Political Quotes

“I thank Congresswoman Omar for continuing to be a champion on this issue, and I thank the Congresswoman for being here this evening. As it was said before, we are the wealthiest nation on Earth. We should be able to feed every child and every person, period, point- blank. We have the resources--financial, natural, and intellectual--to help feed every child on the planet. The fact that we are choosing not to do so is a policy choice. It is not a choice based on a lack of resources. As we focus on school lunches and children in our schools, we often talk about education. The conversation that has been happening over the last several decades is a conversation that focuses on something called the achievement gap. We often look at the achievement gap through the lens of race. We say that Black and Latino students are outperformed by their White and Asian counterparts. What we don't often talk about is the achievement gap through the lens of economic distress and poverty. What we know is children who suffer from poverty and live in poverty do more poorly in school than their middle-class and upper-middle-class counterparts. Poverty is obviously related to food insecurity and hunger. Poverty and everything that comes with it is a complex trauma. Hunger is also a complex trauma. Children will not thrive in a school setting if we continue to allow them to be hungry. This is not just about their academic performance. This is about their physical development.…”