Dear Newt Gingrich

Dear Newt Gingrich,

I am an Americorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America – a federally funded program started by John F. Kennedy) at South Atlanta High School. I teach two AP US History classes, tutor, manage a caseload of 40 boys as an “academic coach,” and serve as needed in the myriad ways help is needed at a public high school in the southside of Atlanta. 99% of the students at South Atlanta High qualify for free or reduced meals, which means that 99% of the students at South Atlanta High are very poor. Also, 99% of the students at South Atlanta High are black.

I plan on writing a succession of letters to you over the course of the next few months, because I would like to share with you my experiences working with an impoverished minority community in the United States. The comments I have heard you make recently reflect on your knowledge of disadvantaged communities in the country you are running for president. Since you seem to have made this area a major platform for your campaign for presidency, I thought I’d offer some constructive criticism.

Barack Obama is the “food stamp president,” according to you, because more people have enrolled on the food stamp program than in any other time in United States history. Of course, we have more people in this country now than at any time in its history, and we’ve endured an historic recession, the likes of which have not been seen since the food stamp program was conceived, but that, apparently, is not the point. It’s also not the point I wish to quibble about. Instead, here is my question: how do you expect the children that I teach and serve to eat, if not with food stamps?

South Atlanta High’s enrollment has increased significantly over the last few years. Newt, can you make a guess why? Okay, fine, I’ll just tell you: it’s because black people in Atlanta who were doing well for themselves got hit particularly hard by the recession and were forced to move their families back to less expensive (read: more poor) neighborhoods like South Atlanta. Jasmine (name changed), one of the top students in my AP US History class, where we have just finished a segment on the Civil Rights Movement (key principle taught: it’s not over yet) is a perfect example. Her family was forced to move from prosperous Midtown, where she attended a top public high school, back down south to South Atlanta because her mother lost her job. Jasmine and her family currently receive food stamps, and Jasmine benefits from reduced cost breakfasts and lunches at the school.

Now I can tell you categorically that the breakfast Jasmine and the rest of her peers eat before the school day starts every morning for free is not a nutritionally beneficial meal. It is a greasy sausage stuck between two greasy biscuits. Every morning. But, I can also tell you that without that free, greasy meal every morning Jasmine would not be raising her hand eagerly at 8:30 AM trying to tell me which president initiated the Great Society program. (And which president effectively ended it). Likewise, Jasmine and her peers would simply not be able to write the essays I assign each week, and read the readings I assign every night, if she cannot go home each night and eat some federally subsidized spaghetti o’s.

My point is, Newt, you can’t expect poor people to work harder if they don’t have anything to eat. So if there’s a recession, and people become less able to buy food, then more people are going to apply for food stamps. Apparently, you would tell those people to demand a job, not food stamps. Of course, they can’t demand a job when they go to the government office looking for food stamps, because Republicans like you have cut hundreds of thousands of government jobs in the name of austerity. So I guess my point really is that you can’t make contradictory statements. They make no sense. And they hurt my kids. So stop. (Please.)