Hunger

A Maryland Penitentiary inmate serving three life sentences is conducting a hunger strike to protest conditions that include human waste backing up into shower drains and thick deposits of pigeon dung on windowsills.A spokesman at the East Baltimore prison said yesterday that 13 other inmates in the segregation unit have quit the strike that began April 4. Cpl. J. Scott McCauley, spokesman for the Division of Correction, said that the leader is continuing the protest because he wants to force his return to the prison's general population to revive a profitable business selling a fermented wine called "jump."

FOR MILLIONS of American families, dinner out doesn't mean McDonald's. It's a soup kitchen. Hunger is growing in our country, despite a strong economy: 31 million people go without food every day. How real can prosperity be when so many are left behind? Trouble is, a lot of people -- including the presidential candidates -- don't seem to be asking substantive questions about hunger. Case in point: During the Republican and Democratic conventions, anyone who wanted to really talk about hunger had to go down the street to the shadow conventions.

Talk of food will fill Loews Hotel in Annapolis this week as Share Our Strength, the nation's largest anti-hunger organization, holds its annual Conference of Leaders.The gathering will bring together corporate leaders, community volunteers and service providers to raise awareness for the cause and encourage participants to continue their work."The conference is the only time during the year that these organizers from around the country and our volunteers can come together and share ideas," said Lisa Richardson, a spokeswoman for the group.

CONGRESS HAS so far made only minor restorations in its severe cuts in food stamps and other nutrition programs imposed as part of last year's welfare reform legislation. As a result, more people will be seeking the services of food banks in Maryland and elsewhere. Already, these groups are seeing increased demand, which they are not able to meet.According to a nationwide study by the Tufts University Center on Hunger, Poverty and Nutrition Policy, the cuts will lead to an unprecedented decrease in the amount of food available to hungry Americans, and private food banks and other charitable agencies won't be able to to fill the gap. The Maryland Food Bank, Maryland's largest anti-hunger advocacy organization, handed out some 12 million pounds of food in 1996.

NEW YORK -- Fourteen of the 15 suspects charged with bombing the World Trade Center and conspiring to launch a wave of terror attacks in New York City have gone on a hunger strike protesting conditions inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center.The suspects are being held at the center on charges that they were involved with the trade center bombing in February, which killed six people and injured 1,000 others. They also allegedly plotted to bomb the United Nations and other structures."They are protesting the bad conditions in the prison," said M. T.Mehdi, president of the National Council on Islamic Affairs.

Some people in Carroll County are still going hungry, despite food banks and soup kitchens, says an active volunteer.So Gay McCormick is one of a small group hoping to draw residents to an organizational meeting at 7:30 p.m. today to form the Carroll County Coalition to End Hunger.The gathering will be in the ground-floor meeting room of Human Services Programs of Carroll County Inc., at 10 Distillery Drive in Westminster.Ms. McCormick and the Rev. Mark Lancaster, chaplain at Western Maryland College, are among the organizers of the local coalition.

With chicken soup and simple ceramic bowls, South Carroll High School joined the battle against hunger. The Winfield school is the first in Carroll County to participate in Empty Bowls, a international project that unites communities in a campaign against hunger. More than 100 diners sat down for a community supper Wednesday, served by students in chef caps and bright yellow aprons printed with "we care." Instead of hearty casseroles, thick slabs of meat and creamy desserts, the fare was plain: chicken noodle soup, bread and water.

HAGERSTOWN -- In a groundbreaking case for Maryland prison protests, a Washington County judge ruled yesterday that corrections officials may force-feed an inmate when it is deemed medically necessary to prevent death or permanent injury.Circuit Judge Frederick C. Wright III said he will issue an order giving officials at Roxbury Correctional Institution that authority over Warren R. Stevenson, 45, a prisoner who has refused solid foods since at least last March.The order is intended to settle a vexing matter for prison officials: Does a prison's right to security and the well-being of its inmates outweigh a single prisoner's right to a nonviolent and widely accepted form of protest?

Luis Larin once fasted six days to protest rising electricity rates in his native Guatemala. Now a day laborer in Baltimore, Larin is among 11 current and former temporary workers who will begin a hunger strike Sept. 3 to secure higher wages for those who pick up the trash at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. "We think it's the only way we'll get attention and get a living wage for workers," Larin said through a Spanish interpreter. The hunger strike announced yesterday is the latest move by the United Workers Association to pressure the Maryland Stadium Authority to meet its demand for better pay. Camden Yard workers typically earn $7 an hour.

LOS ANGELES -- A yearlong University of California, Los Angeles, study on hunger in inner cities found that 27 percent of residents in one South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood say they do not have enough money to buy food and that their families go hungry an average of five days each month.Yet the Los Angeles emergency food system is so overwhelmed, the study says, that food pantries and soup kitchens -- which have seen demand jump 38 percent between 1991 and 1992 -- are being forced to cut the amount of groceries given out and turn away one of four who come to their doors.