Portland is a city that prides itself on its abundant supply of fresh food. Whether it’s being served in cafes, food carts, stocked on the shelves of grocers, grown on sidewalk garden plots or hanging from neighborhood trees, local and often organic produce is all around us. With all this food, it’s hard to understand why Oregon consistently ranks as one of America’s hungriest states.
Let's go for a walk, see what's going down around town...
There ain't much work around here these days, but I'm fortunate enough to be okay for the moment. Better than okay, in fact. It helps to put things in perspective, to take a walk around. Take a look around. It feels good to buy a copy of Street Roots from a vendor, or spend a couple hours helping where help is needed...
A few years ago I was living in an SRO on the West Side, walking home from temp assignments, tear-downs and set-ups at the Oregon Convention Center around 2 AM across the Steel Bridge, through Old Town and down Burnside, walking past the hundreds of my fellow Portlanders huddled in the night trying not to let their set ups tear them down...
Some of us line up for lunch here...
Just a few blocks away, others line up for lunch here...
This is what is missing in the U.S. We treat hunger as if the individual failed and should be ashamed, rather than as resulting from our corporate and governmental policies. We treat hunger as a matter of charity, where our government's tidbits would be a total disaster if private foundations like Feeding America did not exist to provide food now.
Anyone working in hunger relief will attest that hunger is not a problem of scarce resources, but of inefficient distribution. Across Portland, a handful of individuals, organizations and businesses are coming up with creative ways to collect fresh food otherwise destined for landfills and distribute it to our city’s ever-rising number of hungry people. While some call it food recovery and others dub it gleaning, these efforts, spread out across the city, are an important piece of the puzzle when it comes to fighting hunger and creating a more sustainable community.
Great piece, covering a wide range of efforts in our city. Coming from all different angles like The Portland Fruit Tree Project, databases like Urban Edibles, Growing Gardens, DePave, and of course we wouldn't be Portland if we didn't have businesses doing urban gleaning by bike. Too many to name here.
Rose City Resources. Oregon SafeNet.
Wouldn't it be something if we set our national priorities so that we didn't need dozens of agencies and charities, though? Can we make it happen? I'd like to think so.
I'd like to think we can pack up all of our problems, our hate and our greed and our violence and our inhumanities, seal them away in a locked box once and for all and ship them out on the first train out of town.
Tell me I'm not just a dreamer. Thanks for anything and everything you can do...
If you want to donate money, here is the Feeding America donation page.
If you have time to volunteer, here are some handy tools to find out what assistance is needed:
--Plug your zip code into this search engine to find opportunities in your area to assist hunger organizations.
--Typing in your zip code and state in this search engine will locate food banks in your area.
--Clicking onto to your state on this map will return results for homeless shelters and soup kitchens in your area.
Feeding America Blogathon Diary Schedule (all EDT):
Saturday, Sept 25:
10:00a -- rb137
1:00p -- teacherken
4:00p -- Patriot Daily
7:00p -- srkp23
10:00p -- boatsie
Owls -- JayinPortland (You Are Here)
Sunday, Sept 26
10:00a -- JanF
1:00p -- Aji
4:00p -- Timroff
7:00p -- Chacounne
10:00p -- blue jersey mom