According to a new analysis of Gallup data released Aug. 18 by the Food Research and Action Center, one in four California households with children reported food hardship.
Families were asked, “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?” The answers reveal that there are times when families or individual family members skip meals.
Kelly Hardy, director of health policy at Children Now, a multi-issue research, policy development and advocacy organization based in Oakland, Calif., said, “It’s disturbing, but not surprising.”
It certainly is not surprising that at a time when the U.S. government’s priority is imperialist war and tax breaks for the rich, working-class families in California and around the country are going hungry.
According to FRAC’s findings, California has four of the top 20 metropolitan areas in the nation facing food hardship. Fresno ranked fifth (32.6 percent) nationwide among large metropolitan cities in households with children facing food hardship. The Riverside-San Bernadino-Ontario area ranked eighth (30.4 percent), the Bakersfield area ranked 11th (29.5 percent) and the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area ranked 18th (28.3 percent).
The new congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, also known as the “Super Committee,” set up to further reduce federal spending by $1.5 trillion, will predictably target federal food programs. The Super Committee is set to hold its first meeting when Congress returns to Washington after its August recess.
Fight the capitalists—don’t starve
The elite politician’s main concern is their own security and the security of their real constituents—the oil tycoons, corporations, defense contractors and banking giants that finance their campaigns. To the ruling class, hungry children and poverty do not represent a threat to security. To them, war feeds the economy and secures our “freedom.” Tax breaks for the super-rich ensure their spot on the top. The capitalists will never prioritize social spending or poverty reduction initiatives.
The absurdity of the capitalist system doesn’t begin or end at the parasitic priorities of ruling-class politicians, however. Capitalism as a system of distribution is simply criminal. A 10-year study conducted by anthropologist Timothy Jones from the University of Arizona’s Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, mostly funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, found that the U.S. throws out between 40 and 50 percent of harvested food products. It ’is simple: if the food growers cannot profit from the food, they destroy it—systematically denying hungry families their basic rights in the pursuit of super-profits. This amounts to millions of tons of food and billions of dollars wasted each year.
As the capitalist crisis deepens, more and more families will find it increasingly difficult to feed themselves. These families can and should represent a very real threat to the security of the ruling capitalist class. The Party for Socialism and Liberation is already organizing within the multinational working class and organizing toward the goal of reconstructing society on a socialist basis.
Socialism shows the way forward in the fight against hunger. With a centrally planned economy, socialist countries like Cuba are able to guarantee nutritious food as a right to all workers and their families. This can and should be a reality here in the United States, but we must organize and fight against the capitalists for a better system in order to make it happen. Together, the multinational working class can defeat the capitalists and their outmoded social system. Fight—don’t starve!
