Result: recover food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US

FRN’s strategic framework has one singular result: to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US. There are many unique contributions FRN is working toward to achieve ending enduring hunger as we know it in the US. One of two indicators that we aim to achieve to reach this result is to ensure the economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure in the US. 

If you’ve attended any of the Roundtable Talks hosted by FRN this program year or even skimmed our email updates, you know about our framework that we’re calling FRN10X. If this sounds unfamiliar or new to you, I encourage you to look through our Roundtable Talks webpage and to sign up for our newsletter because there is a role for each of you in the movement to recover food to feed everyone who is hungry in the US.

Strategy to achieve result: Powerful Partnerships

We have three strategies to achieve our indicators and our ultimate result, one of which is to develop powerful partnerships to help grow our network from 4,000 to 40,000 people in the next 10 years. Please consider this your formal invitation to be part of this movement. We know that including more people in our work through powerful partnerships will expedite our work to get more precious food into communities experiencing food insecurity. 

Time and again we have seen that when FRN fosters and engages relationships with other organizations, the resulting partnership helps us accomplish our goals faster and with a greater impact than we would have accomplished on our own. Here I want to highlight a new powerful partnership that FRN developed with the Poor People’s Campaign this year.

Indicator to achieve result: economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure

Though we partner with the Poor People’s Campaign at the national state levels, I want to discuss our national partnership here. To achieve the systems-level change of ensuring the economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure in the US, we need to first understand the reasons why so many millions of people are struggling to the point where they do not have consistent access to the food they and their families deserve. We especially need to understand why, when we know that more than 12% of the entire US population does not have enough food to eat, we continue to allow this to happen.

At a policy level, when we understand how policies allow or encourage people to go hungry, we can change those policies so this is no longer allowed to happen. This is how we came to partner with the Poor People’s Campaign to push for policy change that improves the economic security of poor people in the US, many of whom are food insecure.

Fostering a Powerful Partnership with The Poor People’s Campaign

This year the Poor People’s Campaign Policy Director Shailly Barnes joined me as a guest speaker for a conversation I hosted about community disinvestment. At the national level, Shailly discussed what we can all do from a policy perspective to ensure the economic security of the millions of people who are working so hard each and every day, but who do not have the resources to acquire the food they deserve consistently. Shailly talked about permanently implementing the child tax credit that for a short period of time lifted many children out of poverty. She also noted that making the earned income tax credit permanent would significantly support working families. I agree with her and I encourage all of you to learn more about the particular fights to make these two tax credits permanent.

FRN partners with the Poor People’s Campaign on another proposed policy change that we believe will help ensure the economic security of the 42 million people who are food insecure: the fight to adopt a federal level $15 per hour minimum wage.

FRN is joining the “Fight for $15”

FRN has joined the “fight for $15”, which seeks to update the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour. We’re joining this critical push to support fair wages for hourly workers because our network is composed of young people, current students and alumni, dining staff, and farm workers alike, who are often working hourly wage positions and deserve a fair wage for their work. We need to be sure their time is compensated fairly so they can pay for their rent or mortgage, food, transportation, education, and other basic life necessities. There are millions of people working multiple jobs in the US for a federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Our neighbors and loved ones working hourly for $7.25 per hour have children, they have elderly parents they’re taking care of, they have hopes and dreams that further education can support them to achieve. However, they will not begin to advance upon those dreams, let alone have consistent access to food and housing while stuck in the rut of poverty and being working poor that $7.25 per hour almost certainly ensures. Morally, we have an obligation to stop this crisis of continuing to hold so many people back, including the many incredible people that the food FRN donates feeds every single day.

I will continue to talk more about the fight for $15 that FRN has joined in future blogs, so that we can share more of the details about what a federal minimum wage increase like this can mean. In the meantime, I wrote this blog post with more information and action steps that came from my conversation with Shailly Barnes and others dedicated to ensuring our communities thrive. This is a good place to start learning about the struggles of so many people in our very neighborhoods who are working hard every single day to get by.

Another resource I want to share is a report written by Shailly Barnes, along with Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, Josh Bivens, Krista Fairies, Thea M. Lee and Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis produced in collaboration with The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The report first appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of American Educator and I picked it up when it appeared in The Economic Policy Institute website. The report is called “Moral Policy = Good Policy: Lifting up poor and working-class people — and our whole economy.” The report reminds us, and asks us to consider, that “this inequality in the United States did not happen suddenly and cannot be explained as the consequence of individual failures; rather, decades of public policies brought us to this point, making the rich richer at the expense of everybody else. When we fail to meet basic needs for food, housing, and health care for everyone, when we fail to invest in education, safe communities, and fair elections, the health and well-being of our entire nation is compromised.”

Lastly, I hope you can sign your name to the pledge to fight for $15, and join our newsletter to stay updated on this topic, FRN10X and our work to feed more people, faster. As always, I hope you will share your thoughts with us, too.