On the Food Line
Writings by Harry Chapin
In several of Food Monitor's early issues, Harry Chapin's column, On the Food Line, showed his amazing ability to understand the deepest issues of hunger and poverty, and communicate these in a vivid and personal way. We include several excerpts from these columns.
How WHY Began
Despite being a musician, I had always been a relatively verbal sort. When asked to do interviews, I would always drop in a few "heavy," cocktail-type comments about the state of the world.
One particular session, recording a public service program with Father Bill Ayres, a completely down-to-earth practitioner of the religious arts, brought about a subsequent get-together to discuss some common concerns.
Bill, who reaches over six million people a week with his various programs, is well-informed in many areas, because of his varied interests and the regular exposure to guests on his shows. He was already quite knowledgeable about the scope of the hunger problem in Africa, and he concluded that our talk with the suggestion that, "It is time for another Bangladesh concert, but for Africa this time." I responded with the obvious quibble that I was not even close to being George Harrison, but Bill, in his gentle, deadly way zapped me for this too-glib response. So, we resolved to see what one Catholic priest, with a background in media, and one third-class rock singer/songwriter could do to help an obvious tragic situation.
Thus commenced a learning process that has brought us up to this very day, and promises to continue for the rest of our lives. With our first thoughts about doing benefit concerts, we realized we had to learn much more about the problems and about the organizations that attempt to deal with it. We didn't know that we would eventually have to come to terms with great gaps in the overall effort …
As an important corollary to that goal, we wished to articulate a positive tone to combat the more usual "guilt-mixed-with-breast-beating-seasoned-with-hopelessness" that we so often pass off as our highly developed social consciousness.
Who Is Changing the World?
The question is not "Is the world changing?" but rather "Who is changing it?" The answer is ridiculously simple but largely ignored. Changes are caused by those people determined to make change. Although our political system was set up to be responsive to citizen pressure, it is surprising how few people actually take part in the process of change. So those who are actively involved in implementing changes, although few in number, can have inordinate impact … The history of mankind is the history of active minorities …
Whenever I talk about the need for change, invariably someone responds by stating: "Harry, you sound like a radical!" and I have to ask myself "What does that mean, and what is 'radical' in our society?"
Because I believe in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, I am actively trying to shed light on the questionable methods of US monopolies, agribusiness and multinational firms. These are the folks who promote nutritionless products to malnourished people, who take control of land in Third World countries for cash-crop exports, who interfere in the political and economic process in other countries for their own profit, and who divert taxpayer-funded aid programs into fronts for their own investment projects. It is these activities that are radical, these actions that misuse incredible power and betray American democratic values. Is this kind of change we as taxpayers and citizens willing to support?
Doing something about hunger is a timely and seductive idea. We have a system responsive to citizen pressure to implement the logistics for change. History has shown us that positive articulation, humaneness, flexibility, ingenuity and perseverance are important. But most important, it is deeply committed individual people who create the process for change, and who generate change itself. If we can muster up that degree of commitment and get away from the uniquely American perception that if something can't be done immediately it isn't worth doing, then I think the Hunger Movement, this small but growing minority of us, can have a truly significant impact.
Hunger ? Are We Serious?
As I have said so often over the past five years - knowledge is the first step toward affirmative action. A bleeding-heart attitude without a grasp of reality is at best a stab in the dark. Far too often the good intentions of generous people have been virtually hijacked into actions that have completely different and sometimes opposite effects from those intended. What is needed is a marriage of two impulses, a coupling of the urge to do something positive with the willingness to constantly re-evaluate how effectively our actions lead to our goal - that of ending world hunger …
It is very clear in the basic documents of our country that if the business of government is left to our leaders alone, they, and we, are always going to mess up. We are supposed to be responsible for the follow-through. We are supposed to be armchair experts on the important subjects. We are supposed to be in touch with what touches our lives. We are supposed to be knowledgeable enough to ask not only the first question, but also the second, third and fifteenth question about what is going on; and we are supposed to be concerned enough to insist upon trying alternative actions that would make sure we effect change.
Only then can we say we are acting to end world hunger. Only then can we say we are serious.
