A Passion for Results : In the Fight to End World Hunger, Sam Harris Never Gives Up

It was a typical Saturday morning in the life of Sam Harris. Ten people clothed in various states of weekend casual--cutoffs, sweats, old T-shirts--listened to him as they clustered around a coffee table piled with bagels and muffins in a Culver City condo.

But there was nothing laid-back about Harris, who sat off to the side, near a telephone. Attired in gray pants, dress shirt, regimental tie and dark-rimmed glasses, with a phone glued to his ear, he was a study in intensity as he relayed the comments of the room to people plugged in to the monthly conference call.

This was no pep talk to a door-to-door sales force, nor a strategy session to unseat an incumbent politician. Rather, he and his associates--all members of a group called Results that he started here 10 years ago--were plotting the best way to launch the worldwide candlelight vigils they hope will focus attention on the U.N. World Summit for Children this September in New York.

The vigils are the latest step in Results’ grass-roots campaign to create “the political will to end hunger.”

Convinced that the world has the resources and technology to feed everyone but lacks the political will to do it, Harris and his volunteers in 110 U.S. communities study policies and issues concerning hunger and hunger-related diseases, then lobby politicians, bureaucrats and the media.

Harris is nothing if not a nudge, and he gladly acknowledges his penchant for pestering and inundating his way to success. Although his delivery is gentle and his manner endlessly polite, he readily concedes that his persistence and optimism grate on some people. In fact, he describes his behavior as obsessive-compulsive at times. Some observers say it is unclear where Results stops and Sam Harris begins. But even his critics do not question his commitment to ending world hunger.

Harris, a high school music teacher-turned-political activist, is more comfortable with a telephone, fax or photocopying machine than a bullhorn; more effective in planning strategy and laying out details in a roomful of 20 or 30 people than on a podium at a rally; more willing to wade through government reports and drafts of bills than engage in agitprop.

He shares the vision and passion of the firebrands but expresses it in a singularly different and sometimes startling style.

Statistics from UNICEF’s annual report on the State of the World’s Children are frequently on his lips. He will remind anyone who will listen that 40,000 children die each day of hunger and hunger-related diseases. And he sounds neither patronizing nor morally superior, just concerned.

Harris repeats inspirational quotes from world leaders, writers and visionaries that he says fuel him. As Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart once said, “We’re not passengers on Spaceship Earth. We’re the crew.”

In an interview, the activist described the first time he persuaded a newspaper to run an editorial supporting a foreign aid policy. Pausing, he clutched his arm momentarily and observed, “Excuse me. That (the recollection) just gave me chills.”

What seems to give Sam Harris the chills is any evidence, anecdotal or statistical, that supports the underlying philosophy of his group: “You can make a difference.”

Harris and other Results members would seem like anachronisms except that, in an era when U.S. foreign aid is increasingly questioned, they have produced results.

Members do grunt work. They make phone calls and write letters by the thousands, and lobby legislators and their aides, enlisting co-sponsors of bills and collecting votes. They have generated more than 300 editorials in newspapers nationwide.

Results’ first major editorial campaign was on behalf of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a U.N. agency that works with the poorest of Third World farmers and people without land. It is a success story Harris cannot tell without grinning. In 1985, Results helped in getting the United States to increase its support from 58% to 60% of IFAD’s budget at a time when it was threatening to eliminate its contribution, because of a dispute with OPEC nations over the funding formula. Without the U.S. money, the agency would have gone under. Results went to work on the media and spurred 42 editorials in four months.

Said Harris, “Finally we got a call from the State Department, saying, ‘You can stop the editorials.’ ”

Results was also a driving force behind the Micro-Enterprise for the Poor Loans, a foreign aid bill passed in 1987 that provides $50 million to be disbursed by the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) to Third World entrepreneurs.

Now Results is rallying behind the World Summit for Children, called by the United Nations for the sole purpose, UNICEF announced, “of giving children a better chance in life.”

Results is coordinating worldwide vigils on Sept. 23, six days before the summit, to spotlight issues--child mortality, malnutrition, unsafe drinking water, illiteracy, child abuse--and demand commitments from heads of state.

Organizing the masses and forming coalitions will be a departure for Results. “It’s an area we do not know. We know how to lobby and call congressmen,” Harris said. But the vigils came out of a discussion, he said, in which Results members asked themselves what they could do “to get our issue to movement proportions. We’re talking about a mobilization campaign.”

Although Harris is 43 and graying at the temples, his manner is that of a younger man, and that is how he is often described. He is a workaholic by his own description and something of an ascetic, living in “414 square feet overlooking a dumpster” in Washington, D.C., making $29,000 a year, working staggering hours, cut off from exercise, relaxation, meditation and relationships to a degree he never intended.

“I am increasingly not proud of this,” he said, claiming he is “trying to restructure my life.”

The only thing that has remained on track seems to be his course as an activist.

Harris grew up in a “quite religious” Jewish family, and today, quoting the Hebrew prophet Micah, he sees being religious as a matter of working for justice.

He worked as high school music teacher and, at the same time, as a percussionist for the Miami Philharmonic. He spent these early years frequently asking himself, “What am I here to do?,” and felt an underlying sense that “I don’t make a difference.”

In 1977, he got involved, “through my yoga teacher,” with the Hunger Project, an offshoot of est, the self-improvement, self-empowerment programs that swept the country and left a wake of devotees and detractors. While he has never been involved in est, he said, it has been “my albatross” in the eyes of many.

The Hunger Project convinced Harris that “anything you do is an idea first,” he said, and that current notions about hunger were insufficient: “Our thinking was off.”

He began talking to high school students about pressuring politicians to get involved in hunger issues and discovered that few students even knew who their congressmen were. He moved to L.A. in 1979, “to get rich as a songwriter,” he said, to support his activism. The songwriting wound up the avocation, and the hunger work led to the formation of Results.

Moonlighting as an organizer for the Los Angeles World Hunger Event in May, 1980, Harris worked out of phone booths during breaks at various junior high schools where he served as a substitute teacher. Shortly after the event, he started to spend his Saturdays driving to six locations in Southern California where people had gathered to write letters to their congressmen. Results grew out of those Saturday sessions.

The groups started to spread. In 1983, Harris took an advantage of an airline’s “21 city” deal and, over the next few months, made five 21-cities-in-21-days trips, organizing in people’s living rooms, settling for a minimum of four members to start each group. By 1985, there were sufficient funds for Harris to move to Washington, open an office, quit teaching and go on salary.

Steve Commins, a development specialist who is now a senior policy adviser for World Vision, the Christian missionary group with headquarters in Monrovia, worked on hunger issues with Harris in the late 1970s. He recalls the phone calls from school hallways and has watched Results grow. Supporters, including Commins, and detractors alike say Harris is naive about the effectiveness of legislation.

“Sam’s greatest achievement is that he has brought into public action people who never considered themselves capable or able to influence public policy,” Commins said. “He still believes in citizenship.”

It is one thing to push bills through Congress. It is another, and tougher, some say, to ensure their implemention. It is an area in which Results has less to show, Commins said.

Harris agrees. It is one reason Results now has a tax-exempt Educational Fund, he said. Its first report is an examination of the Agency for International Development’s disbursement of the 1988 Micro-Enterprise funds earmarked for loans of $300 and less to the poorest of Third World entrepreneurs, especially women. The report found AID wanting, and Results is now papering Capitol Hill with its analysis and calling for improved compliance.

Michael Farbman, director of Small, Micro and Informal Enterprise programs at AID, criticizes Harris’ and Results’ tactics, lack of information, oversimplification of complicated issues and failure to do necessary homework.

“One can’t deny Sam and Results can raise the temperature on anything,” Farbman said. “They get at least the superficial attention and support of many in Congress and deep commitment on the part of a few. That’s probably about the mix you need. You can put things effectively on the Administration’s agenda with that formula.”

However, the group is one of the few in town interested in aid and development in the Third World, Farbman said. “Results could be a tremendous force in building a constituency for foreign aid. Their tactics, however, build a foundation for a narrow view of foreign aid, often detrimental to the whole program,” he said.

Harris is familiar with the criticism. He said he does not necessarily favor U.S. foreign aid policy, because so much of it is military and, of the remainder, “too much of very, very little gets passed out politically and does not go to the voiceless.”

Rep. Mel Levine (D-Santa Monica), a sponsor of the Global Poverty Reduction Act, has worked with Harris on that campaign and several others.

“I’m a supporter of AID,” Levine said, “and I think it does a good job. But on this issue they have tended to be overly bureaucratic and not willing to be flexible. (Sam) may very well be a thorn in their side, but that’s to his credit on this issue.

“Sam is very effective in the work he’s done in developing legislation and in having an impact on a broad political base at the congressional and grass-roots levels. He has an understanding of the legislative and grass-roots processes and of the issues, and an ability to crystallize them. It’s very compelling.”

Levine said he would not call Harris naive.

“That’s not it. He continues to retain a sense of idealism which causes him to be very persistent. To say he doesn’t understand the process is inaccurate. He’s unique, maintaining idealism while working within a frustrating process.”

Harris is idealistic, committed, in for the long run, and determined to make some changes. He is critical of his effectiveness as an activist and as a human being.

It is time to put some joy back into his life, he said, and balance.

No more waking up at 2:30 a.m. feeling so intense and angry about the status of legislation that the only way to work it off was “to run around the Supreme Court (building) four times.” Time to lighten up. He is ready with examples: an offer on a one-bedroom apartment with a view, a trip to a museum for the first time in five years, a one-month course in meditation, an invitation to a woman he met to come for a visit.

He would like to hire a managing director, he said, adding that he sees himself as an entrepreneur, not a manager, and would like to free himself to speak.

“Groups of 20 to 50, not a rally,” he said. “I’d like them to hear me, and hopefully shift their perspective regarding, ‘Do I make a difference?’ ”