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2017 Offering of Letters: Budget

• Call (800-826-3688) or email your senators and urge them to oppose budget cuts to critical anti-hunger programs, such as SNAP, refundable tax credits, and international development.
• On October 5, the House passed its version of a budget resolution. It proposes hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to SNAP, Medicaid, and refundable tax credits for low-income, working families. The legislation also triggers tax reform through the budget reconciliation process. The Senate is expected to vote on its version of a budget resolution this week. The Senate budget resolution would also trigger tax reform through the budget reconciliation process. It proposes $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, which could result in deep cuts to critical anti-hunger programs. Continue to urge members of Congress to reject cuts to anti-hunger programs and to pass a budget that will end hunger by 2030.

For more information on this issue:

• Budget Cuts Could Reverse Progress on U.S. Poverty
• House Budget Resolution Cuts Programs for Poor and Hungry People

Watch for action alerts. For additional talking points, contact organizing@bread.org or call 800-822-7323.

Schedule your letter-writing event

The 2017 Offering of Letters: Doing Our Part to End Hunger is available in English and Spanish and includes a sample letter to Congress.

Complete Your Activist Field Report Form

Have you met with a new member of Congress? We would love to hear about it. Tell us about your experience using the field report form.

Activists in Action: Million Meal Fast

Photo: Indiana Hunger Network leaders meet with Gov. Eric Holcomb to discuss collaborations to end hunger.

It is easy for the issue of hunger to get lost in today’s fast and furious news cycle. However, Dave Miner, a Bread for the World board member, decided to do something about that.

A long-time Bread leader in Indiana, Miner is fasting for 16 days, from Sept. 20 through Oct. 5, to raise awareness about hunger and proposed federal budget cuts to vital programs that help end hunger. After consulting with his doctor, Miner, who is 64 years old, is replacing solid food with water, electrolytes, and vitamins.

Immoral and inhuman is what Miner calls the House budget resolution that would cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $150 billion over 10 years — a proposal that passed out of the House last week. In Indiana, 1 of the 10 hungriest states in the U.S., a cut of this magnitude would translate into 50 million meals lost to vulnerable Hoosiers.

“I decided to try make people aware of this by giving up one meal for every million meals that would be lost to Hoosier kids, veteran, and seniors,” Miner told an Indianapolis news reporter in an interview aired on television.

The tactic to draw media attention to hunger in Indiana is working. Because of Miner, hunger and the proposed budget cuts have hit the Indiana news cycle, with Miner being interviewed several times, including being interviewed in the state’s leading newspaper, the Indy Star.

For Matt Gross, Bread for World’s co-director of grassroots organizing, coordinating a spiritual discipline with a strategic need is prescription for greater impact. “This has shown me the opportunities that arise when a solid leader takes an idea, prays about it, consults others, and really thinks through what can be done,” he said.

It’s a leadership model that Gross hope others will emulate.

Miner is also writing a blog series and hopes the fast will encourage others in Indiana not just to advocate, but get more deeply involved in the work of Bread for the World Indiana.

Ending hunger in Indiana and across the U.S. will take everyone. Families, churches, community groups, businesses, and government all need to do their part. Miner is certainly doing his part.

Last week, eight days into his fast, Miner sat at a lunch table with his fellow advocates and Indiana’s governor Eric Holcomb to talk about better collaboration at the state level and working together for public policy that can end hunger.

In front of him was an empty plate — a stark reminder to the governor and all of us what too many Hoosiers experience when they sit down to the table.

More Resources: Activist Tool Kit

The Activist Tool Kit is intended for new and current Bread grassroots hunger activists. It provides a set of how-to sheets for carrying out advocacy and fact sheets on the current issues Bread for the World is working on.

It's ideal as a starter toolkit for new Bread activists or as a set of updates for current activists. Form your own toolkit by printing out some or all of the sheets in the kit.

How-tos:

• How to Conduct an In-District Meeting with a Member of Congress (or the Staff)
• Effectively Using Public Meetings to Engage with Members of Congress
• Writing a Letter to the Editor of Your Local Newspaper
• #ForSuchATime Social Media Kit
• Conducting an Offering of Letters

Issues-related pieces:

• Hunger and Poverty State Fact Sheets
• Hunger by the Numbers (2016)
• Fact Sheet: Get the Facts About SNAP
• Budget 101
• Fact Sheet: Do Work Requirements in Public Programs Work?
• Budget Reconciliation 101
• Budget 101: Block Grants, Flexibility, and Per Capita Caps
• Immigration as a hunger issue
• Poverty-Focused Development Assistance (PFDA) 101
• The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program
• Fact Sheet: The Hunger-Medicaid Connection
• The Affordable Care Act 101
• Mass Incarceration and Over-Policing Fact Sheet
• Fact Sheet: Latino Community Hit Hard by Budget Cuts
• Hunger and Poverty in the Latino Community
• Hunger and Poverty in the African-American Community

Biblical resources:

• The Biblical Basis for Advocacy to End Hunger
• The Bible and Immigration Reform
• The Bible and Poverty-Focused Development Assistance
• The Bible and Mass Incarceration
• The Bible on Health as a Hunger Issue