Issue of the Week: Hunger, Disease, Human Rights, Economic Opportunity, Population, War, Environment, Personal Growth

Published June 11, 2018

Last week, we focused on the 50^thanniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s winning the California primary in his campaign for the US presidency on June 4, 1968, being shot after his victory speech shortly after midnight on June 5^th, his death on June 6^th, and the historical impact of these and related events.

This week we focus on our post last year on June 6^th, on the 40th anniversary of the White House cabinet meeting on June 6, 1977 and related documentation on June 11, 1977, beginning a White House commitment to end world hunger and hunger in the US. These events were central in Planet Earth Foundation’s initial work then and much of its work thereafter, including through World Campaign. The post also refers to other historic anniversaries on this day, June 6^th, remarkable anniversaries on the same date, such as the D-Day invasion to liberate Europe from the Nazis. The post speaks for itself.

6.6.17:

Today is the 40th anniversary of an important day in US and world history. It was the day of the cabinet meeting in which President Carter, early in his administration, began a US commitment to reform US foreign aid and policy, and multilateral policy through the UN and other international organizations, to recognize the root causes of and end hunger on the planet.

And days later, on June 11, a seminal document to be revisited below.

As had been the case before in efforts to end hunger and other human rights and social justice struggles, a great deal was accomplished in part while the root causes remained in many ways. The resistance to change equation remained the same. The change in some ways was co-opted by the status quo from the start, again inevitably. But the change was real and measurable. On a scale not achieved before on this issue.

Hunger and related disease was the worst killer in human history, taking 13 to 18 million lives a year, mostly infants and children. Hunger-related deaths were reduced by half to two thirds decades later, with related birth rate reduction, reduction in global violence and reduction in harm to the environment.

Because the job wasn’t finished, which meant and means equality—basic needs and human rights for all—the above problems continue to threaten the future of humanity and all life on planet earth. But without the above, besides hundreds of millions of deaths and billions more people on the planet, the global instability, violence and environmental damage may have already taken us under.

The movement in the direction of what occurred on June 6, 1977 was of course the aggregate of many things, from human evolution to great struggles for equality and against injustice to extraordinary individual actions. We will always remain humbled and awe-struck by the fact that Planet Earth Foundation had the indescribable privilege of being the specific catalyst for that day with a documentary film, our first project.

But before going on in this regard, some other related anniversaries and issues of note.

First, our thoughts and prayers again go to the UK after the attack in London. The principals of World Campaign, Lisa Blume and Keith Blume, have been at the exact spot at London Bridge more than once recently. This second terrorist attack in the UK in weeks happening on the heels of the first meeting of a US president with NATO allies at a 9/11 memorial, consciously avoiding full support for a structure (which of course along with the US has made serious mistakes, and/or represented an unequal global status quo at times) that has kept peace in Europe since World War Two and around the world in many ways—added to the pain. Further, as we noted after Manchester, there are other places with less media attention where this keeps happening on a worse scale. And the bigger killers by far, such as hunger, barely make the front page. As we keep saying and saying and saying—equality for all is the only answer, or the abyss.

Seventy-three years ago today was D-Day. Without the US and allied forces attacking Hitler’s fortress Europe to liberate it, there was no future to have. As we have described at length before, President Roosevelt insisted that the war against fascism would be to create equality of peoples after the war. Lots of things, including the Cold War, interfered. But progress was made in many ways around the world. At the same time, ironically, at the very moment the Cold War was won, economic inequality was gathering momentum in the US and other places.

Forty-nine years ago today, Bobby Kennedy died from an assassin’s bullet. He had brought more attention to hunger in America and the need for land reform instead of war in Vietnam than anyone else could have at that time. He and his brother, President Kennedy, saved the planet from nuclear war and began the arms control process, as well as finally embracing civil rights fully. Bobby rejected, and publicly acknowledged this famously, what both he and his brother had supported in the Vietnam War. The chances that President Kennedy would have escalated as LBJ did seem small, but Bobby’s rejection of his beloved brother’s legacy in any way was an unusual act. And President Kennedy himself had launched a higher level of support for land reform, first in Latin America. Part of the response to the Cold War and the Cuban Revolution, yes. Playing a two-way game as is so often the case (they’re SOBs but their our SOBs as FDR put it), yes. But grinding forward through a combination of vision and hard lessons and necessity, yes.

President Kennedy’s 100th birthday was last weekend. To acknowledge reality fully, he was the sexist mad man in chief in the mad men age. Bobby had to be his keeper. But they both evolved, in lightning speed in both cases at the end of their lives. What world would we be in now without those two killings, and others?

And seventy years ago yesterday, on June 5, the Marshall Plan was launched. Post-war Europe was saved from starvation and anarchy and the otherwise certainty of World War Three.

As Hubert Humphrey, shortly before he died, told Keith Blume, Planet Earth Foundation founder and World Campaign co- founder, in a filmed interview, we needed to do the Marshal Plan again, in a broader way, to end hunger on earth. As did George McGovern, who began to change the nature of US and international aid under President Kennedy. When Bobby Kennedy was asked for a list of decent people in the senate, he identified McGovern as the only one. Humphrey and McGovern also championed programs like the school lunch and Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which Lisa Blume, World Campaign co-founder, spearheaded public awareness and support for in The Campaign To End Hunger public service ads blanketing the nation, and often the world, for approximately two decades starting in the late 1980’s. And Humphrey and McGovern were two of the signatories of the letter excerpted below to newly inaugurated President Carter about our first documentary, “The Hungry Planet”:

(To President Jimmy Carter, The White House): “Mr. President, we believe that you and your closest advisers on this issue should see this film…(on the need for Americans to address the critical international problem of world hunger)…and hear these committed people…(John Denver; Mrs. Denver; Robert Fuller, former president of Oberlin College; Roy Prosterman, instructor at the University of Washington law school, who has testified frequently on world hunger; and Keith Blume, the maker of the film)…Their energy, enthusiasm, and tone are very compatible with the significant attention that you have given to human rights as a matter of international policy.”

~ United States Senate: Wendell R. Anderson, Minnesota; Dennis DeConcini, Arizona; Hubert H. Humphrey, Minnesota; George McGovern, South Dakota; John C. Culver, Iowa; Gary Hart, Colorado; Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont; James R. Sasser, Tennessee

Planet Earth Foundation’s initial president was Roy Prosterman, whose work on land reform was already supported by the likes of Humphrey and McGovern and across the aisle, and was featured in the film; Bob Fuller saw the film and brought us together with John Denver, who was, at the time, the most popular recording artist in the US. Days after the above letter, Keith and John were showing the film to Chip Carter. He took it to the White House to show it to the President and the Carter family in the White House theater. Which led to the following in the cabinet minutes for June 6:

“The President said he recently saw a film with his son Chip on world hunger, a subject which concerns him very much and which was discussed briefly at the recent spring budget review on foreign aid. He plans personally to do more work on the issue and noted the natural connection between dealing with world hunger and espousing human rights. He said that AID Director Jack Gilligan and Mr. Vance are eager to help with this work and noted that P.L. 480 is very popular on the Hill and might be used effectively toward these ends. He added that the U.S. entertainment industry has adopted eradication of world hunger as its humanitarian goal.”

Carter immediately formed the ad-hoc White House Hunger Working Group under his health advisor, Dr. Peter Bourne, which was formalized 12 weeks later. Chip Carter was a key player, as was National Security director Zbigniew Brzezinski, who just passed away on May 26. Agree or disagree with him (Carter said he often disagreed, but trusted and respected him above all others), he was one of the major US foreign policy figures of the post-war era. He acknowledged the critical importance of the developing world, and that he had over-emphasized aid based on Cold War aims as opposed to the wider needs and issues at times. He became a strong voice for addressing inequality, opposed the Iraq War at the outset, and supported Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Also featured in “The Hungry Planet” was Harry Chapin, who Keith called the morning after seeing him espouse ending hunger on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson the night before. He contributed his song “The Shortest Story” to be used in the film. John Denver later asked Keith to produce another film on hunger, “I Want To Live”, which ended with his song of the same name. Chapin was lobbying for the idea of a presidential commission on hunger. A year after the working group was formed, Carter issued an executive order to form the Presidential Commission on World and Domestic Hunger directed by Panama Canal Treaty negotiator Sol Linowitz. The two artist-activists appointed to the commission by Carter were Chapin and Denver, who became the hubs for other activists in influencing the Commission as well.

The Commission issued its report in 1980. Chapin died tragically a year later. Twenty years ago in October, Lisa and Keith Blume were attending the funeral of John Denver after his tragic death.

The work which led to and came after the Commission was bipartisan. President Ford started important research on hunger that Carter received. Keith Blume interviewed him on film and many others as well, such as Bob Dole, another bi-partisan supporter. And Andy Young at the UN. Seeing the pictures on his office wall of the march at Selma and other such events, and talking about the connection to hunger and poverty while watching our film with him, were among the unforgettable experiences of our work.

After the Commission released its report, Keith Blume interviewed Peter Bourne. We and others had questioned the need for a commission when the White House Hunger Working Group had arguably already received and provided all the information needed. Action could then arguably have been taken more timely and decisively, with greater impact, at the height of the political influence of a young administration. Bourne said that had been Carter’s initial view. And in hindsight it may well have been the better choice. At the same time, he noted, the Commission served an important role in getting political buy-in from the various agencies and lobbies. Carter was persuaded on this basis. This is a complex topic that needs to, and will, be taken up in another venue at the length and in the depth deserved. But regardless of what could have been achieved, perhaps much more historically, by more timely action, the Commission did provide what it was intended to in terms of long-term buy-in to greater reform and action than had been taken to that point, which survived in some ways through every administration since, so far.

Five days after the June 6th cabinet meeting, forty years ago, on June 11, 1977, Peter Bourne sent the following memorandum to Chip Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Domestic Advisor Stuart Eizenstat and Science Advisor Frank Press.

It includes virtually all the issues covered in our documentary film, in strategic meetings we and others were involved in, and the issues which needed to and need to be addressed.

It is a statement arising out of the June 6 cabinet meeting under the direction of the president that hunger is a rallying point for a human rights social justice strategy under which all basic human needs—food, health care, education, jobs, are provided for all people on earth.

It is an extraordinary real-time internal view of an outline to change history radically through pragmatic means in the real political world.

The source of the document is Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume II, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs – Office of the Historian, document 213.

We conclude for now with the text of the document:

Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for Health Issues (Bourne) to Chip Carter, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Brzezinski), the President’s Assistant for Domestic Affairs and Policy (Eizenstat), and the President’s Science Adviser and Director of the White House Officice of Science and Technology Policy (Press)1

Washington, June 11, 1977 SUBJECT

World Hunger Initiative Background:

The President’s interest in World Hunger is very timely and needed. Recent estimates indicate that 1.2 billion people are malnourished. Malnutrition is concentrated in the poor, infants and children, and among women (particularly nursing mothers). The largest number of chronically hungry people are found in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Indonesia. The largest number of chronically food-deficient developing countries are found in Africa with the Sahel and Ethiopia of particular concern.

Malnutrition, however, is endemic to almost all poor countries. In parts of South Asia, for example, malnutrition affects over 50 percent of the children. In Latin America, where nutrition is considerably better, malnutrition is a primary or contributing cause of almost 60 percent of the deaths of preschool children. Nonetheless, experience in Sri Lanka, the State of Kerala in India, and China indicates that there is hope. Even very poor countries, if they strongly focus comprehensive social programs on the basic needs of the population, can alleviate or limit malnutrition significantly.

The food production and nutrition problem has several major international aspects. The world’s food production is now sufficient to meet the current needs, and promises to remain so in the immediate future. However, the demand for food in developing countries has been growing and continues to grow more rapidly than the supply of food distributed to those countries. Poor countries increasingly depend on food exports from the United States and a few other major agricultural exporters.

Thus, world hunger is an explosive humanitarian and political problem, causing either directly or indirectly millions of deaths per year. In periods of widespread poor harvests and with no coordinated system of world food reserves to be drawn upon in times of need, catastrophic famines are occurring. Even worse, the distribution of available food is so poor that annually millions starve or are chronically malnourished. It is estimated that one million people died of hunger in India in 1972, and the situation that year was worse in Bangladesh.2

In this setting, the United States’ position as the world’s largest food exporter, as the largest donor in international food and agricultural assistance is highly visible and extremely vulnerable. Serious thought and strong leadership will be necessary to achieve humanitarian goals while at the same time avoiding foreign and domestic crises.

Human Rights Discussion:

We have stressed the need for cooperation and achievement of self-reliance in health care with developing nations. We should also, as an aspect of our overall human needs strategy, stress the need for achievement of self-reliance in food production and nutrition. We might consider the hunger issue as the touchstone of a major thrust in our foreign policy, and one in which we stress meeting human needs through increasing self-reliance in food production and nutrition, carefully integrated with health care and population policies. This thrust will complement our human rights policy, and establish a more firm foundation for it. The human right to food, similar to the right to health care, is fundamental. We cannot continue to focus on the deprivation of rights for thousands of political prisoners and relegate to back pages the unnecessary deaths of millions.

While our affirmations regarding world political rights may be occasionally elusive in terms of implementation, our specific actions in terms of social rights can be very tangible and concrete.3

We can establish broad but practical and measurable human needs goals, e.g., programs of food production and basic nutrition, development of low-cost health delivery systems, adequate maternal and child health programs, rural sanitary water supply development, humanitarian food trade policies, etc. Importantly, this must be done on a government-wide basis to ensure consistency and comprehensiveness. Implementation would then follow through the development of a comprehensive global plan, including goals for the basic human needs of life: adequate and quality food for everyone, basic health care, education, jobs.

Therefore, I am suggesting that as part of a human rights (social justice) strategy, we should develop a human needs policy with hunger and health as the rallying points.

Problems Associated with a World Hunger Initiative:

“There is no single cause of the world food problem. Part of the explanation is to be found in the operation of many of the world’s international systems which deprive Third World countries of the opportunities to develop the resources required to meet their own food needs. Part can be found in the distribution of available food and, in particular, the emergence of meat eating in the industrialized countries as a consequence of affluence, a development which requires an enormous indirect consumption of grain to sustain it. It is also true that many Third World countries have themselves contributed to the world food problem. In some cases they have not given domestic food production the priority it deserves, choosing instead to invest their scarce resources in their cities or in ‘prestige’ projects.

They have sometimes subordinated their food needs to those of the industrialized world, using some of their most productive areas for cultivating the cash crops required by the industrialized world rather than for producing their own food. In many cases they have also failed to free the small farmer from the poverty, ignorance, exploitation and discrimination which are traditionally his lot and thus prevented him from making the major contribution to development he is able to make. They have sometimes, as a matter of policy, kept prices of farm products very low with the net result that the small farmer overwhelmingly carries the burden of development. Many have been reluctant to initiate the land reforms required to expand food production and have failed to come to terms with post- harvest food losses which, in some countries, account for 50 percent of total grain production.”4

In this latter regard, the U.S. has strong but little-used leverage, e.g., favorable terms of trade and eligibility for food aid.

Given careful study and reflection, it is likely that U.S. policies, public and private, can be altered to encourage improved production and distribution at home and abroad.

While it is true that the U.S. is the world’s greatest exporter of agricultural products, we have powerful vested domestic interests which seek to maintain a consistent but complex set of domestic agricultural production policies, for there is a close relationship between world demand for food and U.S. domestic food prices. Any pronounced change in prices will set in motion domestic forces, either from producers or consumers, which could give the President considerable political problems. On the other hand, the Administration has sought to develop policies which stress cooperation with developing nations, and we could do more (utilizing already substantial exhibited support at the grassroots level) to achieve humanitarian and political goals. The potential political liabilities can be avoided, but only by planning which avoids “quick fix” policy pronouncements, and by a strategy designed to gain broad-based consensus on a world food and nutrition policy among 26 Federal agencies and many private farm, labor, and other interest groups in the U.S.

Finally, we must recognize that the diet and health of our own citizens is strongly influenced by many of the same policies that affect the problem of world hunger: the food we grow, how we grow it. Our patterns of trade and aid determine in part what our own citizens pay for and find on their dinner plates. As responsible policy-makers, we must focus attention on how decisions in agriculture and foreign aid affect the health and well being of Americans.

Suggested Optional Approaches:

We should explore approaches that will accomplish these objectives:

—Place the President in a strong leadership position on world hunger.

—Develop public and governmental support for new initiatives, especially among business groups which have strong vested interest views on food policy and development assistance.

—Establish a framework for long-term follow up.

The following scenarios are suggested for consideration.

Scenario 1

Step 1: The President or a Cabinet member delivers a statement on world hunger before a world forum, such as the June 20th World Food Council meeting in Manila.5

Step 2: The President issues a statement appointing a Cabinet- level official, Presidential advisor, or distinguished American from the private sector to head up a public/private Council on World Food and Nutrition Policy. The Council would conduct regional hearings, beginning in Washington, and possibly extending overseas, to assess what could be done and recommend options for the President to consider. One or more members of the President’s family and other prominent figures might be involved.

Scenario 2

Step 1: The President announces a major reevaluation of food policy and agricultural development assistance, and calls for a Washington Conference on Food and Agricultural Assistance.

Step 2: Farm, business, labor, religious and public interests groups, foreign officials (especially representatives of international organizations) as well as Congressional and Executive Branch leaders are invited to a 3-day conference to testify before the President and Cabinet about their views. The President presides over one session each day, the co-chairman might be the Secretary of Agriculture, and Senate and House leadership. At the conclusion of the 3-day conference, the President could appoint a three to five-member Cabinet-level Executive Group (State, AID, Agriculture, Treasury, Commerce) to prepare a decision document based on the findings.

Step 3: The President’s decisions would be made public in the form of a Message to Congress.

Scenario 3

Step 1: The President requests each Cabinet Department with responsibilities related to food and nutrition to prepare a position paper on current policy and proposed initiatives. Papers

would focus on domestic and foreign policy actions to improve the world food and nutrition situation within a basic human needs framework, with attention to domestic nutritional and economic concerns.

Step 2: A specially convened executive group, or one of the existing Executive Office agencies such as NSC, CEA, OMB, would integrate the position papers, and prepare a decision memorandum for the President.

Step 3: Legislative and administrative measures would be developed to implement the President’s decisions. A message to Congress and/or a world forum speech could publicize his decisions.

An integral government-wide policy with widespread support for a major world food program is required. It is not clear that Agriculture, Treasury, State, Commerce, Transportation, and AID are together on an approach to the problems previously identified, nor is there agreement in the private sector.

Therefore, it is necessary to build support and to identify opportunities for consensus if the President is to be successful in this area. A cross-cutting mechanism of some kind which bridges domestic and international interests appears essential. People I have consulted in the private sector agree with this view.

I believe something along the lines of one of the above approaches will enhance prospects for accomplishing meaningful results. In the past, efforts in this area have had mixed or poor results and public interest and action subsided because competing U.S. agency as well as private interests were not resolved.

These views are offered as a start toward the development of a joint memo to the President recommending a course of action. My assistant, Jerry Fill (ext. 6687), will serve as my representative on this issue during my vacation in England for the next 9 days.

Source: Carter Library, Staff Office Files, Domestic Policy Staff, Eizenstat Files, Box 324, World Hunger [2]. No classification marking. A copy was sent to Onek. Another copy is in the Carter Library, White House Central Files, Box HE–6, Subject Files—Executive, 1/20/77–9/29/77.↩
Documentation concerning the U.S. response to the 1972 South Asian food crisis is in Foreign Relations 1969–1976, volume E–7, Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972 .↩
Indeed, achievement of worldwide goals in food production will be more readily understood and felt by the average American. [Footnote in the original.]↩
In: Reshaping the International Order. A Report to The Club of Rome. Jan Tinbergen, Coordinator. E.P. Dutton and Co., Inc., New York, N.Y., publisher. 1976, page 30. [Footnote in the original. The Club of Rome was established in 1968 as a think tank devoted to strategizing global issues.]↩
See Document 221 .↩