Column: The war at home

I write this with a heavy heart. I have tears I can't even begin to cry because I know they would never stop flowing from my eyes. The threat of war reduces me to a small child longing for the arms of my mother. Even as a war abroad appears almost inevitable, I know that a war is being waged here at home. This war is fought with policies and laws against our own people. Our country has declared war on our poor.

When homeless, hungry children suffer in a country as wealthy as ours who is to blame? Who are their terrorists? At whom should their desperate parents shake angry fists? Since when did security not include the safety and well-being of our children?

Starvation in the U.S.? I doubt many people at Duke could turn away a hungry, homeless child if one knocked on their door tomorrow, but as long as poverty remains invisible, we fail to take needed action. The Children's Defense Fund reports that 14.5 million American children experienced food insecurity, hunger or starvation in the year 2000. As Loretta Schwartz-Nobel reports in her groundbreaking book Growing Up Empty: The Hunger Epidemic in America, food insecure households are often just on the brink of hunger and food sometimes runs out. Hunger is especially dangerous for children because hungry children cannot perform well in school or play as other children do. As starvation sets in, energy is siphoned off from the brain to fuel vital functions. Prolonged hunger and starvation stunts growth as a child's body devotes all its resources to mere survival.

There are centers and groups that concentrate solely on the issue of child hunger. The Failure to Thrive program at the Grow Clinic at Boston Medical Center sees poor and malnourished children on a regular basis. As the immune systems of hungry children weaken, they get sick and throw up, lose weight, and descend even farther into malnutrition. Centers such as the Grow Clinic at Boston are quick to point out that hunger increases whenever public programs decrease. The 1996 Welfare to Work changes increased the numbers of hungry children brought to the Grow Clinic, as did the Family Cap policy that caps the benefits a family receives even when another child is born. Even if a family is lucky enough to receive all the food benefits from WIC, welfare, and food stamps combined, they still only receive two-thirds of what a growing child needs to be healthy. This is especially alarming because malnourished children need to eat one and half times the food an average child would consume in order to make up for the damage they have already suffered.

Hunger is not unknown in military families. Some of those who will fight and die in Iraq still live in poverty and struggle to feed their children. Numerous charities try to help struggling military families with food and housing assistance. Many new enlistees make little more than $13,000 a year, even with the meager increases recently approved for military personnel. The military doesn't provide a food allowance for wives or children, and the housing allowances are often far below the cost of housing. As one Marine enlistee told Schwartz-Nobel, "I can go four days without food if I have water, but I know my wife and my baby need to eat." Our military recruits poor men, promising them security and honor, often only to beat them down through overwork, violent training and further poverty.

This impending war threatens to paralyze me with fear and helplessness. Monday night I held my best friend and we cried as the world felt like it was crashing around us. But we can't be paralyzed. We must challenge this war abroad, but we must also remember the hungry bellies and desperate hearts here at home. Apathy is the real terrorist for America's poor and if we truly value the security of our homeland we will end the silent epidemic of hunger in the U.S.

Bridget Newman is a Trinity sophomore. Her column appears every third Wednesday.