Paul Bass Photos
After losing a grandson to a gunshot and her home to foreclosure, Carolyn Banks found herself collecting a free bag of apples — along with a Toni Harp mayoral campaign sticker.
Banks (pictured) for the first time joined hundreds of people lining up for a monthly free-food giveaway in the Hill neighborhood Tuesday morning.
Harp, the Democratic mayoral candidate for mayoral, spent the morning handing out hundreds of bags of apples to the people lined up in the parking lot of Pentecostal Church of Salvation at Columbus Avenue and Arch Street. She used the occasion to highlight the growing problem of hunger in New Haven as well as to discuss how she’d tackle the issue as mayor.
In just the past year, the number of families lining up to receive their monthly bags of fruits, vegetables and grains from the Connecticut Food Bank has leaped from about 160 to about 230, according to Ariel Martinez (pictured). Martinez, associate pastor of the church (which his father Juan founded in 1962) quarterbacked the food giveaway in the parking lot Tuesday.
Throughout the region, the Connecticut Food Bank has seen demand grow annually since the recession started in 2008; it distributed over 18 million pounds of food during the most recent fiscal year, according to CEO Nancy Carrington.
“It’s the economy,” Martinez suggested when asked why the demand has grown.
Banks’ experience offers one example of how more people end up on the food line.
Two years ago this month, an 18-year-old shot Banks’ 13-year-old grandson, Marquell “Quelly” Banks, to death. (Read about that here and here.) Carolyn Banks, a retired state social worker on a limited income, was left to put together the money to bury Quelly.
That set her back; she fell behind on her home payments. She eventually surrendered her house to foreclosure. Then she moved to the Bella Vista apartments; she struggles to pay bills on her pension and social-security payments. She showed up Tuesday morning after learning about the monthly food giveaway.
Others, like Al McAlpine (pictured), are regulars at the giveaway. McAlpine, a retiree and Vietnam-era vet who worked hazardous duty with nuclear warheads while stationed in Germany, was first in line Tuesday morning. He said a stroke has set him back.
“There are a lot of hungry people in New Haven. We’ve got to do something about it,” Harp said in between filling people’s bags or carts with the apples. Beside her, other workers handed out sweet potatoes, five-pound bags of rice, loaves of bread from Chabaso Bakery, three-pound bags of carrots, artichokes, and organic baby arugula. “These people wouldn’t be here if they didn’t need to be.”
Much of the work to combat hunger and promote “food security” needs to take place at the federal and state governments, Harp said. The federal government distributes food stamps through the states (and is looking to cut back on them). As a state senator, Harp helped beat back cuts to senior nutrition vouchers, enable people to use food stamps at farmers markets, start a “farm-to-school program” putting Connecticut-grown food into local schools, and require that school vending machines offer more healthful, lower-fat options. Before that, as a New Haven alderwoman, she led a successful effort to make free breakfasts available to all schoolchildren.
As mayor, Harp said, she would spearhead a citywide campaign to encourage people to exercise and eat better. She also promised to help vendors get permits to sell healthful foods from more mobile carts, replicate a Philadelphia model to help corner groceries to work together to buy more fresh produce, and develop a “specialty-food small-business incubator.”
Food policy has emerged as an issue in this year’s mayoral campaign. Click here to read about a candidates’ debate devoted solely to the topic. Click here to read Toni Harp’s full position paper on food security. Justin Elicker, Harp’s opponent in the Nov. 5 general election, has called for the city to create “healthy food zones” around schools, where stores can only sell healthful fare; regulate ice-cream trucks; inform more people about food stamps so they can qualify; advise recipients on how to make food stamps last longer each month; help farmers markets open in more neighborhoods; convert more vacant land to “urban farming”; and “mandate nutrition education in our schools.” Click here and here for more on Elicker’s food positions.
Harp was impressed at all the fresh produce distributed Tuesday. Carrington said the food bank has made a concerted effort to distribute healthful food.
“When people don’t have access to good nutritious food, people get sicker. It costs us more in the long run,” Harp observed. “It’s in our interest to make sure people eat well. We pay on the other end with diabetes and amputations” if they don’t.
Recipients said they appreciated seeing a political candidate take the time to hand hundreds of them food.
“Not too many people that want to get in office come out here and do this. They’ll take our vote, but that’s it,” said one woman (who declined to give her name. She said she would “most likely” vote for Harp as a result.
“You’re gonna win, right?” Namon Townsend asked Harp after she gave him his apples.
“If you vote for me!” Harp responded.
“I voted for you last time,” Townsend assured her.
Later he and his companion, Clarissa Austin, said they’ll indeed vote for Harp. They have always supported her state senate campaigns, they said.
It turns out that it might take more than apples to win Banks’ vote. She supported Henry Fernandez in the Democratic mayoral primary after he made an impressive pitch at Bella Vista. She remains undecided in the general election contest between Harp and “the other fellow,” who is a “younger man” who “needs a chance,” Banks said. She said she found the governor’s visit to New Haven to endorse Harp “a bit much.” When it came to the bread and potatoes and apples she was bringing home, on the other hand, Banks cast a decisive thumbs up.