Bernie Sanders and Universal School Meals
On Friday, November 15th influential public figures such as Bernie Sanders, Michelle Obama, Jeff Goldblum, Dwayne Johnson, and many more, made a surprise special appearance at the Minneapolis Walker Art Center’s Teen Takeover Fall 2019 — a party designed specifically for teens, organized by the Walker Teens Art Council. Before I go any further, I should mention the special guests were cardboard printouts.
I was tickled to learn that Bernie was chosen to hand out snacks and treats throughout the evening. While there’s underlying humor and simple detractor talking points behind Bernie’s specific duty to hand out “free” anything — in this case food — there’s a much more serious conversation to be had here.
In the richest country in the history of the world, as reported by the Washington Post, “Over 13 million kids go to school hungry, and one in five children in the United States live in food insecure households, which means they lack consistent access to enough food.”
On October 15th of this year, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders introduced The Universal School Meals Bill, a new piece of legislation that would “provide free breakfast, lunch, and dinner to every student–without demanding they prove they are poor enough to deserve help getting three meals a day” one that “eliminates the stigma surrounding children who receive free or reduced lunch.”
As stated by Rep. Omar, “There are nearly 1 in 10 households in Minnesota that struggle with food insecurity, along with millions more across the country. We must find a way to address this crisis. When our children have empty stomachs, they cannot learn. They have more trouble concentrating. They are more likely to be absent or tardy. Study after study finds that access to meals increases child participation.”
On Monday, November 11th — nearly a month after the new bill was introduced— Richfield High School was behind a disgusting lunch-shaming incident, where “more than 40 students were served a hot lunch only to have staff take the hot lunches, throw them in the garbage and replace them with cold lunch.”
What was the motivation? Each student had a lunch balance of $15 or more. Richfield Public Schools has since released a statement apologizing for the incident, but as Ilhan said, “No child should incur a debt because of their financial constraints beyond their control.”
This is not only about food — though Americans waste 60 million tons (or $160 billion) worth of produce annually — this is not about a broken system, but a rigged system. In a country where the 400 richest billionaires are worth a combined $2.68 trillion, and the richest three billionaires alone own as much wealth as the bottom half of our nation’s population, the poor and middle class are left to fight over three meals a day, a decent standard of living, a living wage, and whether or not we deserve healthcare as a basic human right.
Spoiler alert: you deserve it all.
To fight back and demand what we what all deserve as human beings — especially children — it requires a major movement of conviction and compassion, which feels overwhelming and next to impossible, but with a leader who is an activist at heart, and has spent his entire career fighting for us, we can and will succeed.
It’s us versus them. They are 1%, we are the 99.
“When people stand together, and are prepared to fight back, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish.” — Bernie Sanders, February 2016
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