Political ‘Food’ Fight

No doubt “The Politics of Food” was an indictment of capitalism today, and it seems to me that the indictment is warranted and long overdue.

Roughly 30 million people, most of them children, die each year as a result of food-related maladies, and that, Mr. Steigerwald, is so criminal as to verge on the criminally insane.

Year in and year out, orchestrated or not, Western imperial corporate slaughter continues under Democratic and Republican, right and left administrations, and it must be stopped, can be stopped, and, one way or another, will be stopped.

Steigerwald’s premise--unstated, of course--was that communism is evil in this “us or them” world, and any solution that comes from a communist impetus is, mutatis mutandis , wrong.

Steigerwald wants to perpetuate capitalism regardless of its effects, even when he stares them in the face--in this case that of a nameless starving child dying every five seconds or so.

Steigerwald wants balance. So be it, but let’s begin by balancing the distribution of the world’s wealth, power and basic human rights.

Put “Food First”--not capitalism, communism, the United States or the Soviet Union--was the conclusion of “The Politics of Food.” Give the poor what they have a right to: the land and the means to grow their own food.

Those who watched “The Politics of Food” had a chance to glimpse the world from a global perspective. For a few hours, public television removed the blinders. It was about time.

ROBERT McDONELL

San Diego