More than 200 Angelenos rallied on the steps of City Hall South and marched downtown to the state building on May 20 to demand an end to food waste, healthier food for inner-city neighborhoods and expanded access to Food Stamps.

For the last 12 years, low-income people and advocates have gone to Sacramento to lobby for laws in California that alleviate hunger. But this year a joint "Hunger Action Day" was also held in Los Angeles, coordinated by Hunger Action Los Angeles.

"We've seen a tremendous increase in the number of people who are coming to us each month for food assistance - an increase of 50 percent just in the last year, and it shows no sign of letting up," said Fred Summers, operations manager of SOVA Community Food and Resource Program, in his kickoff address. "Hunger is a genuine issue. People are struggling to keep food on the table, and your being here today is hopefully a step in the solution of this problem."

Summers pointed out that most people in L.A. had a "misimpression" of hunger. He said hunger wasn't hearing your stomach growl at 10 a.m. and wondering why you skipped breakfast, but waking up in the morning not knowing where your next meal was coming from. Hunger, in short, was trying to decide weather to pay the rent on time or buy food for your family.

"This is a hunger that goes much deeper," he declared. "And this is a hunger that affects one-out-of-every-ten Angelenos. This is a problem that needs a solution."

Ray Sosa, coordinator of Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles, explained that one reason for the march was to protest food waste. He noted that 6.5 million tons of eatable food is routinely thrown out by California restaurants, hospitals, county facilities and businesses every year.

"These are not foods that are no good and should be thrown away," he stressed. "The city, the county and the state should provide some kind of method about saving this food. They need to provide some kind of solution so it doesn't get dumped in the trash can. This food should be given out to homeless people, to organizations that serve the poor."

Joanie Lee, also from Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles, talked about the need for Los Angeles County to implement as soon as possible Assembly Bill 433, which waives the income resource limit of $2,000 for families to receive Food Stamps.

The grassroots advocate also passionately addressed the issue of the lack of healthy and affordable food in the inner-city. "We demand fresh and healthy food in our communities," she declared. "Every one has a right to fresh and healthy food. Everyone has a right to be able to go to their local supermarket near their home and buy healthy and affordable food. We need fresh vegetables and fruits in communities like South-Central and downtown-Central L.A. plus skid row.

"We are people, too," she said, "and we demand proper healthy food from these supermarkets"

Marching against hunger
Wearing bright orange T-shirts, the group headed down Main Street's sidewalk to the rhythmic beat of half-a-dozen conga drums, punctuated by the haunting notes of a single saxophone, from the Los Angeles Drum Ensemble dressed in traditional African attire. At the front of the human line were youths from the group YouTHink, who chanted, "Spoiled food out, healthy food in!"

Then a girl shouted, "What do we want?"
"Better food!" the other teens responded.
"When do we want it?"
"Now!"

A young man with over-the-ears black hair held up a handmade cardboard sign with Magic Marker letters saying, "No more roaches in our markets." Nearby a girl's poetic placard read, "Our ambition is better nutrition." Other posters proclaimed: "In with the fresh, out with the old," "Good food? Over 4.5 million Californians don't," "Who stole the health out of our food? Who stole the groceries out of our hoods!!"

A few marchers held up 5-foot-high color cutouts of corn, watermelons, grapes and oranges - some of the veggies and fruits that are so hard to come by in many urban Southland neighborhoods.

As the block-long demonstration proceeded north on Fourth Street, occasionally a car would honk in solidarity, including one LAPD patrol vehicle.

The marchers stopped at the gray-cement Ronald Reagan State Building on Spring Street for about 10 minutes, with the drumming and chanting growing even louder to protest SSI (Supplemental Security Income) cuts to the disabled and other proposed drastic welfare program reductions by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to lessen California's $21.3 billion budget deficit for the coming fiscal year.

State workers getting out of work were careful to keep their bureaucratic expressions blank and eyes focused straight ahead as they threaded the sidewalk demonstrators on their way to parking garages.

'Affects us all'
By 5:20 p.m., the Hunger Action Day marchers were back at City Hall South, where they formed a rough semi-circle on the lawn below the stone steps. A former homeless man, who reported being on the street for 19 months, was the first to address the still revved-up crowd.

"I fed myself out of the dumpsters behind a market on Gower," Robert Coughlin said. "When we have fresh food and proper nutrition, it helps our minds grow and we make better decisions. I made some very awful and bad decisions in my life until I got help from organizations like SOVA and Project Chicken Soup, who believed in me enough to give me good nutrition, fresh food, and I began to get my voice back. I'm a better person for that."

Los Angeles City Council member Jose Huizar said his Boyle Heights community badly needed more supermarkets that stocked fresh produce. He noted that many of his car-less neighbors must rely on public transportation to shop at faraway places if they wanted healthy meal choices.

"We've got to realize that people who go hungry in the City of Los Angeles affects us all," he pointed out. "It affects us because if our kids get to school hungry they're not getting to school ready to learn. If they go and their parents have to choose between paying the rent and paying to put food on the table, it affects our economy. So it affects us all."

Jessica Jara from YouTHink was one of the last to speak. "Just because you live in South L.A., does that make you less deserving of food?" the 17-year-old asked, before answering, "No, it does not.

"We want residents of South L.A. to have the same quality and selection of foods that are available to people in other communities," she said. "We want more markets and more choices. We want to be able to get a variety of fresh and healthy fruits and vegetables. We want stores that carry low-fat options and organic foods, soy products and products for people with special health concerns like diabetes or high blood pressure."

Food Stamps eligibility
Mary Agnes Erlandson helped launch Catholic Charities of Los Angeles' St. Margaret's Center in Lennox 22 years ago and has been its director ever since. One of the main services provided at the multipurpose anti-poverty facility is a new and enlarged food pantry. Another is on-site assistance with applying for Food Stamps, along with offering practical nutrition workshops.

The big reason she and seven other center workers marched in Hunger Action Day, 2009, was to protest and change the Food Stamp requirement that cuts off families having more than $2,000 in resources from savings, retirement and other sources of income.

"It doesn't matter if you have zero current income, but if you have those resources then you're ineligible." Erlandson told The Tidings after the march. "If you've been unemployed for awhile and then your unemployment runs out, those resources are all you have. And it's really, really difficult when you're told you can't get Food Stamps. So that issue is really critical with us."

But a whole other looming matter is the threat by Gov. Schwarzenegger to do away with or greatly cut back the CalWORKs program for low-income families along with health insurance for these families. "So it seems that the budget is being balanced on the backs of the poor," she said. "It seems inevitable that's going to happen."

Meanwhile, new clients keep showing up at St. Margaret's Center on Hawthorne Boulevard.

"We're just seeing more and more people who are coming to the center and calling asking for help, especially with food," reported Erlandson. "We figured it out. It was about a 20 percent increase over the last month, and we had really high numbers to start out with."