I gave my notice today. For the past six-and-a-half years I have been the development director at a regional food bank. I'm moving on to an excellent new job that I'll write about sometime down the road.
As I was telling one of my colleagues that I'm leaving, something happened that reminded me of why I've been doing this work for so long.
Food banks are distribution centers. We take in government and food industry food and distribute it to local soup kitchens, food pantries, shelters, and other non-profit agencies. So we act as the hub, serving the agencies and (for the most part) not giving food directly to individuals.
But every once in a while an individual stops in needing food. We give them a list of local programs and a big box of food to tide them over. Today, as I was telling one of my colleagues that I am moving on, we were interrupted by somebody saying there was a man who needed help.
His name is Mark, and he is living in his car. He's looking for work, but as he told me, it's a tough situation: even if you get a job you don't get paid for a couple of weeks, so it's really hard to get ahead from the position he's in.
So while somebody pulled out a list of food pantries, I took Mark into our warehouse and we filled up a couple of boxes of food: soups, canned beans, chili, fresh salad greens, tuna, that sort of thing. We each grabbed a box and took them out to his very small car.
He shook my hand, thanked me, took the information we had for him, and headed off down the road.
After he left it occurred to me: I should have thanked Mark. On this day when I am preparing to leave my job, he reminded me - again - that hunger has a human face. Mark looked like a buddy of mine; I could tell that he is a good man, temporarily down on his luck.
Last week, in a diary someone wrote about poverty, I got upset at comments suggesting that people are poor because they make bad decisions. And worse: that we, the tax-paying Americans, get to decide how anyone getting public assistance lives, and what they get to buy.
People like Mark are why I get annoyed by such thinking. Because this is the uncomfortable truth: poverty is, by and large, not about a moral failing. It's much more often, in my experience, the product of bad luck in a harsh and unforgiving society that has shredded all the safety nets. Sure, some people make dumb decisions. But many more - millions more - are in poverty because the mill closed, or they've had to leave a violent situation, or a family member got very ill and they had no insurance.
That means it could happen to you or to me. To any of us.
I met a man at a soup kitchen one time who used to manage a convenience store. But one night, while he wrestled with his kids, he whacked his eye on the bedpost and became legally blind, unable to find a job.
I met a Vietnam veteran whose weight had dropped from 160 pounds to 120, because he didn't have enough food to eat. This man put his life on the line in our military and he can't afford to fix a decent meal.
Here's why I'm a Democrat: because we are in this thing together. We believe in the idea of the commonwealth, that the purpose of our civic life is to ensure that everybody - everybody - has access to the basics, and has a fair chance of fashioning a decent life.
Mark, as you prepare to sleep in your car tonight, I want to tell you: you were a blessing to me today. You were and are a reminder that we have a hell of a lot of work to do at every level of government, to give you a chance of a better life in this harsh land we love so much.