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0 of 3 Premium Clicks used this month SUBSCRIBE Print + Online Subscriber Activation | Register x Forgot Password | Need an Account? subscribe | newsletter | deals Classifieds Jobs Autos Real Estate FEATURED » NEWS NOW Our View: Wider is better ... Hands needed to help Food Bank with bi-monthly drive ... Ashland High grad, professor, author and musician plays here Friday ... Our View: Wider is better ... Hands needed to help Food Bank with bi-monthly drive ... Ashland High grad, professor, author and musician plays here Friday ... RELOCATIONS Herb Rothschild Jr.: The courage to ask Comment DailyTidings.com Writer Posted May. 9, 2015 at 12:01 AM Posted May. 9, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News Last night, Peace House held its annual Empty Bowls Supper on behalf of Uncle Foods Diner. It was a celebration of Ashland’s spirit of caring for its neediest residents. The generosity of potters, restaurants, bakeries, musicians, individual donors, volunteers, and attenders — including the mayor and City Council members, who ladled soup — made the event a wonderful success materially and spiritually. We are deeply grateful. Uncle Foods Diner is Peace House’s only program of social service. Most of our work is educating and organizing for social change. Many people relate easily to the former, and understandably so. Direct giving is personally rewarding, and the results seem tangible. In comparison, trying to change public policy seems abstract, and it may require years of work to see any results. Not only that, social change work entails risks. One is that the solutions we are proposing may prove misguided, whereas nothing can be misguided about feeding a hungry child. Another risk is that such work can embroil us in controversy, whereas direct service brings us only affirmation. As the great Brazilian bishop Dom Helder Camara put it, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” Perhaps the biggest risk, though, may be the discovery that we are at least as much part of the problem as part of the solution. Let me explain. In most cases, people aren’t hungry or homeless for no reason or simply because of poor choices. If large numbers of people in a wealthy nation are in those circumstances, something is systemically wrong. And if, like Dom Helder, we summon the courage to ask why, we may find that the people we voted into office, the political ideologies we espouse, and even our own economic behavior, are the causes. If we are sympathetic to hungry people, it’s important to know that both versions of the fiscal year 2016 budget resolutions that the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate just passed will, if they are enacted, guarantee that the ranks of the hungry will swell dramatically. The Food Stamp program, renamed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, has been our primary tool of food security for decades. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, says that 1 in 4 Americans receive Food Stamps. That program is targeted for cuts totaling $125 billion over 10 years. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that such reductions can be achieved only by kicking 11-12 million people off the rolls or by reducing everyone’s benefit by $55 (for a woman and three children, that means $220 less per month). Those cuts won’t begin until 2021. But the Earned Income Tax Credit, on which low wage workers depend, is slated to end completely in 2017. That will push almost 15 million poor people deeper into poverty and add 1.8 million to their ranks. Programs like Uncle Foods Diner will do what we can to mitigate the damage. But we won’t be able to do nearly enough, so we are obligated, I think, to do everything we can to prevent the damage. I’ll have more to say next week about this appallingly mean-spirited budget — an assault on working-class and poor people unprecedented in my lifetime — and what we might do. For now, my plea is that we get beyond our philanthropic comfort zones and become advocates for justice. Without realizing it, the people we care about need us to take that risk. Herb Rothschild Jr. is chairman of the board of Peace House.   DailyTidings.com Writer Posted May. 9, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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