Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [91]
In a dozen years focused on food problems, traveling back and forth across the United States, I’ve met hundreds of other people working on everything from food co-ops in Michigan to investigating center-pivot irrigation in Nebraska to water rights in California. I consider all these people allies, and some have become close friends, even if we get to see each other only a few times a year.
But I always fear that people who have never been involved in work for social change believe that people already intensely engaged are somehow different from themselves. They assume: “Well, she must have always been self-motivated and had direction. I could never be that way.” In my experience, this perception is just not accurate, certainly not when I look at the progression in my life. One goal of this book and of the book What Can We Do? Food and Hunger: How You Can Make A Difference,* which Bill Valentine and I wrote in 1980, is to demystify the people already involved—to show that we all must undergo the same struggles. None of us is spared the uncertainties. It may look easier for the other person, but it probably isn’t. For What Can We Do? we interviewed two dozen food and hunger activists in the United States and Canada and tried to find out what makes them tick. How did they get involved? How do they see their work changing the food system? And what keeps them going? In this chapter I would like to share some of their responses as well as those from people around the country who wrote to me as I was preparing this edition.
Use What We Have
As I was working on the final draft of this chapter, the popular balladeer Harry Chapin died in an automobile accident. He was thirty-eight. I was deeply affected, because Harry’s life reflected many of the themes in this book—especially this chapter. Joe and I first met Harry in 1976, when Food First and our Institute were just being born. The year before, Harry and radio talk-show host Bill Ayres had founded World Hunger Year as a vehicle for their work against hunger.
What first struck us was Harry’s drive to learn. I guess we’d assumed that entertainers who got involved in “causes” were not too concerned about the facts; they were out to prove they had a heart, not just an ego. But Harry was different. We sent him the drafts of the Food First manuscript and we held informal seminars to discuss our findings. I felt that what appealed to Harry most was that ours is a message of hope.
While Harry’s fame came from his hits “Taxi” and “Cat’s in the Cradle,” his most fervent fans were those who had seen him in concert. In his concerts Harry broke all the “pop star” rules. He needed no gimmicks. It was just Harry—in simple street clothes, with no props. Harry sang ballads about the pathos of everyday life—and between songs told people of the tragedy of needless hunger—yet he left his audiences uplifted. How did he do it? By the force of his character, grounded in certain core beliefs. One he called the “nudge factor.” To him this meant the power of even a small minority to bring about enormous change—if that minority just cared enough. In Harry’s presence, you had to believe, for it seemed as though even a minority of one could do the impossible.
When someone like Harry Chapin is gone, we feel an enormous void. But we can use the lessons his life taught to take up the challenge of filling that void. Perhaps the most important lesson is to use what we have. He started with what he had—musical talent and incredible energy—and used them to open doors for millions of people. He was directly responsible for the birth of three antihunger organizations and, through these, several more. One spinoff was the New York City Food and Hunger Hotline, through which hungry people can get emergency help and support in coping with the government food programs. Harry also made major contributions to our Institute during the early years when we needed help most.