end of the 1970s.

However, that success was short-lived. A Place at the Table explains that The 1980s and 90s brought a different public sentiment regarding food insecurity and the  issue of hunger in America shifted from being a public problem to a private problem as we began to rely on charities and churches to provide for the hungry. But charity food banks are not sustainable enough for long-term assistance, as they are intended to provide emergency support rather than chronic usage. People should not be forced to rely on these food banks for their day-to-day needs as charities cannot eradicate systemic hunger as they struggle to provide foods of significant nutritional value.

A Place at the Table also discusses how the price of produce has gone up since the 1980s while processed foods have remained cheap largely due to the agricultural subsidies that go to corn and wheat and largely ignore fruits, vegetables, and meat. These subsidies, which totaled $26 billion in 2000, are outdated as they date back to the Great Depression. FDR passed the Agriculture Adjustment Act in 1933 to provide emergency relief for families who risked losing their farms by purchasing their excess grain. But now the farming industry in America has changed, and consolidated and profitable corporations now dominate the agricultural landscape and have much less need for financial assistance. As the purpose of the current subsidy is no longer relevant, the film implies that America should consider making nutritious foods more affordable rather than focusing on corn and wheat production.

We need to tell our senators and representatives that if they are not with us on hunger, then we will not be with them for reelection. The problems in America are often unsolved due to political inaction and the bickering between blue and red ideology. But unlike many of the current hotly debated issues in congress, keeping our children properly fed is a bipartisan issue. Unfortunately food insecurity does not get the same level of media coverage as the nation’s more contentious issues. But as we have learned from the anti-hunger campaigns in the 1970s, the public can rise up, influence legislators, and ultimately alleviate or eliminate food insecurity in America. Now is the time to act.

Fir more information on how to fight food insecurity, text  the word “food” to 77177 or visit A Place at the Table’s action center at http://actioncenter.takepart.com/apatt.

Image credit: http://candychang.com/food-insecurity-poster/

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You can’t always judge a book by its cover. In our culture, the term ““inner city” conjures images of condemned buildings and dilapidated public housing units as we mentally label “inner-city” as “poor.” We also often associate the term “suburban” with “affluent,” as we imagine idyllic neighborhoods with large backyards and quality schools.

However, a recent Brookings Institute study shows that poverty is rising faster in America’s suburbs than in its urban core. And Atlanta is no exception.  Metro Atlanta had the fourth highest suburban poverty growth rate in the United States between 2000 and 2010.

Although Atlanta city dwellers are still more likely to be in poverty than those in the suburbs, with the urban poverty rate at 26.2% and the urban poverty rate at 16%, poverty is growing in the suburbs at 14 times the speed of that in the city.

What is even more telling is when we look at the sheer numbers of individuals living in poverty. 886,390 people in poverty live in the suburbs while only 246,229 live in the city, meaning that 78% of metro Atlanta’s poor lives in the suburbs.  Although this statistic can largely be attributed to the fact that the Atlanta suburbs carry a much greater population than the urban core, we should still realize how this should impact policies for helping the poor in the area as social and economic programs are traditionally concentrated in the city.

To make matters even more troubling, the implications of living in suburbia hit Atlanta’s poor particularly hard as transportation from the outskirts of the city into the central business district can be extremely time consuming, if not impossible, without a car.  This lack of mobility in the suburbs greatly limits accessibility to the safety-net services and job opportunities that the city offers.

Fortunately, cities across America that also faced this suburban poverty challenge offer a number of innovative solutions to Atlanta’s problem. Houston created 60 neighborhood centers throughout the metro region to reach both inner-city and suburban neighborhoods. The Seattle area developed a Road Map Project that focuses on closing achievement gaps in suburban schools. And in Chicago, suburban communities decided to look past their town borders and created regional initiatives that focused on shared success rather than competing with each other for resources.

If you feel passionate about alleviating suburban poverty, you can take action in a variety of ways.  Raise awareness in your community by bringing up the topic at school board meetings, a chamber of commerce meeting, or even your Facebook page. Tell influential leaders how you feel. Visit your representatives in the state legislature. If that seems too intimidating, express your beliefs to your faith-based leader or explain the problem to a local business owner. These people are more influential than you may realize. Finally, share your opinion with the media by contacting your local television station, writing a letter to the editor, or even by posting a blog post.

Visit http://confrontingsuburbanpoverty.org/action-toolkit/  for more information on how to make a difference.

The post Like other cities, Atlanta has a suburban poverty problem appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Football and God rarely clash in the South. But the neighborhood surrounding the future $1 billion new Falcons’ stadium may be forced to lose two of its historic churches due to the new stadium, scheduled to open in 2017.

Local officials claim that that the new stadium will revitalize the western portion of downtown that struggles with unrelenting crime, high unemployment, and poor school performance. Per The New York Times,

“Politicians are also trying to portray the new stadium as a way to help redefine the beleaguered western flank of downtown, a civic jewel that would re-energize the core of a city that has long considered itself the glittering capital city of the South.”

The new stadium comes with a $45 million fund dedicated to benefit the surrounding communities of English Avenue, Vine City and Castleberry Hill.

But neighborhood residents who attend Friendship Baptist Church and Mount Vernon Baptist Church, the two churches in the way of the stadium’s development, do not agree with the city’s priorities. After all, these churches offer more than a place of worship. Friendship Baptist is one of the most historically important black churches in the region. It was established in 1862, in the days after the Civil War, as the first independent African-American Baptist congregation in Atlanta.

Regardless, “We want what the Buckhead kids have,” said Andrew A. Motley, pastor of Lindsay Street Baptist Church in the English Avenue community.

“Resources. Our children’s needs are no less. They don’t have options for resources. We need recreational facilities and green space. All they have are the drug deals and the users, the appearance of glamour from the drug dealers (and) police not as friends but as occupiers. We know the stadium will be built, but it is a luxury among all the needs around us.”

The stadium will be both privately and publicly funded. Although Arthur Blank, owner of the Falcons, will cover $800 million of the stadium cost, the city will likely provide $200-300 million through city-issued bonds and revenue from the future hotel-motel tax.

If the public is going to fund this stadium, it should offer more than a flashy arena that will likely be used for fewer than 10 NFL games a year.  Legislators should ensure that the future neighbors of the stadium, who will likely sacrifice a part of their history and identity in the loss of two of their churches, should benefit from the new stadium.  There are already too many instances of promised revitalization from politicians that ultimately only bring commercial activity benefitting the larger city while ignoring the most dire needs of the neighborhood.

The post Atlanta’s new stadium: Boost or boondoggle? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Over the past 20 years, the pork industry in the United States has increased productivity and cut costs through industrialization.  The process of pork production, once dominated by over hundreds of thousands small independent hog farmers, has become more concentrated in order to take advantage of economies of size. The reduction in the number of smaller, distributed farms results in a more efficient industry that is dominated by a few large and intensive operations.

However, this change has had complex environmental, economic, and political ramifications.  In general, the livestock sector affects many natural resources and the increased intensity of hog farming in specific geographic regions amplifies these effects.  The increasingly concentrated levels of hog waste pollute surrounding regions and emit dangerous greenhouse gasses, such as methane, that contribute to ozone depletion. Further, many of the industry leaders in large-scale concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have significant financial clout and political connections. This power, coupled with particular financial interest in a loosely regulated pork industry, makes impartial public policy improbable, as industry interests directly compete with those of small, low-income communities and comparatively weak environmental advocacy groups.

North Carolina’s pork farming and processing industry illustrates this common struggle.

Although hog farming has always had a presence in North Carolina, the industry experienced exponential growth in the 1990s. The hog population increased from 2.6 million to 8 million from 1988 to 1998 and North Carolina’s pork production rapidly surpassed the Corn Belt’s, as it became the nation’s second-largest hog farming state after Iowa. Following the nation-wide pattern of increased concentration of large operations, from 1983 to 1997, the number of hog farms in North Carolina decreased by 78 percent, despite a five-fold increase in hog population. Nearly all of the state’s pork industry’s growth was from industrial-scale enterprise, and resulted in a critical reduction of the number of independent farmers.

However, the explosion of the North Carolina pork industry also brought a welcome economic stimulus and remains a crucial part of the state’s economy, as the industry employs many farmers who lost their livelihood in the struggling tobacco industry. And despite the reduction of independent farmers, total employment in the state’s hog farming industry increased by 16% from 2001 to 2006. The industry provides a windfall of approximately $1 billion annually for North Carolina in the form of tax revenue.

When the community of Tillery in Halifax County, N.C. was told that they should expect to see 410 new hog farms in NC by the end of 1997, they decided to act. Citizens mobilized a grass-roots movement called HELP [Halifax Environmental Loss Prevention], and began their fight for environmental justice.

Tillery is a poor, black, and rural area and is a “prime target for hog expansion.  Traditionally, poor marginalized citizens are less prone to voting, and corporations that open in those areas are less likely to suffer political consequences from constituent backlash. Nonetheless, the movement gained momentum and attracted the support of environmental advocacy groups to make their voices heard in legislation.

Even with the support of local organizations, citizens were still weak compared to powerful pork producers. The NC Pork Producers political action committee, the Pork PAC, spent significant amounts of money to fight industry regulation. In 1994, 92 out of 170 state representatives received campaign contributions from the committee. Wendell Murphy, owner of Murphy Farms, contributed $150,000 to candidates. The revolving door between North Carolina legislators and pork executives is substantial; many legislators are or were hog producers.  Wendell Murphy was a state representative for five years and a senator for three. Former Senator Lauch Faircloth, who served on the congressional Environment and Public Works Committee from 1993 to 1996, was once also a wealthy hog farmer.

However, citizens had their own way of giving legislators an incentive to favor environmental protection.  Organizations such as HELP, environmental advocacy groups, and the media informed constituents of the industry’s detrimental effects. Thanks to the democratic process, large campaign contributions are not what ultimately keep legislators employed, and eventually enough angry constituents reached state congressmen.

Significant numbers of letters to representatives prompted legislators to pass stricter regulation and to budget $1.5 million to fight hog pollution. The citizens also successfully convinced commissioners to establish a committee to analyze the health consequences in the region. Soon thereafter, the committee passed a livestock ordinance that stopped three out of the seven hog farms who previously had plans to open in Halifax County. HELP continues to inform other communities of the environmental injustice practiced by hog farms and has done so through town meetings and  “hog roundtables.”

Halifax County was the first local government to increase hog farm regulation. By the late 1990s 14 North Carolina counties followed suit.  In 1997, a state statute was modified by North Carolina House Bill 515 to give counties the power to pass zoning amendments to control hog farm location, giving counties the ability to create large buffer zones between farms and communities to protect citizens from local water and air pollution.

Ultimately, HELP won the hog farm fight in Eastern North Carolina.  HELP’s efforts remain a best practice for instilling a citizenry lobby that is powerful enough to fight big-business interests. Their success cannot be understated, as a successful citizenry lobby may be the only force strong enough to give environmental interests a fighting chance.

The post Hog Hell: How a citizen lobby influenced policy in North Carolina appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I am part of America’s middle class and I want to pay higher taxes.

Before you call me insane, let me explain that I want to pay higher taxes in the same way that I “want” to work-out, eat less chocolate, and watch less television. I know that regardless of how much I complain while I’m exercising, I know that at the end of the day I will be satisfied that I invested in a healthy future.  This is the ever-important concept of delayed gratification and unfortunately previous generations did not apply this concept to the federal budget.

I’m assuming that everyone knows by now that President Obama has not balanced the federal budget for the last four years. I’m also assuming that the majority of the population knows that our deficit is dangerously high (eg. $16 trillion).  But did you know that our federal budget has only been balanced four out of the last 35 years?  Well, you already knew that if you watched former President Clinton ‘s speech at the Democratic National Convention (I’ll let you guess which administration balanced the budget). Given America’s sordid history of reckless accounting, it should be no surprise that this generation is finally going to have to pay for it.   Please stop saying that we must solve the debt crisis for the future generation and start doing it for your self.

I’m aware that one cannot just simply take the high road and elect to pay higher taxes, but I know that I have the guts to vote for a lower paycheck so that my country does not fail.  There is no realistic way the government can lower taxes or keep them at their current level without slashing federal spending.  We can’t just de-fund PBS, NPR, and Planned Parenthood and call it a day (Federal contributions to those three programs combined make up around 1% of the federal budget).   We would need to eliminate historic programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, which help keep millions Americans afloat. As I mentioned earlier, I am not wealthy. A cut in my paycheck would mean I have to make hard budgeting decisions.  But I am ready and willing to face those circumstances for the betterment of the nation’s status quo. I do not ask what my country can give me; I ask what I can give to my country.

As a college graduate, I am willing to pay more taxes so that the future generation has the same opportunity, regardless of their financial status.  As a daughter, I will make sacrifices to make sure that my parents’ generation has Medicare and Social Security.  As a woman, I want to make sure low-income women are not burdened by the high cost of female-specific health expenses, from contraception to mammograms.  As an American, I want to make sure that the men and women who serve my country come home to the same healthcare privileges that I enjoy.  And as a human-being, I know that we should stop forcing the world’s densely populated and poverty-stricken subtropical regions from reaping the consequences of America’s selfish ignorance to climate change.

We are all aware of the consequences of greed and self-interest yet we refuse to yield any of our income to those who are hurting the most.  Yes, Governor Romney and President Obama, you are correct.  The middle class is hurting.  We are still burdened by Wall Street’s failures.  But we, too, will have to pay for the mistakes of the wealthy if we truly want to see this nation recover.  We must not have a one-sided approach to reducing the deficit.    I understand that the middle class is economically diverse, with incomes ranging from  $32,500 to $250,000 and I apologize for lumping this huge economic class under one umbrella.  There are certainly members of the middle class who cannot and should not pay higher taxes. And, I also understand that members of the middle class can afford higher taxes but don’t trust the government with their hard-earned cash.  But the fact of the matter is that we must raise revenue on those who can afford it while making government programs more efficient and less costly or else we will either lose major government programs, worsen the current economy or both.

We must cross the partisan barbed wire fence and do what is necessary for the nation.  After all, the U.S. credit rating was not downgraded because of the financial crisis; it was downgraded because our politicians failed to unify days before the federal government reached a fiscal cliff. We have spent the past three decades putting ourselves before the benefit of the nation. Raising taxes should not be political suicide.  If you ask me, it’s simply patriotic.

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