Rabbi Allen Bennett sat on the floor eating a peanut butter sandwich on white bread, watching his more fortunate lunch companions at a nearby table enjoying chicken, mashed potatoes, salad and sparkling cider.
The study in contrasts, part of “Hunger Banquet: Interfaith Call to Action” in downtown Oakland, was a chance for people to experience firsthand how income inequality affects food choices.
The Nov. 6 event drove the point home by assigning composite identities to participants as they walked through the door of the First Unitarian Church, dividing them into three groups representing income levels in the Bay Area: low income (23 percent), middle income (50 percent) and high income (27 percent).
Bennett, of Temple Israel in Alameda, spent the afternoon as a Marin County farmer named Peter. He started in the middle-income group, whose members ate buffet-style spaghetti with tomato sauce and drank soda. But he suddenly dropped into the low-income group after the farm had a bad season and Peter’s son damaged the family tractor.
Bennett said he could imagine Peter’s plight. “People often encounter circumstances they couldn’t have anticipated, and fall victim to circumstances beyond their control,” he said.
The banquet was co-sponsored by local Jewish Community Relations Councils, numerous East Bay synagogues, Catholic Charities of the East Bay and the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California.
Oakland City Council member Rebecca Kaplan described her city as the place “where every social justice movement begins” and won over the interfaith crowd of 80 with her remarks, delivering quotes from Isaiah and “a brilliant Jewish community organizer from Nazareth.”
“We’re not in the lean years now, we’re in the fat years,” she said. “More food is produced every year than we need; it’s just not sent to where it’s needed.”
Kaplan, who grew up attending Orthodox Jewish day schools in Toronto, said she had been sounding the shofar since she was 5 and proceeded to do so, characterizing it as “a 5,000-year-old call to solidarity.”
Anne Quaintance, a JCRC lay leader and a senior director at Meals on Wheels in San Francisco, noted that in the Bay Area 23 percent — more than 440,000 households — are “under self-sufficiency” and at risk for hunger, and 12.4 percent fall below the federal poverty level. Also, more than 500,000 Bay Area children are at risk for hunger.
“Low-income people often have to decide between paying rent and utilities and eating healthy food,” said Quaintance, adding that many make meals out of “empty calories,” such as soda and chips.
“Many Americans, though not technically below the federal poverty line, are one missed paycheck or serious illness away from hunger,” she said. “This event is a metaphor for how wealth is unequally distributed.”
The banquet model, designed by Oxfam America, is used throughout the country. The local event was part of a national effort by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Catholic Charities USA and the National Council of Churches, which together created the initiative “Fighting Poverty with Faith.”
Seeking to cut domestic poverty in half by 2020, the coalition “works to focus attention on the root causes of poverty,” said Myrna David, regional director of the JCRC East Bay, before the banquet. “This year’s theme is working together to end hunger.”
At the end of the banquet, attendees were given suggestions for how to get involved. One was advocating for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps (click on the “take action” tab at www.fightingpovertywithfaith.com). Another was to volunteer at the Alameda County Community Food Bank or City Slicker Farms, which grows healthy food in West Oakland.
Joani Blank, a Jewish member of the First Unitarian Church of Oakland who called herself a “Jewnitarian,” began the day in the low-income group, but because of the federal supplemental program Women, Infants, and Children, she was elevated to enjoy the spaghetti lunch.
“I thought it was a powerful exercise,” she said. “Very well-presented.”