Hello ,
I hope that this update finds you and your congregation doing well. This is your Autumn Hunger Action Congregations Update (3 per year, plus occasional periodic news or action alerts), and as usual it is as full as a plump pumpkin pie.
Four Hunger Action Congregations Co-sponsor Food Week of Action
Buffalo Presbyterian (MN), First Pres of Huntsville (AL), Oxford Presbyterian (OH) and Tippecanoe Church (OH) participated in Food Week, which had a record number of co-sponsors and events. Let me know if you’d like to co-sponsor the 2020 Food Week.
- See the Food Week Map of Actions and Events and the Presbyterian News Service article, “Food Week of Action will focus on ‘life and death’ issues”
On World Food Day, we added the 54 new Hunger Action Congregations that joined this year to together make 164 total HACs. Did you see the Presbyterian News Service article about it?
I’ve plotted all of you on a U.S. map with purple crosses (purple is the Hunger Program’s unofficial mascot color, by the way). Check it out… the cluster in Giddings-Lovejoy (MO) is quite impressive!
Farmworkers announce major
Wendy’s Boycott mobilization in NYC, Nov. 18, 2019!
For over five years, the CIW has been calling on Wendy’s to take responsibility for ending the generational poverty and rampant sexual assault that continues unabated on farms outside of the Fair Food Program.
Following 2018’s two powerful marches through the streets of Manhattan – the Time’s Up Wendy’s March, which marked the culmination of the Freedom Fast and was joined by thousands of consumers, and the “How Much Longer, Wendy’s?” March – farmworkers and consumers from across the region will be gathering in New York to once again take to the streets to demand farm labor justice from Wendy’s on November 18th of this year. I will be among Presbyterians joining the march in New York next month.
Following the 2018 Freedom Fast and Time’s Up Wendy’s March, the fast food giant announced at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in June of that same year that it would be shifting its tomato purchases from Mexico to U.S. and Canadian greenhouses, responding to consumer pressure over the abysmal human rights conditions in Mexico’s produce industry. But the Fair Food Nation will not rest until Wendy’s joins other fast-food giants – McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway, and Chipotle – in supporting the only proven solution to ending human rights abuse in U.S. agriculture, the Fair Food Program.
These are the words of CIW’s Lupe Gonzalo, speaking to hundreds of cheering consumers in New York last July:
… Once again, we are here to demonstrate our strength. We have made it clear to Wendy’s that we will not give up until they join the Fair Food Program. After our fast of five days in this very same place, in the cold, enduring hunger, marching with 2,000 people in the streets of New York, we have taken an important step forward: Wendy’s will now only buy tomatoes from the U.S. and Canada. But another, bigger step remains – and that is to sign a Fair Food Agreement. We will not be satisfied until Wendy’s responds directly to us as workers – because to simply buy from greenhouses is not equivalent to ensuring justice and human rights.
Be in solidarity with the farmworkers by taking one of these actions:
- Submit a letter to the editor or an op/ed to your local paper to amplify farmworkers’ call for Fair Food. You can download a how-to guide here
- Drop off a letter to the manager of a nearby Wendy’s
And if you are near New York City on November 18, join us!
Hunger & Homelessness Sunday is November 17, 2019
Learn how other congregations, PHP, and partners are working to end homelessness. Find stories and resources at pcusa.org/homeless.
You can download a new bulletin insert here.
Food Week Actions Have a Great Shelf Life
You and folks in your congregation can take any of these actions throughout the fall.
- Take the Presbyterian Climate Care Challenge — Commit to a personal and collective action and find out your current carbon footprint
- Preach (or ask your pastor to preach) about Hunger on any Sunday and Support PHP’s Response to Famine, helping to provide aid to Yemen, Nigeria, South Sudan and Somalia
- Tell BlackRock: Stop Financing Amazon and Climate Destruction!
- Support Farm to School in the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act — Calls to Senators and Representatives to cosponsor two related bills.
– The Farm to School Act of 2019 (S.2026, H.R.3562) – fact sheet
– Kids Eat Local Act (S.1817, H.R.3220) – fact sheet
Thank you for your many faithful activities and ministries in your congregations to help end hunger and eliminate its causes!
Again, don’t be a stranger. Send me anecdotes, stories, and photos for me to share. Thank you!
Blessings,
andrew
P.S. Oh, did I mention to send us updates, stories and photos to share? ☺ php@pcusa.org or comment below…
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
~ Martin Luther King Jr.
RELATED ARTICLES:
- Hunger Action Congregations Covenant with instructions and links to resources
- How to Cool the Planet?
- Celebrating 2018 Hunger Action Congregations!