According to Hunger in America 2010, 888,100 unduplicated Arizonans received emergency food in 2009. That’s a whopping 85% increase from 2006. Almost half – 46% – were children under the age of 18.

This dramatic increase underscores the importance of funding and sustaining a food safety net. But it also underscores the fundamental economic imperative of investing in an economic climate that is creating jobs with wages sufficient to meet basic human needs like food, shelter and health care.

And how do we do that? By investing in education and the infrastructure of healthy, sustainable communities. The current fixation by some policy leaders on the politics of fear and exclusion ironically will make the state neither safer nor more secure.