They arrived before dawn to wait for the food truck. Middle-aged men, young women with children, the elderly and the retired, mixing with the low-paid on their way to work. As the sun rose high in a blue summer sky, several hundred people clustered in precious spots of shade in Dove Springs, a suburb of the Texan capital of Austin. Some brought garden chairs to sit on.
When the truck from the Capital Area Food Bank eventually came, each person patiently waited to pick up a box containing cans of spaghetti sauce, fruit juice, a few pounds of potatoes and some pears. Connie Gonzales, an Austin city official, watched the crowds of hungry and desperate people and said that they grew bigger each week. "It is the economy. It is bad. Any help these people can get, they really need it," she said.
It is not meant to be this way. Not in Texas. After all, this is governor Rick Perry's Lone Star state. This is the Texas whose record at job creation is at the centre of Perry's bid for the Republican presidential nomination. This is the state whose economic "miracle" is being hailed as a conservative blueprint for the future of America – "Texas exceptionalism" as rightwing columnist George Will glowingly called it. This is the state of low taxes and low regulation and which is so pro-business that corporations are booming here. It is the state that dodged recession and has roared back into recovery; an oasis of jobs in a devastated US economy.
Yet there is a dark side. It was on stark display in Dove Springs. This is the Texas of a collapsing education system that is failing to educate its children. This is the Texas where millions have no health insurance and a growing low-wage economy means having a job is not enough to provide the basics of life. This is the hungry Texas that the food bank serves.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/04/rick-perry-economic-mirage
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