November 27, 1981

EDITOR:

  Day by day I listen to the news and cringe and joke about one more inequity. But today I've had enough, and I write to ask, HOW can we stop the spiraling injustice that spins off materialism?  Last week as I commuted forty-five miles after a draining corporate day, I heard on the radio that four Minnesota counties were going to shut down their school lunch program because it was losing money. For want of $10,000 or less, hot lunches would be discontinued. And I grimaced and thought, "Since when did we define the welfare of our children by dollars?"

  Today as I huddled in front of a fire, my thermostat set at 55 because I can't afford it any higher, I heard on the television that NSP had received a Federal Regulation Agency decision that it could charge the consumer the $67,000,000 it lost in speculative development of a nuclear power plant in Minnesota which, thank God, was denied a permit.

  As government spending is cut and fuel relief programs disappear, who will pay the increased utility bill of the person eating dog food on Social Security, or the single parent on a secretary's pay, or the striking worker (who would much rather be working but was outvoted), or the unemployed artist?

  Contemplation of the tragic irony of our society's priorities brings me to the question, wouldn't it have been preferable to have invested $67,000,000 in school lunch programs and feed developing minds than to have wasted $67,000,000 (and how much more if they had succeeded?) on a facility which ultimately and inevitably would cause horrible death and disease when the unthinkable becomes reality, and nuclear waste explodes in transit to desert or island or space?

  But that question is vast and theoretical. What we're dealing with here is specifics. There are children who are going to be undernourished in Minnesota because the schools are functioning on lovely capitalist principles of profit and loss, supply and demand, leave morality to the parents, let's teach kids survival of the financially fittest, Junior Achievement for executive kids, Boy Scouts for officer kids, street hunger for poor kids.

  Who's going to pay if these children are hungry? Well, of course the children, whose brains will be starved so they'll be labelled "backward," whose stomachs will rumble and make the other kids laugh. Then, when they get angry enough, society will begin to pay in rage and crime and maybe incarceration. And then, 'round we come to the taxpayer/consumer again, who invests more and more money in police services and less and less money in humane programs...like school lunches.

  I propose that every comfortable household living in or feeling for one of the stricken counties forego one holiday engorgement and send the money saved to their county's school administrators earmarked for school lunches.  I propose that every fourth and sixth and 8th and 10th drink be foregone, and the money sent to the school administrator earmarked "milk for schoolchildren."  Wouldn't take long to get their $10,000.

Counter-proposals welcome.

Ellen Benjamin   
Hudson, Wisconsin