My good friend and partner here at Central Dallas Ministries, Gerald Britt serves as our Executive Director.

What follows are exerpts from his introduction of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson at our 11th Annual Urban Ministries Prayer Event earlier this week. Ms. Johnson introduced Senator John Edwards, our speaker for the morning.

I thought Gerald's opening remarks were powerful and more than worth sharing here.

I told him afterwards that I would have hated to have had to follow him at the mic! Senator Edwards did very, very well, but, as you will see, so did Gerald. __________________________________________

This is a particularly inspirational event: over 1000 people, representing the business, political, religious, non-profit communities and beyond, in fellowship and in concern with the working poor of our city. . . .

At Central Dallas Ministries, we have bent over backwards. . . [to make]. . .this affair non- political. But, at the end of the day, while this event is non-partisan, it is political.

First of all this is true, because, as Aristotle says, we are political beings.

Secondly, it is true because politics is further defined as the process through which we determine the allocation of resources: who gets how much of what, where and when, so the focus of our gathering this morning is indeed political.

And so, just as there is a politics of infrastructure, or public safety, or public education, there is a politics of bread.

The number of households which suffered from food insecurity increased by nearly one million from 2003-2004. Texas leads the nation in the percentage of households which experience food insecurity at 16%.

Any serious conversation in a city like Dallas about those among us, who daily face the issues of food insecurity and food inadequacy, dare not be confined to individual charity and institutional good will.

In a city like ours, people among us who go daily without healthy and nourishing food, because they don’t make enough money, or live in the wrong neighborhood, is a sad commentary on our collective priorities and ambitions.

While many of us seek to excuse ourselves from the conversation by pointing out the social pathologies of those whom we classify as “poor,” I would remind you that we are reminded daily of the pathologies of those who have sought safe haven in the suburbs. The purposelessness, self-destructiveness, the histories and habits of sin, the nihilism and materialism that characterize those of us who are middle class, leave us no room to point fingers.

The desperations of the poor and the prosperous, don’t teach us that any of us are better than one another, they teach us that we need one another.

The fact is, in a city like Dallas, there are far too many churches, far too many non-profits, far too many programs for anyone to go hungry because they don’t have access to healthy and nutritional food choices.

Central Dallas Ministries is proud to try and bridge the gap between the “isness” of hunger and the “oughtness” of the politics of bread.

During the month of February alone, our food pantry saw more than 3,500 people in need of groceries! Just think what that number of people would be if more people knew about us!

But, we are not limiting our efforts to our food pantry, as great a job as Terry Beer and our staff are doing. . . . just this year [CDM] acquired a new program. It is called Nurture, Knowledge and Nutrition. With this program we intend to combat basic issues of hunger in our school children.

This year, in February, we served 633 children almost 9000 snacks in at risk after school programs in 17 sites throughout Dallas. The number of children served exceeded our target of 500, and we project that the number will exceed 700 this month.

Yet currently, only ten percent of the children who need this program take advantage of it. And there are so many of you here this morning that could make a difference by helping us help them.

And so this morning I’m going to make a deal with those of you here, in a position to help: if you start an after school program (or if you have one), in your church, community center, or if you have an child care program, or a Vacation Bible School program; Central Dallas Ministries will remove the major financial roadblock to getting these programs underway. . .we will provide your food, free of charge!

But I will also make you another commitment. We will keep on working on the politics of bread.

It’s not enough to salve our corporate, theological, or electoral consciences by quoting Jesus, when He says, “The poor you will have with you always.”

We will continue to provide the pantry, AND train our neighbors for living wage jobs; we will feed the children AND work on fit and affordable housing; we will help those who are providing warm hot meals AND we will make health care accessible, AND we will work with every segment of and system in our society to bring people from dependency to the dignity of self-sufficiency, because it is what is right and just. And because that which is owed in justice, should never be given in charity.