Federal Updates
2017 CWA Annual Conference Plenary Address on Monday, April 10, 2017
Written by Rev. Douglas Greenaway, National WIC Association
Delivered by Victoria Valdez, LA Biomed WIC Program, in Rev. Greenaway’s absence
To suggest that we are living in challenged and uncertain times is most definitely an
understatement. Every day there is some new and unfortunate revelation coming from our
nation’s capitol that demonstrates our seeming inability to move beyond discord, disrespect, and
demonization. And the difficulty for all of us is that somehow we must either learn to operate at
a level that silences much of that noise in an effort to survive the rancor, or dive head first into
the fray and end up potentially victimized by the sheer volume of the noise.
Sadly, to some degree we have divided ourselves into camps of the faithful and the infidel. One
of my dearest friends recounts a story how in a simple conversation about the election outcome
that feelings were bared to the point that it is now difficult to be in meaningful relationship.
At the same time, we cannot simply bury our heads in the sand, for that my friends may be part
of the reason we find ourselves in this mess. To some degree we have to accept responsibility for
our failure to listen carefully to the mantras, and messages, tropes, and dog whistles of opinion
shapers who have sought to lead us down paths that are counter to the well being of our
communities, the nation, and the world.
We cannot live in isolation, in either our personal lives or our corporate lives, for we are all
interconnected. We rise and fall together as in a boat tossed at sea.
In 2012, on one of my sabbaticals, I served as parish priest for the month of December at St.
Andrew’s in Tangier, Morocco. Completed in 1890, that church is a testament to the power of
interfaith community. Built on land granted the then Moslem ruler, Sultan Hassan, the interior of
the church features a stone carving of the Lord’s Prayer in Arabic over the altar and behind the
altar is a cleft that indicates the direction of Mecca, with carved quotes from the Quran.
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Beyond these, the parish is famous in part because of a beautiful painting of the church by the
French Impressionist Henri Matisse.
In that parish, I met and listened to, and prayed with hundreds of Sub-Saharan Africans, who had
escaped war, civil unrest, and economic misery in their homelands. They had crossed the
tortuous perils and extreme temperatures of the Sahara desert and the rough terrain of the Atlas
Mountains, avoiding marauding bandits, in hopes of beginning a new life, after yet another
perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
What struck me about these deep, often emotional encounters was the tremendous personal
strength and courage each of these, my sisters and brothers, despite their very real fears and the
risks they were taking. They each manifested a vulnerability and yet a determination to live into
the gifts they had been given. And so, when the time came, they would join others in
overcrowded unseaworthy rafts and fishing boats to meet their destiny.
The great poet e.e. cummings wrote: “We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that
deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch.
Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any
experience that reveals the human spirit.”
The mothers and young children who come through your WIC doors each and every day are
called to reveal a level of vulnerability that many of us would feel challenged to equal. We are
called to stand in their shoes, to sit in their seats and listen carefully with open hearts and open
minds as we would wish to be listened to were we in their place.
The same holds true for those of us who are colleagues, supervisors, or managers in the
workplace, for each other here this week in our shared commitment to this WIC Program, and to
the families we serve.
Listening with a shared spirit can help us tune in not simply to the words we hear spoken, but to
the deep and meaningful spirit and emotions behind the uttered words. Listening with a shared
spirit is wrapped up in heart, and soul, and strength, and mind all coming together in each one of
us and then meeting the same in another. It calls us to be wholly present for another.
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Maya Angelou wrote, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget
what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
There is a healing power in this manner of listening.
This past week I and some colleagues representing a handful of umbrella organizations focused
on children’s health issues had an encounter that was fraught with myriad challenges, none the
least because of the setting – the White House compound — but also because of what had been
shared by other colleagues who had held earlier meetings in the same setting. Their meetings, we
were warned, devolved into shouting and tremendous discomfort. Folks present could not wait
for the meeting to end and a dash for the exits.
So, we were challenged to enter, as best we could, into a spirit of shared listening. Our goal was
not to beat anyone over the head with our messages, but rather assure White House staff that we
were eager to be their resource on matters of women, children, health, education, food insecurity,
and nutrition.
Most of us know by now that the President had issued what was called a “skinny budget” cutting
some $54 billion dollars from domestic discretionary programs – including a 21% cut to the
Department of Agriculture, WIC’s funding agency, and a 28% cut to the Environmental
Protection Agency – keeper of the rules that protect safe water and clean air – to fund what many
feel is an unwarranted increase to defense spending. It was for these reasons and to request
protection for programs that serve and care for children, that we had requested a meeting with
the White House Office of Management and Budget, led by former Representative Mike
Mulvaney, whose key goal in Congress has been to devolve or shrink the federal government.
The White House is a very different place these days. For those of you who may have attended
our annual Washington Leadership Conference over the past eight years, you may recall just how
busy the place was and how diverse the staff was. What struck us all as we entered the
Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building on the White House compound, adjacent to the West
Wing, was how tomb-like the corridors were and how devoid they were of the many faces that
make up the tapestry that is America.
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Nevertheless, we threw ourselves into our mission with the staff assigned to us, former
employees of the Heritage Foundation. It became apparent, very quickly, that the policy person
charged with managing a range of accounts seemed clueless about the programs he had just
taken the scalpel to. The meaningful high point in the conversation fell to me as I could
reasonably thank the White House for funding WIC in their budget plan at $6.2 billion for the
fiscal year 2018. While many of us will know that this is a reduction in funding from the current
level of $6.36 billion and the National WIC Association’s legislative request of $6.36 billion, it
is, we believe, adequate to meet caseload needs.
Why? We are experiencing a downward trajectory in WIC caseload as a result of the improved
economy left by the previous administration, an essentially flat birthrate, heightened fears of
access among immigrants, the shaming by policy makers of families receiving benefits, the
challenges of the WIC shopping experience, clinic consolidations and closings, and barriers to
certification, among other reasons.
While presenting us with huge challenges, this also presents us with significant opportunities.
The National WIC Association has undertaken a national recruitment and retention campaign
that you will hear more about during the Conference. Many of you know that it is web- and
mobile device-driven, using social media, out-of-home, and traditional print tools to raise WIC’s
visibility and WIC’s value in the eyes and minds of our neighbors and especially WIC eligible
moms. The latest data indicate that in the last month it has driven connections to more than 8,000
WIC offices nationwide, with nearly 65,000 people clicking on digital ads alone.
Another National WIC Association effort helping you to raise your WIC voices will aid us all in
being better educators in our communities about the WIC story, its value, and successes.
By the way, using this pause in caseload growth also gives us a meaningful opportunity to be
better listeners for our WIC families, to enter into a shared spirit of listening, to render ourselves
vulnerable to the families we serve. It is no longer simply about good customer service. It is
about genuine hospitality, about receiving the other, not as a stranger, but as a friend, a fellow
traveler in need.
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It is absolutely true that the staff my colleagues and I met with at the White House have huge
differences of opinion about public health, the role of the federal government, and the
importance of the programs we were each there to represent. But one thing we can do for each
other is enter into a spirit of shared listening, and prayerfully in that experience, find a way
forward to continue meeting the needs of children and struggling families in this nation. Now I
am no Pollyanna, and recognize this to be an uphill slog – but I am not devoid of hope.
On some weekday mornings during my time in Tangier, I would go down to the sea with some
of my African parishioners and friends to pray and watch as they crammed themselves into boats
to make the crossing to Europe, knowing that some would not survive the journey. What struck
me in those experiences was the determination and immense courage of those who were yearning
for a new and prayerfully better life. They understood in the words of the author and educator
Parker Palmer, “before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling
me who I am.”
So, despite the rancor coming from Washington, despite the challenges of engaging in
meaningful conversations about the conflicts of our time, we are called to affirm the human spirit
in each of us, the spark that gives power to our light in the world.
Shared listening – listening that is patient, self-giving, truly reciprocal – is a discipline we all can
hopefully cultivate. Here at this Conference, in our work lives, with colleagues and WIC
families, in our personal encounters with family, friends, and neighbors we are provided
countless opportunities to do just that.
Those who have ears, let them hear.
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