Hunger Banquet Raises Awareness

from The Daily Campus

By: John Bailey

Even before the food came out, the metaphor was clear: "Right now the upper class is being served. The middle class will get served next and the poor people ... you'll get your food eventually."

We feel small and the world feels enormous. Sometimes, activists bother people; they seem to be taking a moral high ground, or to be idealistic, starry-eyed dreamers. For many, it's easy to be pessimistic or even downright scornful about activism.

For anyone who was at Idealists United's hunger banquet Thursday night, it just got a lot harder.

The room filled quickly. The ring of chairs, which had been empty, became occupied with bodies, hands clutching their "middle class" tickets. The long table, adorned with pumpkins and festive tablecloths in a touch of dark irony, became dotted with the "high class" ticket-holders. And the floor, which strangely enough seemed to hold the jolliest and most gregarious, became the site of a mass social circle of the "impoverished."

If you aren't aware of the specifics, a "hunger banquet" is a regular meal with a sobering twist: everyone, upon entering, is given a ticket. Written on the ticket is an economic status level, from richest to poorest. Ticket proportions are divided based on the levels of real-life poverty around the globe. When the food is distributed, the richest get full meals, salad courses, all the food groups, cider - the whole shebang. The middle class get meals that will fill them up, to a point. The lower class has to duke it out over a bowl of rice and pitchers of water.

Or hug it out, as the case may be. The poorest, who were the most numerous, were also the most convivial. Stories were told and jokes were cracked.

"I just want to know if there are bugs in it for protein," said one of the unfortunate impoverished of the rice.

The middle class sat in an intimidating ring of chairs, surrounding the poorer folk, but they didn't seem to have quite the same spirit of friendship. The upper class, amusingly and perhaps tellingly, was completely isolated, separated as they were by a long table.

After the dinner, the speaker of the night, Gina Brassaw of Community Outreach, took her place in front of the circle. After some mock surprise that the poverty-level guests had been given forks and plates, Brassaw gave what could be called a lecture, but in the context, it was more of an informal chat. She talked about her experience with activism as a community organizer, and in particular the enormity of the task before activists of today.

"Our society - locally, nationally, globally - has a lot of huge problems," said Brassaw. From climate change to hunger to HIV/AIDS, the situation is looking rather bleak. "The fact is, this is a pervasive problem throughout our globe," said Brassaw of hunger in particular.

So what's a young activist to do? Give up in the face of such colossal odds? By no means, argued Brassaw. She identified three important tools to help: stay informed, don't underestimate the power of small actions and, most importantly, stay engaged. If you don't know about a problem, she said, you can't really do anything about it. Even a brief glance through news Web sites online gives you a giant edge, she said, which brought her to her next point: take small actions. Little things add up. Recycling your waste, buying things with less packaging, helping out at homeless shelters or soup kitchens - anything, because it's the small goals that keep you moving towards your large ones.

Finally, and this is the reason for the small actions, stay engaged. Activism, she said, is draining. You don't necessarily want to be "on" all the time. Let yourself feel rewarded when you accomplish the tiny victories and you'll be energized to keep moving.

After Brassaw finished her talk, the floor was opened for discussion by Allyssa Milan, a 5th-semester sociology major. From here out, the night really began to shine. Far from being starry-eyed, confused idealists, everyone from every "income level" was bursting with insight and enthusiasm.

Discussion topics ranged from waste reduction to feeding the homeless. Parker Gleason, a 7th-semester English major, had plenty to say, and single-handedly kick-started some of the debates.

"I'll go to a grocery story and buy my stuff and I get plain paper bags. You can reuse those. If you minimize your waste, even in the smallest ways, it helps a ton," he said. Later, Gleeson brought up stories of homeless people he invited into his car to get a meal.

"You can actually see an emotion that comes over them, you - two minutes of your life, two minutes of their life, it can change your whole outlook," Gleason said, talking about the importance of face-to-face communication.

The importance of that personal connection was emphasized by Milan as well. "One of the greatest things we can do is just have conversations. You never know when you're going to be able to plant seeds. I'm big on that," said Milan, a 5th-semester sociology major.

Some of the problems and difficulties inherent in activism were discussed too, with nuance and eloquence.

Ashley Saab, a 7th-semester molecular and cellular biology major, brought up a common fear: that it's too late to really get involved.

"I'm graduating in four weeks. And in the back of my mind, I've always wanted to help in some way. Now, I sit here, regretting that I didn't do anything, and then I realize that I can just start now. I can just start tomorrow. I don't have to wait to graduate," Saab said.

Bureaucracy and bundles of red tape are another common issue, as brought up by Anna Aluko, a UNESCO student ambassador for human rights. She mentioned the thick paperwork surrounding the dining program at UConn and the difficulties involved in trying to donate food that would otherwise be thrown away.

"Why should I have to go through such cutthroat paperwork to do what is right?" she asked.

It's easy, again, to dismiss this kind of stuff - to say that someone else will take care of it, and that we don't really need to bother. After all, how does it harm us if someone in Africa is starving? But everything comes around, and not in some spiritual karma-riffic way.

"It's just a law of physics," said one guest. "We can't keep consuming 40 percent of the world's resources forever."

This is something that needs to change, and change will come about only through awareness. There are groups of people like UConn's Idealists United working to spread that awareness, and these groups are growing every day. Get out there and find them, because it's easy to do, and next time, you can be involved in something big.