It’s Friday AM of the week long Food Stamp Challenge and I’m starting to feel a little ashamed. The meals I’ve had so far this week really aren’t substantially different than the ones I normally have, though the portions seem much smaller than usual. I’ve come to the table with hunger pains and my temper has been a bit closer to the surface than usual. I’ve read some of the posts on the Neo-Con blabber-blogs (actually I’ve read the same post just cut and pasted to several locations. Geesh, don’t those folks even come up with their own spin?) The gist of the neo-con critique of the Food Stamp Challenge seems to be that it’s not effective, that nothing is actually being changed by this activity. And to some degree, I think I might agree with that assessment.

I’m feeling a bit like a bourgeois tourist, temporarily visiting the place where others live daily. So what am I going to do about it? The easiest thing would be to continue the Challenge, to adopt it as a continuing practice. We could then calculate the amount we used to spend on food and donate the difference to any of the food relief organizations. But as someone else on this board noted, charity is not going to resolve the problem of hunger much less that of poverty.

The more difficult and ongoing task is to work for justice.