Street Spirit December 2005

Please Feed Me

by Mary Perkins

"Please feed me," he said to the slouching, fat, scowling woman, sitting in the church kitchen chair. "Please, please feed me," he pleaded softly.

"Come back tomorrow," she said, hunching down over the overflowing plate of food in front of her.

The man's eyes took on a look of panic. "This is where they said to come for food. Please, please feed me!" he softly wept and pleaded.

The fat, sullen, tired woman looked annoyed. She shoved another spoon filled with steaming hot food into her month and looked with hateful eyes at the waiting, quivering man, and growled once again, "Come back tomorrow."

She then looked down at the food that she was feeding herself and instantly began to ignore him.

His face and body crumpled in agony and despair. "I took the wrong bus," he said. "I haven't been here for 10 years. I got confused. Please, please feed me. I am late because I got confused and took the wrong bus. Can't you please feed me something, anything, to eat?"

She continued to ignore him and started talking to her friend while she kept shoving food into her month.

I went to my car, got out a bag of food from it and a five dollar bill. I waited in the church kitchen until the desperate man came out of the bathroom and I spoke to him. I said, "Follow me. The rectory will give you some food. Knock on their door and ask for food. I will show you how."

He took the bag of food that I offered and sat in front of the church and ate it. He ate alone. No one spoke to him. "God bless you," he said, softly, to me.

"What is the point of having money if not to use it to help other people?" I said. "Lord knows, you can't take it with you."

Church soup kitchens need far more private funding in order to set up 24 hour food service stations for the nation's hungry. How many men, women and children die on your city streets because the governments and churches do not use the money that is given to them by taxpayers and charitable donors to open their food and kitchen facilities 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year? If they did that, we could feed the thousands of men, women and children who starve on our city streets.

How many men, women and children die on your city streets because no one simply bothers to care about them and to house, feed and care for them?

Why do you pay your tax dollars to fund such compassionless politicians and governments who would prefer to see people starving rather than to take care of them? What does this say about us, as a people?

What does the world think about how we treat our own poor? Why should any nation trust us to do the right thing when we cannot do the right thing by our own nation's poor and hungry?

The point of government is to address real human needs. Poverty is a real human need. Homelessness is a real human need. Hunger is a real human need.

Why are they so poorly addressed in such a rich and powerful nation like ours? These issues are so poorly addressed because this country has absolutely no ability, nor inclination, to care for anyone, except its rich citizens and its politicians.

If Democratic and Republican politicians in the United States cared about poverty, hunger and those who are homeless in this country, they would have addressed these issues already. The issue of human need has not been addressed. The facts speak for themselves. Absolutely no one in power in the United States cares about anyone, except themselves.

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