Walking for a Cause

 By Marilyn Moore

An outcome of the pandemic has been a renewed commitment to walking…good for the heart, good for the core, good for the soul.  Most days, these trusty Keens have taken me on a variety of neighborhood treks, two to three miles a day.  In the winter, add socks…and change to boots when it’s icy.  

I’ve learned that my neighborhood walks have quite literally grounded me in the neighborhood.  I’ve met my neighbors, I stop to chat, I’ve traded brownies for tomatoes, and I admire the year-round efforts people make to brighten this little corner of the world, from lights in the winter darkness to profusions of blooms in early spring, from Halloween yard art to sidewalk chalk art.  I know the neighborhood in a way I’ve not known it before, despite having lived here for more than forty years.

Sometimes, walking is for another purpose.  Such was true last weekend, when on Saturday I walked to the rally for reproductive rights at the state capitol, and on Sunday when I walked in the Lincoln CROP Hunger Walk.  Both are causes that are important to me; both are causes that drew many other walkers.  Both are issues that will determine candidates I will support in the upcoming elections for local, state, and federal offices.

Reproductive rights is a subset of women’s health rights, and could become a subset of health rights for all people.  The constitutional privacy right that protected abortion, described by the Supreme Court nearly fifty years ago, is the basis for other major life questions.  It’s the same constitutional basis for assuring that a person can marry someone of another race, that a homosexual marriage is no less valid and legal than a heterosexual marriage, and that people have a right to access to contraception.  Marriage and contraception rights are not restricted to women.  

While some Supreme Court jurists tried to soften the anti-abortion judgment with the assurance that the decision would not apply to other such privacy rights, one jurist expressly said that the decision should re-open those questions, too.  And we’ve certainly seen that what has seemed to be “settled law” for decades can be tossed aside…. So yes, there are major ramifications to what some would regard as “just sending the abortion question back to the states,” and it’s an issue that causes me to walk.  

Even if it were “only” about abortion, I would walk, knowing that the people I have known who have made the agonizingly difficult decision to seek an abortion had complications in their lives that could never be anticipated by legislators, most of whom are men, a few of whom are just now realizing the ramifications of bills they so readily, and unthinkingly, passed.  The clamoring eagerness of some legislators to prosecute women for taking care of their health and physicians who are providing treatment informed by training and professional judgement can only result in poorer health for women, in a nation that already has  poorer health outcomes for the general population than is true in most developed countries.  And I speculate….if legislators can decree that women must give birth, could they also decree that some (likely just “some” women) cannot give birth?  There are some horrifying incidences of this in our history…might they be repeated?

The next day, I joined dozens of other walkers in following a route through northeast Lincoln, participating in the Lincoln CROP Hunger Walk. This walk, held annually for many years, is a national event, a fund raiser for programs that provide food for hungry people.  Part of the funds raised are distributed through national and international agencies, and part are distributed to local efforts to end hunger.  

Globally, it is estimated that more than 800 million people, about 10% of the world’s population, go to be hungry every night, a figure that is increasing rapidly.  Three major causes are identified for the increase in the past two years:  Covid, climate change, and conflict.  Covid has impacted supply chains and distribution of food, and it resulted in record unemployment, from which many families have not yet recovered.  Climate change, with resulting fires, floods, and drought, have rendered previously arable land as land that can no longer grow crops.  Conflict, like the invasion of the Ukraine, has disrupted the growth and distribution of food worldwide.  

Locally, the Food Bank supplies an increasing number of meals every year, 13 million in the most recent year.  Even though we are a low unemployment city, the lines at food distributions have not shortened.  Seniors, those with major illnesses or disabilities, children….they’re not able to “just get a job,” and get out of the line.  The number of little free pantries around the city is growing, with neighbors helping neighbors in this most direct and caring way.  Hunger is real, and its effects on learning, growing, health, and well-being are real, too. 

Part of addressing the hunger issue is providing immediate assistance.  Food banks and little free pantries do this.  Part of addressing this issue is examining root causes of why people don’t have consistent access to food.  There are public policy proposals that address systemic roots of hunger, like livable wages, affordable health care, housing and child care, and benefits for veterans and those with disabilities.  

I walk for both of these causes, hoping that my steps might be a part of advocacy that affects public policy on reproductive rights and systemic hunger, that they might be a part of fund-raising that provides immediate assistance to hungry families.  And, I walk to remind myself what I care about, the causes I’m willing to lend my name to, the causes I’ll support financially, the causes that determine my votes.  

And for these reasons, walking for a cause, like walking in the neighborhood, is also good for the heart, good for the core, good for the soul.