"A Place at the Table" Film Draws Attention to Poverty Problems

Harvesters food bank in Kansas City sponsored a screening and discussion of “A Place at the Table” this week at the Alamo Drafthouse theater. This film covers a wide landscape of hunger in the U.S., including a historical perspective that attributes the 1968 “Hunger in America” news report by CBS as influencing Congress to enact laws on child nutrition and hunger relief. The legislation significantly reduced poverty and improved the quality of life for working poor people. This poverty reduction approach is an example of how to reduce hunger in the U.S., which by accounts is worse than during the Johnson Administration’s work on the “War on Poverty.”

The film featured several individuals and their struggle to make ends meet. A single mother with two kids, who sadly was unable to get food assistance after she got a job working the “Hunger Hotline.” She was a stoic young woman who discussed her situation -- a 2-year old son with some health issues, experiencing hunger and poor food quality while growing up, and sacrificing meals to feed her kids.

Several people from Collbran, Colorado, a poor rural area in the western part of the state were profiled. Those featured included a 5th grade girl, her school teacher, a pastor, who explains the growth of hunger in the small town, the sole police officer after others were laid off, a twenty-something rancher who worked a second full-time job cleaning at the school.

The film balances these hard stories with discussion from notable hunger and nutrition experts like Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics and Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved.

“A Place at the Table” pushed for government solutions -- why not? they worked before -- and stressed the importance of quality nutrition in the diet because of the widespread problem of obesity.

It’s clear today that legislators and corporations don’t make eradicating poverty or reducing hunger as the highest priority of their concern.

It’s arguable that some legislators don’t understand the depth and significance of poverty in the U.S. Some legislators are flat-out vindictive. What else explains their concentration on attempting to drug-test food stamp recipients? Why would they seek to prevent individuals who have served their time for a drug crime from receiving food stamp benefits as occurs in Missouri? Why do they seek to seek to control whether food stamp recipients from purchase white bread instead of whole grain bread?