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Feeding Our Families; Nourishing Our Souls: Harry Chapin’s Gift to All of Us.
Feeding Our Families; Nourishing Our Souls
(40 years ago, the first and only United States Presidential Commission on Hunger, created by President Jimmy Carter, delivered a landmark report on global hunger, aimed at reducing food insecurity among tens of millions of people in the U.S., and around the world. One of the driving forces behind the creation of this unique Commission — a brainchild of Sandy Chapin’s — and it’s work was singer/songwriter Harry Chapin, who created World Hunger Year (whyhunger.org) five years earlier with former Catholic Priest and social activist Bill Ayres.
While the Commission’s practical and humanitarian recommendations were suffocated after the election of Ronald Reagan, and the rise of mean-spirited, anti-social justice ideologues in the United States in 1980, Harry Chapin’s work against hunger and food insecurity continues to this day. Earlier this year, the first documentary about Harry Chapin’s brief, but impactful, life was released entitled: “Harry Chapin: When In Doubt, Do Something.” You can see the two-minute trailer to the Chapin documentary — produced by Rick Korn, S.A. Baron, and Harry’s son, Jason, with whom I was privileged to work — right here: https://share.getcloudapp.com/YEuoDnWL.
Over the past several months of this increasingly desperate year of 2020, I have written several stories about Harry Chapin’s life and work as a way of lighting a candle to guide us through the darkness of 325,000 COVID deaths, and 50 million American families suffering Food Insecurity, not knowing where their next meal is coming from. While you are reading this, some of your neighbors are waiting five and six hours in a breadline, waiting for emergency food from one of this country’s 50,000 food banks — in the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world, where the Right to Food Security should be a human right. That’s 1 in 6 Americans who are going hungry, and 1 in 5 children.
As a gift for many of my friends, former colleagues and readers, I have combined those stories into one narrative detailing how Harry Chapin was decades ahead of his time, devoting his life, his celebrity and his fortune to fighting hunger and food insecurity. In exchange, I ask you to donate to a local food bank…
