Interview with Larry Diskin

My partner interviewed Mr. Larry Diskin of the Second Harvest Food Bank in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties for our Social Justice Project, the injustice of world hunger. The interview took place at the Starbucks coffee shop located at El Camino Real and 17th avenue in San Mateo California, on March 28th 2010. Mr. Diskin is an expert in hunger in our local community of San Mateo County, he has worked for a number of years expanding Second Harvest as a non-profit organization to feed a huge portion of people in our county—over 230,000 people on average every month
My partner Andrew and I met Mr. Diskin at the Starbucks and were received quite warmly. I warned Mr. Diskin that the results of this interview may be posted on the internet on our project’s blog, and he assured me that he was fine with whatever I posted on the site. I bought him and myself a cup of coffee (my partner Andrew came about 5 minutes after I did) and we traded niceties about each other, he was interested in where I would be attending college, and told me he had two daughters who went to Notre Dame Belmont High School, and I was intrigued as to where they went to college and asked how they were. The attitude of the entire interview was relaxed and friendly, he answered every question I asked, although he did say he was uncertain at times on certain statistics, but this was only for statistics on a global scale (e.g. the poverty level of this county when compared to a third world country), but facts about our local areas he was quite certain the figures he used.
What I expected to learn was that hunger is a virulent problem not only around the world, in photographs we see in magazines of African Babies emaciated into marionette dolls in a God-forsaken republic, the former colony of a European power now under civil war. But also in our own community, where it is a problem that goes unnoticed, often times because of organizations like Second Harvest, which feed at-risk families who need the food without complaint or burdening either the families that receive the food or the people who donate their time, money, and agricultural products to them. As one of their mottos states, 96 cents of every dollar given to Second Harvest goes to buying more food for their clients.
What I did not expect to learn is the scale of operations of Second Harvest and the amount of energy it takes to bring this product to the people who need it without compromising the quality or the healthiness of the food. The organization boasts a fleet of heavy-rig 18-wheeler trucks and vans which transport food to enormous warehouses, where food of every type and quality from cereals and pasta to fruits, vegetables and sometimes frozen goods are kept, only to be shipped once again to the families in need. As Mr. Diskin put it “it is constantly moving, all of the time, nothing is kept in our warehouse for more than 24 hours—the demand is sometimes that great.” What is fascinating is also the progress being made in the organization, it is not just a turning wheel, but there are programs to eliminate all sodas and other unhealthy items from their menus, programs where excess crops from a certain farm (where, under certain laws it is no longer profitable to sell at market) are given to them to give to the families. Also, there are certain “farmer’s Market buses” which have become extremely popular, as they can venture into very underprivileged neighborhoods and provide a real farmer’s market—selling fresh fruits and vegetables—to mothers in that neighborhood who usually must buy from a grocery store where the fruits and vegetables are usually old or tarnished by the time they reach the shelves. It is astounding to see that these good programs, which help the entire community go unseen by the media in our community, replaced instead by car-chases and crime on the prime-time news.
My overall impression of the interview is very positive. It gave me perspective of my project, made it real to me. I’m not just creating an expository project about a problem that seems so far away, and pointing at it for my classmates and myself, but I’m speaking about a subject that is very close to home, and affects many people in my community, I might know some people who use Second Harvest, my neighbor might have to use food-stamps to make it from meal to meal. I think those that do not use these programs do not see how prevalent they are and how prevalent the issue of being able to provide for one’s family is, around the world and even in our own community.