On September 5, I joined District Director Elena Cohen and Constituent Services Director Jessie Cooley from our team at the launch of a new Campus Pantry at UMass Amherst.
This long-time vision is now a reality — with thanks to all of the students, staff, and faculty who have advocated for it for years; to Chancellor Reyes who championed this project since he arrived on campus, working with his team; and to the Amherst Survival Center which is at the helm.
I’m grateful to have such steadfast legislative partners in Representative Mindy Domb, Representative Natalie Blais, and Congressman Jim McGovern, all of whom are champions for greater food security in the Commonwealth.
Read on for the remarks I delivered at this hopeful launch.
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I’m delighted to join you for this truly heartening and very necessary opening. Delighted also to be joined by Representative Natalie Blais and to speak today on behalf of Representative Mindy Domb, both are steadfast partners in our shared service to the students, faculty, and staff of UMass Amherst.
Mindy wanted so much to be physically present. But she is, however, absolutely here in spirit as a long-time champion of food security — and a devoted former executive director of Amherst Survival Center.
Chancellor Reyes, in our earliest meetings with you, Rep. Domb and I were inspired by the immediate urgency you shared to address food insecurity on your campus. Thank you for bringing this home.
And Congressman McGovern, you have long led the way across our region and nationally as you charge us to end food insecurity and hunger and tackle diet related disease by 2030. We face enormous headwinds now, but I know you’re not yielding Jim, and neither are we.
In Massachusetts, we’re doing our best to rise to your challenge thanks to initiatives like the multi-agency Anti-Hunger Task Force just established by Governor Healey. I am honored to have been appointed to serve on this task force — which is co-chaired ably by Massachusetts Department of Agriculture Resources Commissioner Ashley Randle, who reminds us that without farms there is no food.
We’re also doing our best in the state to invest in higher education so that it’s both affordable and accessible.
Today, we’re saying that true higher education affordability and accessibility extends beyond tuition, fees, books, and supplies.
While investing in those is crucial — and we are and we’ll keep pressing forward — the opening of this pantry signals that UMass and the Amherst Survival Center understand that we must also focus on the total cost of college. And that includes rent, transportation, sometimes childcare, and food.
Food insecurity can interrupt degree completion, thwart goals, derail dreams. And on campuses across Massachusetts we know that it plagues far too many students, as well as some staff and faculty alike.
So we must meet the immediate demands of hunger and food insecurity even as we work to end the root causes of systemic poverty and ravaging inequities.
This is a brutally complex time.
And brutally complex times demand steadfast and iron clad partnerships like those embodied in this campus food pantry — made possible by the people of this campus, the people of the Amherst Survival Center, and countless other individuals and community partners who have already or will dedicate their time, talents, and resources toward the pantry’s success.
I join colleagues in sending a special appreciation and congratulations to Lev and cheers for Jake’s incoming pantry leadership.
This is the best of who we are as a region. As Washington (not Jim) retreats, this pantry, these partnerships are leaning in — toward dignity, nourishment, justice, and hope.
I am in awe of this work and everyone who is leading it. And I join Mindy and Natalie in being so very grateful to cheer it on and support it, now and in the days ahead.
