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PORTLAND, Oregon (June 8, 2005) -- Lisa Wenzlick remembers the time, one year ago, when she became a hunger activist. She remembers a meeting at her church, Saint Luke's Lutheran in Southwest Portland, when an organizer from another congregation explained that Oregon could never food-box its way out of hunger. Generosity would never be enough; it would take advocacy. The insight led to her sitting, last November, at a table outside church services where worshippers were urged to write their legislators. Since only one out of 75 knew who his legislator was, it was sort of a two-step process.
Tuesday, Lisa Wenzlick appeared all over the country, at Hunger Awareness Day meetings organized by the faith-based hunger advocacy group Bread for the World.
"I see hunger as my problem, because there is a void in our leadership in dealing with it," she said on a Bread for the World videotape focused on the Oregon Faith Roundtable Against Hunger. "That to me goes back to our faith, because that's what we're called to do."
And one of the Hunger Awareness Day meetings, at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Northwest Portland, featured Wenzlick herself, talking about lobbying legislators in Salem and Washington, D.C.
"It doesn't matter if we're a faith-based community," she said of her reception. "It matters that we're average citizens. Most of what they hear is from paid lobbyists."
And sometimes, the difference between the two outlooks can be as sharp as a hunger pang.
To 200 people gathered Tuesday morning at Trinity, the faith connection was vital. Religious organizations have always been vital in Oregon hunger efforts; 70 percent of the Oregon Food Bank's client groups, the food pantries and soup kitchens that actually distribute food, are religiously connected. The Oregon Faith Roundtable Against Hunger was driven by the same realization that struck Lisa Wenzlick: To make a dent in hunger, activists have to deal not with the poor but the powerful.
It was not, several of them admitted, their first instinct. They're more used to working in church basements than legislative lobbies.
But they showed up Tuesday to talk about advocacy, people like Bob Zimmer of Northeast Portland's Grace Memorial Episcopal Church, which, together with Westminster Presbyterian, puts together regular hot dinners. Hunger, Zimmer says, pops up in neighborhoods where you wouldn't expect it.
Mari McGovern of the St. Barnabas Soup Kitchen in McMinnville, serving 8,000 to 10,000 meals a year, said St. Barnabas wasn't doing advocacy yet, but that was the next step.
Emily Gottfried, executive director of Oregon's American Jewish Committee and chairwoman of the Interreligious Action Network of Washington County, said, "I love working with this group. I love having an issue where we can make a difference."
So when Norene Goplin, director the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry of Oregon, asked everybody to get out their cell phones and call their House members and Speaker Karen Minnis, urging a hearing on a bill limiting payday loan operations that collect interest in hundreds of percentage points, people started dialing.
There was also an eye on Washington, D.C., watching the efforts of Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., who has introduced the Hunger-Free Communities Act of 2005, a grant program declaring a goal of cutting hunger in half by 2010 and ending it by 2015. A Smith spokesman said that in the week since the bill was introduced, Smith had recruited five more co-sponsors. It's not part of the bill, but reaching the goal would also require defending current hunger programs against serious potential budget cuts.
"We're hoping he'll think of this as a legacy," said Mike Hiland of Bread for the World, "thinking of his work on hunger as something he'll really be proud of."
For years, Oregon was nationally notable for hunger. It could become notable for doing something about it.
The conference carried another message, from Sharon Hunt of McMinnville. A longtime volunteer at St. Barnabas, she lost her job in a merger last year, and now made a point of showing her food stamps card.
As people who work with hunger say, there really aren't two sides to the table.
There's just a table.
And some people who feel called to set it.
Contacts:
David Sarasohn, The Oregonian
(503) 221-8523
davidsarasohn@news.oregonian.com
Terry Kirby, Communications Director, FOOD for Lane County
(541) 343-2822
tkirby@foodforlanecounty.org
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