You require the children to attend school. Ok. But then you don't feed them? AND they can incur debt if they can't afford to eat? You call that "socia
You require the children to attend school. Ok. But then you don’t feed them? AND they can incur debt if they can’t afford to eat? You call that “socialism”?
Before Lunch Debt, Some Communities Asked a Simpler Question: Have You Eaten?
When I was a much smaller child living up North-New Jersey, there were times when I benefited from free school breakfasts. I can say that without shame. A child needed breakfast, breakfast was available, and I ate. Sometimes while my mother was attending school, I was left in the care of an elder extended family grandmother in the projects. She could scarcely feed herself, let alone me. Sure, my mom always left food with us but certain people take pride in feeling like THEY provided a meal for people who came to their home.
So, we would get on the elevator and ride down to the basement to join the other kids and adults and eat breakfast as the sounds of The Jacksons played on the stereo in the background. We would repeat the process at lunchtime.
There is history behind that kind of community thinking.
In 1969, the Black Panther Party began its Free Breakfast for Children Program in Oakland, California. It spread to cities around the country. The Panthers understood something beautifully practical: a hungry child sitting in a classroom has already been asked to overcome something before the lesson even begins. Their breakfast program did not create America’s federal School Breakfast Program, which already existed, but it helped push the issue of childhood hunger into public view and demonstrated what communities could accomplish when feeding children became an obligation instead of a judgment.
Years later, Mom moved us back down South so we could play outside where she grew up and like she grew up. Swinging on the swing set in the backyard, sitting on the front porch and playing for hours at a time, catching fireflies in the front yard until we didn’t even know that it was after midnight, and going trick-or-treating at the homes of people who knew my mother since she was a little girl.
In the South, we encountered the same principle through a different tradition.
My Granny was Rosa Robinson, the woman for whom RosasChildren is named. If people were around and she was getting ready to eat, she didn’t begin without asking two little words:
“Have some?”
That was it.
“Have some?”
You could hear an entire Southern understanding of hospitality tucked inside those words. If somebody was sitting nearby while you had food, you offered some. You didn’t need their financial records. You didn’t need to know why they hadn’t eaten. You didn’t make them explain how much money their mama had or whether Daddy’s paycheck should have stretched another three days.
You had food. There was somebody there.
“Have some?”
I think about those words when I hear that children are skipping breakfast or lunch because of money owed on school meal accounts.
Somewhere along the way, adults built systems complicated enough that a hungry child can stand in the middle of them while everybody discusses eligibility, reimbursement rates, household income, account balances, and debt. Debt?!!!!
Those things have to be figured out. Schools need funding. Cafeterias have expenses. Food costs money. Adults have real policy decisions to make.
Granny Rosa’s question still cuts through the noise.
Is there a child here?
Is there food here?
“Have some?”
Poverty shouldn’t make us ashamed of children or their families. Poverty should make us pay attention. It should get neighbors talking, policymakers calculating, communities organizing, and grown folks figuring out what needs to change.
The Black Panthers understood that when they fed children before school. Families who have depended on free and reduced-price meals understand it. Generations of Southern grandmothers understood it without needing a policy paper.
Feed the child first.
Then grown folks can sit down and figure out the bill.
Prisoners see the value in paying for children’s lunch, but people are voting for people who do not. We are intentionally electing people—casting votes for people who are looking at children and saying, “Have NONE.”
Are we going the right way?
Did prisoners in Kansas donate over $4K to pay off school lunch debt? | Snopes.com