Hunger In America – A Helpful and Interesting Watch

Name: Klara Moss

Social Justice Group: Food insecurity in NYC (B)

Date of Fieldwork: January 10, 2025

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Documentary: “Hunger In America”

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:

A couple weeks ago my partners and I watched the CBS 1968 documentary called “Hunger In America”. It was an old film but we learned a lot about food insecurity back then and got many sad but intriguing facts. One statistic really stood out to us and it stated that 10 million people were suffering from hunger in our country at the time. We then googled how many people hunger strikes now and there came to be a total of 47 million which is a crazy increase and shows that there needs to be a change soon or else the number will keep going up. Another sad fact was that many young girls and women became prostitutes to earn money to buy foods. This wasn’t unusual either.

There were a lot of clips on how babies are also greatly impacted by hunger and that many infants are constantly admitted to the hospital due to starvation and end up dying. They noted that babies with malnutrition are sometimes so weak that they can barely move or cry at all. Many people look 20 years older than their actual age because skin wrinkles when their bodies can’t produce fat from not eating. Several children live miles away from school with walking as their form of transportation and have to go at lengths with an empty stomach because the lunch price of 35 cents was too high for kids to afford. It’s hard for kids to concentrate in school from being so hungry which affects their grades and behavior and makes a dent in their long term future. A lot of these issues are big loopholes that people can’t seem to get out of without support since it’s hard to recover without money or food.

This film was very helpful for our project and gave us visuals that were partly upsetting to see but eye-opening to the topic.

Klara Moss

Hello my name is Klara Moss. I am 14 years old and an 8th grade student at LREI in Manhattan, New York. I am participating in a Citizen Action Project, and my focus is on "Food Insecurity and its Effects in NYC". I am passionate about this topic because I believe everyone deserves to have a meal on their table. 

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