A Tsunami of Hunger Looms on the Horizon

By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. Posted April 30, 2009.

Rodriguez explains that they try to send the bulk of the fresh produce they receive to sites like the Community Kitchen in Harlem and other soup kitchens, where meals are served for the hungry, as opposed to food pantries where the needy shop for staples. "We'll send them onions, romaine lettuce, a variety of produce. We don't want to just send onions just because we've got 20,000 onions. We'll make sure we send a mixed pallet of produce with, say, six different types of produce -- bananas, apples, cabbage, and other fruits and vegetables."

A former serviceman who still retains his straight-backed military bearing and runs a tight ship in the warehouse, Rodriguez remembers a childhood in which his family sometimes faced food insecurity. "We're in the business of feeding the hungry," he explains, "feeding a lot of families. The way the economy is, it's unfortunate. More and more people are losing their jobs, and more and more people are struggling to make ends meet."

White-Collar Hunger

Even some of those managing to hang onto their jobs are having trouble feeding themselves. Evidence of it is crystal clear in Harlem where white-collar workers, sometimes still clad in dressy clothes, are beginning to join construction workers as the new faces on the soup kitchen line.

Some need the food just to get through their job searches. Jesse Taylor, the Community Kitchen's senior director, recalls a recent morning when a man appeared at the front door. "He was dressed really well. A shirt with a collar," Taylor recalled. The man asked, "Do you have anything for me to eat?" but was told the Kitchen wouldn't be open for dinner until four in the afternoon.

As Taylor remembers it, "He said, 'I've only been in town for a couple weeks. I'm from California. I'm living in a shelter right now. I'm homeless and trying to find work. I'd like to come back at four, but I don't know where I'll be. I hope to have a job by then. Can you give me anything? Anything at all?'"

"We made him up a quick sandwich," Taylor adds.

And that early morning job-hunter isn't atypical these days. Taylor points to "a huge increase in the number of children and seniors in the soup kitchen line, as well as quite a few people in business attire. They usually come in one time in their dress clothes." The next day, they're back dressed to better blend in with the others in line who are homeless or, as Taylor puts it, "carrying their whole world on their back."

That night, I saw no dressy clothes in the line for dinner, but I certainly noticed men in work boots and teenagers as well. Behind the small glass counter in the cozy, cream-colored dining room, nine young volunteers -- mostly women -- in hairnets and latex gloves moved briskly to keep the assembly line of food going. They were lining up trays with servings of either ham or meatloaf next to mashed potatoes, cabbage stew, an apple, a piece of bread or a roll, a slice of cake, and a cup of purple fruit juice.

This scene is repeated Monday through Friday (with breakfasts on Tuesday and Thursday mornings), and this night the crowd was eager, moving through the room and then eating with purpose. As the first batch of folks filtered out, those waiting moved forward to take a tray as the volunteers filled plate after plate. The day I was there, staff kept up with demand, but will they be able to keep up if the economic crisis grinds on?

"What Can We Do?"

The line for the soup kitchen is only one of two queues that form in front of the Harlem site. Four days a week, a second line heads in the other direction, toward Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, leading to the food pantry that adjoins the Community Kitchen. On this day, the pantry opened at 1 pm and, three hours later, the line was still there, mostly women, leaning on their own folding metal shopping carts in which they would haul their groceries home.

Via a short stairwell, a few shoppers at a time are allowed into a surprisingly small but well-stocked, supermarket-style room with a checker-board linoleum floor. There, they find metal shelves filled with pasta, hot and cold cereals, canned vegetables and fish or meat (including tuna, salmon and mackerel, chicken chunks, and beef with gravy), as well as fresh vegetables, a freezer of frozen meat, and a refrigerator full of skim milk and ricotta cheese.

See more stories tagged with: hunger, economy, crisis, new york, starvation

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

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