Where It's At

After asking to be told "where it's at," New York's Jacob Javits, acting chairman of the Senate Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, was driven to a barnlike building in east Los Angeles known as the All-Nations Neighborhood Center. There, in a filth-encrusted gymnasium, Javits and Kansas Senator Robert Dole were shocked to find that the area's Mexican-Americans and Negroes were not only hungry and unhappy but also bitterly critical of the committee.

"All you do is investigate," cried Molly Piontkowski, a diminutive Polish woman, one of 13 angry witnesses who appeared before the committee. "You don't do a damn thing." Asked by Javits if she knew of "people actually suffering from hunger," she replied: "Are you kiddin'? Are you kiddin'? You can walk down the street in east Los Angeles and seven families out of ten on a block are barely existing." Said Catherine Jermany, a huge black woman who heads an organization known as the Los Angeles County Welfare Rights Organization: "I'm tired of this jive! This whole welfare thing is an administrative cop-out." Lydia Rodrigues scolded the Senators: "Coming here, asking for statistics, it's a farce. You know the answers. If you dare come here again, ask the mothers on Fourth Street."

How about food stamps? the women were asked. "More trouble than they're worth," answered Molly. On the days they are issued, stores jack up prices. Besides, not enough are passed out each month. "By the eleventh and 25th of each month," said Alicia Escalante, an attractive Mexican-American with five children, "we are forced to feed our families rice, beans and other starches. Hidden hunger and periodic starvation appear in at least half the families of our community."

Elegantly Tailored. Javits' customary imperturbability did not survive the ordeal. Explaining lamely that he was the son of a poor immigrant in New York's East Side, the portly, elegantly tailored Senator blurted: "I had to eat starch when I was growing up." They booed him. Javits asked if there was a black market in stamps. The audience roared with laughter. Catherine Jermany snapped: "They ain't worth nobody spending time to hustle 'em."

In the middle of the hearings, twelve members of a local guerrilla theater troupe staged a searing attack on welfare. Ignoring cries of "You can't do this!" from Javits, they portrayed a poor family set upon by welfare officials and harassed by a social worker who carried a whip and shouted, "Where are those dirty little Mexicans?" In the bitter finale, performed directly in front of Javits, the social worker stuck out her sweater-stuffed rear end and members of the aid-seeking family lined up and kissed it.

Hungry Cynics. If nothing else, the California hearings demonstrated that decades of deprivation have spawned a nation of hungry cynics. Last week President Nixon took note of the paradox of having 11.5 million people verging on starvation in what is glibly known as an affluent society. It was a marked turnabout for the President, who only days before was reportedly anxious to postpone any organized assault on hunger for at least a year. "That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable," said Nixon. "The moment is at hand to put an end to hunger in America itself for all time."

To achieve that vision, Nixon outlined a program that, when fully operational in 1971, would cost $2.5 billion annually--up from $1.5 billion already provided for in the 1970 budget. Next year the Administration plans to spend $270 million to get it started.

Cash Income. Initially at least, the money will be spent to provide a family of four with a minimum of $100 a month worth of stamps redeemable for food. If the family has an income of under $30 a month, it would get the stamps free. For those slightly better off, food stamps would be provided at a cost no greater than 30% of their incomes. The chances are that the Administration will eventually switch from giving food stamps to disbursing cash.

The Nixon food-stamp program came close to being shelved--at least for this year. In March, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Robert Finch, together with Agriculture Secretary Clifford Hardin and Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans, submitted the food-stamp proposal to the President. Fine, said Nixon, but where will we get the money? Though the President planned an attack on hunger in 1971, there was no room in his tight budget for the millions of dollars needed to start the program in 1970. As months passed, the hunger question became a prickly issue in the White House. Some advisers sided with Presidential Counselor Arthur Burns, who opposed any attack on hunger this year. Others agreed with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Assistant to the President on Urban Affairs, who sees the program as a first step in redesigning the entire welfare system.

Compelling Issue. In the end, the President was spurred into action by rising public sentiment for legislation. A recent Gallup poll shows that 68% of the people favor giving free food stamps to the poor. Despite its unhappy confrontation in Los Angeles, the greatest influence on the President was the Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, whose fulltime chairman is South Dakota Democrat George McGovern. The committee's findings had made hunger so compelling a political issue that Nixon ultimately felt it necessary to ignore the economizers and submit his eleventh-hour program.

For his part, McGovern thinks that even "a billion dollars a year for hunger will be less than a third of what is needed," and he promises to press for an increase. Where Nixon will get the $270 million to start the program in 1970 is still unknown. One obvious, if possibly simplistic, solution would be to make a radical revision--or excision --of agricultural subsidies. The Government now pays farmers more than $1.8 billion a year not to grow crops. That sum would go far toward easing the chronic hunger pangs of millions of Americans.

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