Part of the Series
Moyers and Company
In President Obama’s State of the Union address last night he asserted that American children really do matter to our nation’s top politicians. “I want our actions to tell every child, in every neighborhood — your life matters, and we are as committed to improving your life chances as we are for our own kids.”
2015 was supposed to be the year when America ended its child hunger crisis. That was the promise then-president-elect Barack Obama made during his first campaign in 2008.
At that time some 12.4 million children lived in homes that self-reported as food insecure — in other words, they couldn’t afford enough food for an active and healthy life. Today there are 15.8 million such children.
At the start of 2009, the Obama administration began to look into what it would take to end child hunger. Officials from the United States Department of Agriculture were put to the test as they hosted listening sessions in each region to hear from experts and people who knew hunger firsthand.
Tangela Fedrick, a mother of two young children and member of Witnesses to Hunger, testified at one of those hearings. “I am one of the millions families that doesn’t have enough money for food, so I count” she said. “But I am not just a number. My children and I are human beings.”
When our dispossessed brothers and sisters must demand to be considered human, and remind the powers that be that they matter, we, as a society, have failed miserably. This should haunt each and every one of us.
The hashtag #blacklivesmatter, created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin’s murder, and widely circulated following the deaths of black people by police since then, shows that our country has profound problems that go far beyond racism, bigotry and classism. We have trouble with our own humanity and belonging.
While Obama’s proposals aimed at improving the plight of America’s impoverished children are excellent — an increase in the child tax credit, improved wages and paid family leave — it is absolutely appalling that he must encourage Congress to show children that they matter.
The Republican leadership’s reaction to Obama’s proposals was predictably dismissive. Just after the State of the Union address, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Hopefully that’s just rhetoric. He knows we’re not likely to pass these kinds of measures. We’ll still look for things that we can actually agree on.”
Can’t we all agree that policies aimed at helping impoverished children is the right thing to do? Clearly, ideas of ending child hunger faded fast as our economy tanked. But in the midst of rampant income inequality, President Obama did not use his State of the Union to even mention poverty nor the poor, insisting that the state of our union is strong. We are not strong when almost one in five of America’s kids live in households without enough money for nutritious food.
What about the promise he made to America’s children — that 2015 would be the year they would no longer experience hunger?
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy