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Food For All Book : 3 of 6

Praying For Food

Darren Jackson

Introduction

When I was around 7 years old, I remember there being no food in our home. There was one can left in the pantry and an almost-empty jar of leftover birthday cake frosting in the fridge. I took the frosting out and started scooping it onto my finger, eating every bit I could find. I spent extra time trying to get the little sprinkles stuck to the bottom and sides of the jar. I then went to my mom and told her I was hungry. We were in the kitchen; she looked around and noticed the same thing I did — there was no food left. I was “hangry” and kept asking her if food was ready while she frantically searched for anything.

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She took out the can, which had peas or green beans, and although that might have held me over for a few hours, we both knew it wouldn’t be enough for her, me, and my sister. She started turning red, holding back tears, then knelt down and said in her overly optimistic tone, “We’re going to pray. We’re going to ask God to help us.” We looked up at her, held hands, and closed our eyes. My mother, who was orphaned as a 2-year-old, began to talk to God as if she was begging to her father. I didn’t know we were poor until that moment — until I heard my mother praying, with tears streaming down her face, on her knees, in front of her babies, desperately asking God, who felt so distant to me, for food.

She worked two jobs, and it still wasn’t enough. We’d go to work with her during overnight shifts and sleep in the break room. At one point, we were living out of a car or bouncing between friends’ houses. Yet, I still didn’t fully realize we were poor or in need until that moment when I heard my mom … begging God to let us eat.

I’m crying while writing this, knowing that right now, in the St. Louis region, our shared home, one in every six of our children is having this same experience, according to Feeding America and STL Food Bank.A1 When my mom got up from praying, she asked if we wanted to help her make what was in the can. She always made cooking together fun, so, of course, I was going to cook this can of vegetables with her.

While we were cooking, we sang and laughed. She and my sister went from singing old hymn songs from church to singing, “I know a song that gets on everybody’s nerves” from an old TV show called Lambchop. I hated that song, and I hated the green veggies we were making, but I loved being in the kitchen with them. We tried different spices, we laughed a lot, and we did our best to make the most of the situation.

Before we finished cooking, there was a knock at the door. We opened it and saw several bags full of groceries, but there was no person to be seen. My mom started to cry, and I — on the same day I became aware of how little we had — experienced my first miracle.

 

We were in the kitchen; she looked around and noticed the same thing I did — there was no food left. I was “hangry” and kept asking her if food was ready while she frantically searched for anything. I was in shock. I wanted to eat everything instantly, but my mom said that’s how we ended up with no food in the first place.

 

We finished making food; I’m not sure what all we had, but after we cleaned up, my mom took out the loaf of bread and lunch meat from the bag and said, “Now we’re going to make sandwiches.” She then told us about how when God gives to us, it’s up to us to care for those who have less than we do, even if all we have is a little. Later that weekend after church, we took the food downtown to the unhoused community. She told us to give those sandwiches to people and “just say Jesus loves you,” then ask if they needed prayer. Ever since, I knew I wanted to do this for the rest of my life: serve others.

Even as a kid, I’d pray for opportunities to help make sure others have what they need: food, clothes, water, housing, community. That still is my prayer. In 2023, when Serving Our Communities Foundation gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to our community through Food City, I had a moment.A2 Who would’ve thought that a kid, whose mother had to beg God to let them eat, would one day help people all over our city experience the same miracle he experienced?

From the Mud

Hunger is not just a crisis for the poor; it ’s a crisis for us all . It is a brutal reality that disrupts families, tears through communities, and continues to deplete the spirit of St. Louis and beyond.

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The journey of me becoming a food-for-all advocate began in the mud. The mud is where the lotus grows, the most beautiful flower in the world. It’s where miracles still happen. When we started building Food City, I told our team, and I continue to tell them, that our job is to be closest to the people who are experiencing the challenges — in the mud — listening to them and supporting their work as they feed and heal our community. To advocate for those struggling to eat and support the ones growing real food in places where food has been poisoned with chemicals or stripped of its nutritional qualities.

To me, becoming a Food For All Advocate first requires reflecting on your relationship and story with food, then spending time listening to and understanding the lives of those around you and their own story with food. It takes us being able to have safe conversations and being able to ask each other, “Have you or anyone you know ever experienced food insecurity?” That simple question during our research for this book led to unthinkable, heartbreaking stories related to how the system has failed us.

But imagine a Food For All city, where food isn’t accessible only through the desperate prayers of the poor, but through policies and practices upheld by our leaders and more fortunate citizens. According to the St. Louis Area Food Bank, in the 26 counties it serves, 117,120 children (one in six) are food insecure. The lack of food affects both sides of Delmar. It transcends city and county, urban and rural, and every other line that divides us. Although there are clearly communities experiencing what many call “food apartheid,” everywhere in this region, there is a child and a parent who are starving.

Yes, there are families in Ladue, Clayton, and Chesterfield who will go to bed without food, and will be too ashamed to ask for help because of the ways food access has been stigmatized. Even in our survey, nearly 26% of households with incomes above $100,000 say they don’t have enough food or the kinds of food they want to eat.

Many of you reading this know what it’s like to not have food. You’ve been hungry before. You know because of lived experience that no one should have to worry about food. Like breathing in fresh air, having access to food should be as natural as inhaling and exhaling.

Some of you reading this may be living paycheck to paycheck, realizing you are one doctor’s visit away from missing a meal. You’ve had to choose between food and paying a bill, food and transportation, food and therapy.

The thought of telling people you don’t have enough food is more daunting than the idea of waiting till you get paid again. It’s like our society has shamed hungry people into deeper starvation. This is food insecurity, and unlike breathing in fresh air, this is what it feels like to be connected to a breathing machine on life support.

Now, there are even fewer of you, but to those who never worry about where your next meal will come from and have never known the gut-wrenching fear of not having enough to eat, or the hopelessness of having to ask for food, you have access to food like you do fresh air. Everywhere you go, there’s food options, and you have the resources to take your pick. You are the lucky ones.

However, I’m appealing to you as much as anyone else. I imagine many of you — the lucky ones — are still feeling hungry. With limitless food options and trash cans full of food waste, it starves you knowing that you have plenty and others have nothing. After having had more than the amount From the Mud of food necessary to feed my family and myself for years, one day, I started to feel that hunger … the hunger that comes from having too much. The feeling of remorse because you are surviving, while your neighbors are not. That brings me to my challenge to, and encouragement for, you, which comes from the Nevi’im in Isaiah 58:10: “And you offer your compassion to the hungry and satisfy the famished — Then shall your light shine in darkness, and your gloom shall be like noonday.”

What is
Food Justice?

If we do not feed our children now, we will continue to be haunted by the echoes of their screaming bellies in our classrooms, courtrooms, and caskets. We cannot afford to stand by in comfort while others suffer. We — who have known the privilege of security — should be on the front lines of advocating for Food For All.

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The St. Louis Area Foodbank and Feeding America Hunger and Poverty Map estimates that less than $100 million would be enough to ensure every person in St. Louis County has enough food to survive — a goal that could transform countless lives if we chose to pursue it. Instead, taxpayer dollars continue to flow to large corporations that don’t always have the best interests of the communities they claim to serve in mind.

Take Boeing. The aerospace company has faced multiple lawsuits over airplane safety issues, including two crashes that killed a total of 346 people, as well as fraud charges.A3 Yet, in 2024, Boeing was awarded $155 million in tax breaks from the St. Louis County council for the construction of a new manufacturing site for combat aircraft.A4 In return, Boeing agreed to pay rent to the city and promised to create 500 new jobs.A5 But with that same $155 million, we could feed more than 114,000 hungry families and still have more than $50 million left over. With the money from those tax breaks, we could feed more than 200 times the amount of people in St. Louis County that Boeing says it will feed. That says nothing of the $32 million a year that Boeing’s CEOq makes — a sum that could feed more than 30,000 St. Louis County residents every year and still result in an annual income of $2 million.A6

At a recent hearing, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said to Boeing’s CEO, “I think the truth is, Mr. Calhoun, you’re not focused on safety, you’re not focused on quality, you’re not focused on transparency… I think, actually, you’re focused on what you were hired to do: cutting corners, eliminating safety procedures, sticking it to your employees, and cutting back jobs to squeeze every piece of profit out of this company.”A7

In voting against the tax incentives for Boeing last fall, St. Louis County Councilwoman Kelli Dunaway, a Democrat, said, “I think that it is these types of incentives that have turned this country, this county, the world we live in into a game that is stacked against the working families that we’re trying to protect by passing this bill.”A8

The problem is not limited to Boeing, however. For instance, in 2018, St. Louis City offered $7.1 billion in subsidies in what ultimately resulted in a failed bid to lure Amazon.A9

It’s insights like this that force me to question the entire system. I think of my mom, working two jobs just to put food on the table, while our leaders give tax breaks like this — deals funded by people, like my mom, who work multiple jobs and still don’t make enough to fill their or their children’s stomachs? Why aren’t hungry families being given the breaks?

If we do not feed our children now, we will continue to be haunted by the echoes of their screaming bellies in our classrooms, courtrooms, and caskets. We cannot afford to stand by in comfort while others suffer. We — who have known the privilege of security — should be on the front lines of advocating for Food For All.

Article Citations

A1 Feeding America, “Map the Meal Gap,” accessed October 21, 2024, https://map.feedingamerica.org/.

A2 St. Louis Magazine, “Food City: St. Louis 2023 Grantees,” accessed October 21, 2024, https://www.stlmag.com/dining/food-city-st-louis-2023-grantees/.

A3 Associated Press, “Boeing Pleads Guilty to Fraud Conspiracy in 737 Max Crashes,” published October 21, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/boeing-guilty-plea-fraud-justice-victims-fd309f4cc643637ebd9637fd5864dbb9.

A4 Newsweek, “Boeing Breaks Ground on New Advanced Combat Air Facility,” published October 21, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/boeingbreaks-ground-new-advanced-combat-air-facility-1919025.

A5 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Boeing Wants to Build New Aerospace Programs in St. Louis County, Add 500 Jobs,” accessed October 21, 2024, https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/business/boeing-wants-to-build-new-aerospace-programs-in-st-louis-county-add-500-jobs/article_2cde8d44-27d4-11ee-9123-a3decef75e1a.html.

A6 Associated Press, “Boeing Shareholders Approve CEO Compensation Amid Investigations,” published April 18, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/boeing-shareholders-ceo-compensation-investigations-2216aff126c2c48f03294ae3541bf7b6.

A7 Boeing, “Building the Future of Aerospace,” YouTube video, 3:25, published January 15, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LOG9tL6MKM.

A8 St. Louis Public Radio, “St. Louis County Approves $155 Million in Tax Breaks for Boeing Expansion at Lambert,” published September 19, 2023, https://www.stlpr.org/economy-business/2023-09-19/st-louis-county-approves-155-million-in-tax-breaks-for-boeing-expansion-at-lambert.

A9 St. Louis Business Journal, “St. Louis Is Not a Finalist for Amazon’s HQ2,” published January 18, 2018, https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2018/01/18/st-louis-is-not-a-finalist-for-amazons-hq2.html.