HANDS’ GRASP: MIXED REACTION

So we must learn to

love each other

See that man over there,

he’s my brother

And when he laughs, I laugh

And when he cries, I cry

And when he needs me

I’ll be right there by his side

--from “Hands Across America”

A warm, glowy feeling enveloped the nation and beguiled the media on May 25.

The most spectacular demonstration of compassion for the poor that the United States had ever seen seemed to imply that nothing--not even greed or government bureaucracy--could stand in the way if enough people banded together and showed that they cared. It’s tough to argue with the passionate intent of 5.6 million well-meaning, hand-holding Americans.

But when Hands Across America began to fade from the national consciousness, the cold, hard facts about the hunger and homelessness it purported to help end were still there, along with a fledgling organization that will try to translate last month’s euphoria into grass-roots involvement.

So far, Hands Across America’s accomplishments have received mixed reviews.

The first post-Hands financial report released last week showed that the event that initially hoped to generate $100 million in donations for America’s homeless and hungry had actually taken in $27.8 million. After deductions of about $17 million in expenses, that figure was reduced to about $11 million that could actually be dispensed to the poor.

If another $8.6 million in pledges is collected, the Hands Across America contribution to the poor could rise to about $20 million. Publicly, project officials are optimistic that the figure might climb as high as $30 million by summer’s end, but privately they see $20 million as a more realistic goal.

Poverty experts say that $20 million is not enough to pay for one night’s shelter for 2.5 million homeless Americans or enough to feed more than one meal to the 20 million who go hungry each day.

But the event’s organizers now say they understood from the beginning how little the Hands Across America money would buy. Money was never the point, they say.

“What we wanted to do all along was raise awareness,” said Hands Across America’s creator Ken Kragen. “I believe we did that.”

To experts on the homeless and hungry, such as Phillip R. Warth Jr., executive director of Second Harvest: National Food Bank Network, which distributed 200 million pounds of food last year, money--how it is raised, who donates it and how it is spent--is very much the point.

“That is a disappointment,” said Warth. “I’m sure this is going to give everybody involved cause to reflect.

“I don’t like to second-guess a noble effort, but (the financial shortfall and high overhead) will have an impact on how people approach these things in the future,” he said. “I would think that when people are approached again, they are going to proceed with real skepticism (about projects) that require a real big front-end investment.”

More than two-dozen politicians, relief agency officials and hunger experts interviewed by The Times in the three weeks following the May 25 mega-event agreed with Kragen’s assessment that his event’s success or failure rested chiefly on its ability to heighten moral outrage and political action.

The 49-year-old rock-promoter-turned-pop-humanitarian who came up with the idea for a 4,152-mile-long hand-holding communal event doesn’t want to be involved with partisan politics.

“So far, we’ve been able to stay above politics,” Kragen told The Times.

In the beginning, his irresistibly bold plan for tapping a nation’s hunger for moral and patriotic meaning appeared to be as apolitical as the Olympic Torch Run. At the same time people held hands, they would raise their own awareness of America’s growing underclass and $100 million to help eradicate hunger.

And Kragen’s vision went still further.

“This is just the beginning,” he proclaimed on May 25, moments before the singing and hand-holding began at the start of the Hands Across America line in New York’s Battery Park. “When today is over, roll up your sleeves and go out to work in your community. We have to move from the big event to the person on the street.”

The execution of Kragen’s vision was unprecedented. But it remains unclear whether the participants really heard the second half of Kragen’s message.

Some, like Maxine Johnson, president of the Weingart Center emergency shelter in Los Angeles, said the high Hands Across America profile did initially increase donations and new volunteers at her Skid Row facility.

“What it did I like, was (generate) lots of coverage, lots of awareness and some aftershocks,” said Johnson. “The next day (May 26), Valerie Harper was out at our soup kitchen serving 5,000 people on Skid Row. Someone made a $500 pledge. That $500 pledge can turn into 500 meals.”

Pamela Stebbins, a founder of the New York City Interfaith Hunger Policy Task, applauds Hands Across America for forcing people “to think about something that they might otherwise not have thought about.”

But she holds out little hope that any significant percentage of the participants will roll up their sleeves any time soon. “I work at a soup kitchen at my church and it’s always the same ones who work there,” she said. “We have meetings to see how we can bring more people in, show them that it’s not scary and that street people are easy to talk to. But it’s very difficult.

“There has always been just a small number of people--the do-gooder type--who work at this all the time. The same ones show up over and over. I wish that it would, but I don’t think this (Hands Across America) is going to change that.”

To experts like Stebbins, who work with the homeless, the most disturbing fact isn’t Hands Across America’s disappointing bottom line, but the large number of people who held hands across America and contributed neither volunteer service nor money to the homeless and hungry. According to organizers’ own figures, fewer than one of every three persons who participated in the event made the minimum $10 contribution sought.

Medea Benjamin, issues analyst for San Francisco-based Food First, said the fund-raising shortfall raises serious questions about Hands Across America’s parent organization, the USA for Africa Foundation, and its ability to translate its good Samaritan message into any kind of action.

“What kind of organization is behind this? What kind of organization is this that is going to take people a step further?” Benjamin asked. “It doesn’t sound convincing.”

“The next step is maintaining a relationship with all those people who participated on May 25,” said USA for Africa Foundation Executive Director Marty Rogol. “We realize it’s no free ride for us. It’s not as if the ticket is punched and people are with you forever.”

The USA for Africa Foundation, which staged Hands Across America, now plans to bombard participants with follow-up information on how to get involved at the local level.

But hunger and homeless experts have their doubts that post-Hands efforts will make much difference in influencing grass-roots volunteerism.

Most give Kragen’s effort high marks in bringing splashy media exposure to the issue. But many of those interviewed by The Times sadly reported that all of that grass-roots energy did not seem to translate into anything more tangible than a monumental media event.

Robert Fersh, director of one of the nation’s top research groups on hunger, insisted that it was unrealistic to expect Hands to have a substantial impact on Americans.

“My view is: Most of the people who came out will not be interested on a sustained basis,” said Fersh, whose Washington-based Food Research Action Center received $150,000 from the USA for Africa Foundation last month.

Small organizations like his got a major boost from USA or Africa grants, but “the money pales in comparison to what government assistance can do for people,” Fersh said. If Hands Across America pulls 5.6 million private citizens together without also winning a strong government policy on hunger and homelessness, “then that would be unfortunate,” he said.

Second Harvest’s Phillip Warth said that the very size of the Hands Across America event may obscure the issues. “The focus winds up turning on the event,” he said.

Food First’s Medea Benjamin called Hands Across America a superficial media event that may blind people to the basic political causes of hunger and homelessness in America.

“I think using the broadest possible appeal, using movie stars, the media hype, dilutes the message so much that we don’t see the connections between jobs and a substandard minimum wage in this country,” she said.

Dr. J. Larry Brown, chairman of the Physicians’ Task Force on Hunger in America, argued that the event represented a first step toward bringing hunger and homelessness to national attention.

“The event had its own implicit validity,” he said. “It’s silly to criticize it because it wasn’t all things to all people.” But while the event may have alerted some to the problem, he said, “I doubt if it helped people understand why we have hunger. One event cannot fulfill that overall educational function.”

Hands Across America’s biggest achievement was its success in getting private business to participate, said Dennis Albaugh, a 20-year veteran of fund-raising causes. Kragen was able to get Citibank, Coca-Cola and more than 70 other corporations to contribute $8.6 million in cash to Hands Across America. In addition, he secured millions of dollars worth of advertising for the event from many of those same corporations.

Albaugh is more cautious on Hands’ other achievements. He is vice president of Comic Relief, the organization that evolved out of a comedy all-star television special that aired last March 29 on Home Box Office and raised $3.5 million for America’s homeless.

Speaking only for himself, Albaugh explained that Hands Across America’s biggest failing may be its inability to transform awareness into new forms of individual and private sector volunteerism.

“One thing they talked about (was) . . . creating awareness and compassion,” said Albaugh. “But they didn’t really identify why these people are hungry, why they are homeless, who they are and any real commitment to long-range plans to eliminate these causes. People should get involved they said, but they didn’t say how.”

Hands Across America officials told The Times that project volunteers could have done a better job getting that word out on the day of the event. Kragen cited California and Texas as the two weakest links. Hands officials acknowledge that all along the route there were problems both in collecting donations and distributing information on how participants could help end hunger in their own neighborhoods.

Now, USA for Africa’s staff is attempting to regain any momentum Hands Across America might have created and lost over the last few weeks.

Rogol said USA for Africa will soon hire public-information officers and seek volunteers to answer phone and mail inquiries about where and how volunteers can help. A mailing list is also being compiled of those Hands participants who pre-registered by mail, over the phone or through Ticket Master.

People on that list, which is expected to have more than 2 million names and addresses, will receive information on local food banks, medical facilities and other agencies that need volunteer help. They will also be solicited for more contributions to USA for Africa, Rogol said.

Until last week, Judy Lee Beres was one of the thousands reluctant to contribute any money.

“I haven’t yet sent in my donation to Hands Across America and I don’t know if I will,” said Beres, who rode a bus from her home in Eagle Rock to her place in line in the heart of Skid Row.

“What good will it do? I stood on a dirty urine-drenched street of downtown Los Angeles and held hands with clean, freshly washed people of various races and ethnic backgrounds. That was nice, but there weren’t any celebrities. Not even a Hands Across America coordinator ventured there. Will they go there to help those that need the money from this event? Somehow, I doubt it.”

The essentially middle-class media event failed to measure up to its lofty expectations for other reasons.

Television failed to capture Kragen’s passionate panoramic vision of a human chain stretching toward the horizon. And while some walked away from the event feeling their lives had been profoundly altered, others, like Beres, went away feeling such a moment never arrived.

Like the experts and advocates for the hungry and homeless, Beres weighed inspiration against disappointment and tried to assess whether the successes of Hands Across America will ever materialize.

“On Sunday, May 25, 1986, I was not only part of an historic human chain, but I was part of human disappointment,” Beres said. “Americans left this event for someone else to do--and very few did it. It appeared to work on television, but where it counted, it failed. “

Last week, Beres finally broke down and sent in her $25. Her reason?

“I wanted a T-shirt,” she said.

Next: Sport Aid versus Hands Across America .