A Clash of Beliefs

Yesterday, while we were discussing the article and video about the man who kept an open garden in his community there was talk about his view of change. He said instead of marching and petitioning, you can simply start change in your own life and community instead. 

To me both the grassroots movements as well as more top-down approaches to making change are good, but often, they work best in tandem. But I digress. What came to mind when were discussing is that people usually believe what they doing is best. It’s natural human tendency, and it’s difficult to expand your horizons. Thus this thought led to when we watched “A Place at the Table”, when the government officials increased funding for school lunches. They had this whole press conference with smiling children and cartoon pieces of food with faces, not realizing that they were barely making a change and only increasing the budget for a school lunch by a few cents. 

I talked about this a bit in my last blog post, but really, what is the right way to make change in a meaningful way. How do you even define what is “meaningful”? Having access to decent food is one of the most vital parts of life, and when our government fails to really understand the need for change, what can we do? 

I think we need to first stop by criticizing the way different people deal with the issue. No matter what you are doing, you are creating awareness and that’s key to making progress and helps others realize the need for change as well. Part of the reason access to food in America is getting worse is due to a lack of knowledge, and active understanding of the issue. I say active because it’s very easy to say, “People are hungry, that’s sad. I’ll donate to a food pantry.” then a few months later if we haven’t felt like we are making a huge difference we stop and get on with our own lives. 

Perhaps there has to be some sort of feeling of accomplishment to help people continue. For example, yesterday when we were reading about community gardens, people were very excited about it and seemed rather involved in the cause likely because they understand and see what they are doing. On the other hand, more large scale activities also help develop this sense of community, so both methods are valid and effective.