Anti-hunger leader Ambassador Tony Hall from the Alliance to End Hunger urged the country to join in April’s rolling Hungerfast. This movement was started to prompt goverment leaders to take a stance against budget cuts to safety-net programs. He shared his stance with Feeding America:
This past Sunday I stopped fasting.
Though my own personal fast has come to an end, I know that the Feeding America network and other partners like the League of United Latin American Citizens are continuing to fast through the end of April, and we must all continue to advocate for programs that serve the hungry. The movement to ensure our leaders don’t balance the budget on the backs of poor and hungry people is only getting started.
As we move forward and continue this work together, I want to pause for a moment to look back on what we have accomplished, and to express my gratitude for all the ways people broke out of their normal routines in order to make the Hungerfast movement possible. I am truly humbled by the response the fast has received from leaders like Vicki Escarra and partners like the Feeding America network.
Hungerfast brought together a large and diverse coalition of partners. From Feeding America and the ONE Campaign to World Vision and MoveOn.org, the broad and creative response to the fast has been remarkable. With over 36,000 Americans, including 28 Members of Congress, committed to fasting, personal sacrifice and action, the HungerFast movement will have repercussions long into the future.
Hungerfast didn’t focus on any one specific political ask. Instead, we sought to fundamentally alter the contours of the budget debate. We wanted to change the very nature of the political and spiritual environment within which the national debate took place. Our goal was to put a moral frame on the budget, and make the case that “budgets are moral documents.”
We softened the blow of proposed cuts in the FY2011 budget though losses occurred as well. Internationally, House Leadership had proposed cutting the McGovern-Dole feeding program that benefits 15 million poor and hungry people — by 50%; in the end they only cut 17%. They barely touched Development Assistance Programs, PEPFAR, or the Global Health and Child Survival accounts — a decision that literally saved at least 70,000 lives.
Domestically, we saw a $518 million cut to the WIC program – a program with a remarkably high return on investment and a long history of bi-partisan support. This underscores the importance of these debates moving forward.
As bad as the cuts in the continuing resolution were, even more is at stake in the 2012 Budget debate. On April 15th, the House passed a budget resolution that includes harmful changes and funding cuts to SNAP (Food Stamps), including a proposal to block grant the program and cut funding by $127 billion over ten years.
This goes beyond responsible budget cutting; the proposal literally targets poor and hungry people, asking them to carry the burden of decades of fiscal irresponsibility in Washington. We can’t let this happen.
Thousands across the country have drawn our line in the sand. We’ve sent a message to our elected officials, a message they need to keep hearing throughout this debate: if you come after poor people, you will have to go through us first.
