FN12 – A Place at the Table Video Response

Today we watched a movie called “A Place at the Table” about hunger issues in America. Before this class, I thought that food insecurity only appears in some third world countries and some families living in the countryside who can’t have a lot of money to support their daily life (at least things look like that when I was in China). The movie really shocked me when I saw that there are a lot of urban citizens in developed countries like America who don’t have enough money for food!

In this movie, there are two examples to explain how serious this issue would be. The first one was about a girl called Rosie who lives in the countryside with her family. She receives a plastic bag of snacks every month from her teacher. She lives in a very small room and her family seems to be poor. Her mom once asked for the government to give them some food stamps but she was turned away. I think maybe it’s because that there are so many people have the same issue in the place they live. That’s a sad fact. The other example was about a woman called Barbie who lives in Philadelphia who has to raise two kids by herself. She was fired from her job and receives money from the government, the money was too little and she could hardly guarantee that her children would have enough food every day. Barbie joined a helping group to make speeches in the White House and she was invited by the radio program to talk about the issue she has–poverty in the city. Some ways that the two women coped with their food insecurity was by receiving food from charities and finding a new job.

I think the people at risk may be those who are without a job, drug addicts, low-income families with a lot of children, refugees, and some native Americans. They are all at risk because they don’t have the high income. For example, refugees might have trouble finding a job because they might be too scared and they can’t speak English well. I think there might be some historical reasons why Native American people might struggle. For example, Native American families may have gone to residential school and at the school, they may have been abused. This could affect families many years later till now. Native Americans could have trouble graduating from school and have trouble finding jobs.

If I was working in the government, I should increase the tax and make the tuition fee lower, and I would found some charities like more food banks to collect more money and spend them on school’s cafeterias. What’s more, I want to found a group of people to test if common people are all having healthy food every day, to make sure that people won’t have a very high possibility to be sick caused by unsanitized food. I think I can also make an effort on reducing the number of drug addicts in my country.