Words to give by

This is Thanksgiving week and along with the turkey, cranberries and other fixings, usually comes another tradition — a Thanksgiving message written in this space for our local readers. The editorial always urges everyone to not only count their own blessings but to reach out to those who have unmet needs for food, shelter or personal security.
The words are carefully chosen and the sentiment behind them is full of heartfelt meaning. We really do think all of us with full Thanksgiving tables should make donations of food, time and money to our local food pantry projects and to the Redwood Empire Food Bank. We not only say it, but we make donations ourselves. We always try to remind all our readers that hunger is not just a holiday-time topic. We offer statistics such as the fact that one of every six county residents faces poverty and “food insecurity” on a daily basis. The Food Bank needs 13 million pounds of food a year to feed 78,000 people every month of the year.
Some years we have mused about the day when hunger may no longer exist, but then we look at other statistics that show the problem is getting worse, not better. This year county households supported with federal food stamps lost $36 a month in coverage due to a federal budget cut by the Congress. That means qualifying families now get $1.40 per meal, or just $632 per month. Food stamp recipients are mostly children of parents earning minimum wage or unemployed. Food stamp recipients are also the elderly among us, living on Social Security or a fixed income.
When we write our Thanksgiving editorial we can’t help thinking about what good so many words on paper can actually do. We’re not as eloquent as most and we’re not sure how to make our words more forceful. We’re pretty sure most of our readers know there is a need to fight hunger and help the local poor people. And we get encouraged when we see the volunteers at the free community Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. We applaud the clinking sound of coins being dropped in the Salvation Army’s red buckets. It’s wonderful to see the orange food bank barrels get filled at the entrance to our local grocery stores.
It is not so much whether our Thanksgiving words make a difference or not. It is more about if we chose to write no message at all. Our newspapers have great readers and serve an incredibly generous set of communities. We feel we would not be doing our journalism job if we didn’t deliver this annual message, no matter how much it might sound like last year’s or the year’s before that.
Each year the Redwood Empire Food Bank holds a holiday-time Foods & Funds Drive. This year’s campaign was launched on Nov. 1. Hundreds of local businesses, most schools and individuals sponsor community-based food drives. Last year, 47,000 pounds of food was collected by Sonoma County school children and another 93,000 pounds of food was collected in the orange barrels, erected between Thanksgiving and the end of January.
Funny thing about food and hunger, though. Donated food only lasts for a day or a single mealtime. Hunger never goes away. Hunger in Sonoma County is not about a lack of food. We have a surplus.
No one goes hungry by choice. No one assumes there will always be a donated meal waiting for them. No one can deny that the real problem is not hunger, it is poverty.
And, in turn, poverty is not a problem of a lack of money. It is a problem of economic and social injustice. It’s a problem made worse by cutting food stamp allowances and similar anti-poverty programs. But that’s an editorial for another day.