Ending Hunger in America, 2014 Hunger Report Full Report | Page 139

CHAPTER 4
dreamed of. All of these projects produced the twin benefits of helping the poor and the
hungry and teaching the people of Dayton about problems and ways that individuals can
help. We were building a constituency for the hungry. In addition they also served as models
for other communities to emulate.”18
By the time Hall left office, there were still people in Dayton who were hungry. The stubbornness of hunger and poverty
in the city and surrounding areas
is inseparable from the economic
fortunes of the region. Deindustrialization has pummeled Dayton’s
manufacturing base, the foundation of the local economy since
World War II, as it has other areas
of the Rust Belt. It’s what Jim Weill
was saying about the economy
being akin to the long game in golf.
“What’s important,” says Hall,
“is that many people in Dayton
are committed to helping the less
fortunate.” By the end of his career
in Congress, when his office surveyed people in the district about
the issues they cared most about,
hunger had risen to the top of their
concerns. “In my later years in
Congress,” he says, “we asked people what they would want to talk about if they had a chance
to talk with me. Almost 80 percent said they’d like to talk about hunger.”19

A Leadership Challenge
Every community has people who are leaders against hunger. Tony Hall thinks the
odds of defeating hunger increase many times over when elected officials provide the
leadership. We shouldn’t expect the intense hands-on leadership as he provided in Dayton
from every elected official; however, there are other ways for individuals to be leaders in
this fight.
The loss of the Select Committee on Hunger in the U.S. House of Representatives was a
blow to leadership at the policy level. As Hall described in his 2006 book, Changing the Face
of Hunger, “It had been the vehicle that empowered me to call public attention to the problems of hunger, poverty and oppression at home and overseas. It enabled me to summon
witnesses to hearings that caused Washington-based media to report about tragedies—such
as famine in Africa, oppression in Haiti, and hunger on U.S. Indian reservations—they otherwise might have ignored…It helped me convince other committees to consider legislation
that the hunger committee devised but did not have the authority to bring before the full
House for passage.”20 Reinstating the Select Committee on Hunger in the House would be
a sign that Congress is serious about ending hunger in America. In the Senate, the Select
www.bread.org/institute?

Courtesy Alliance to End Hunger

As executive director
of the Alliance to End
Hunger, Tony Hall
traveled to the world’s
largest refugee camp,
Dadaab, on the KenyaSomalia border.

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