Mark Bittman has hope

I've always thought of Mark Bittman as simply a food writer. Thus, I have seldom read his columns. However, in today's NY Times he has a column entitled "Is it bad enough yet?". It begins:

THE police killing unarmed civilians. Horrifying income inequality. Rotting infrastructure and an unsafe “safety net.” An inability to respond to climate, public health and environmental threats. A food system that causes disease. An occasionally dysfunctional and even cruel government. A sizable segment of the population excluded from work and subject to near-random incarceration.

You get it: This is the United States, which, with the incoming Congress, might actually get worse.

This in part explains why we’re seeing spontaneous protests nationwide, protests that, in their scale, racial diversity, anger and largely nonviolent nature, are unusual if not unique.

Clearly, this is not a column about food. Bittman is talking about the current state of the U.S., which he acknowledges as terrible. He thinks the basic cause of our problems is inequality and therefore our problems are interrelated.

Everything affects everything. It’s all tied together, and the starting place hardly matters: A just and righteous system will have a positive impact on everything we care about, just as an unjust, exploitative system makes everything worse.

Bittman thinks that the various protest movements - be it the Moral Mondays in NC, the marches re Brown and Garner, the walkouts by fast food workers, etc. - can bring about "a just and righteous system" in this country.

I wish I had his faith. I had hopes for the Occupy movement, but that failed. Looting and violence when protesting does not help the cause. Ineffective and uncaring political leaders don't want the change that is needed.