palmyra church of the brother an unpublished repents of an ask the question of their class of someone who was hungry and they came by the church what would jesus do the class responded jesus would feed them well seven years have gone by since that question was asked and we're going to show you the answer to that question welcome to brother voices i'm brett carlson the sunday school teacher cindy border elaine hoffer and that's the myers could not have dreamed of what would it result from that simple question they asked seven years ago the fast responded to this is what freedom and they decided to do a food drive and collect food for those who are hungry and the food was collected and was given to those who came by the church the people who are hungry the kids said that's what jesus would have been the word got out and another church heard about it and s the story unfolds that church referred a family to the poem are richer for the brother and for food as they didn't have any food to give out themselves later possibly feeling a little troubled that they didn't have a resource of their own they collecting food and sent it over to the church of the brother to help out well seven years later the effort is now known as the caring cupboard and twenty five area churches are involved a little later we're going to show you what's happening these palmyra pennsylvania and actually visit the caring cupboard brother voices met with some of the you who had actually been in that sunday school class seven years ago this year to commemorate lead the junior and senior youth groups decided to do a special project collecting one thousand rolls of toilet tissue and one thousand boxes of kleenex to publicize the project that has produced a video called the chronicles of tissue tyler congregation in general and we thought that a video with a mascot to shoot tyler would be a great way to do that so one night the youth got together and about an hour he ran around the church and made some different skits about when people need f tissues why they're important why we need them for the caring cupboard and we sort of had a lot of fun with it and it was i think it was a pretty good success we asked him about the project what they remembered about the event of seven years ago well the caring cover of a started about ten years ago by the children's department a group of the teachers had this vision that they would have a cupboard in the church filled with food so that when people came in looking for  and they couldn't afford it there would always be food there to give them and soon it grew and it filled the entire kids department and then it got big enough that the c which is packed for short bought up a new building and everything moved over there and it's grown a lot bigger since and we're really proud of the progress it's me oh all right here with all of this started i was only wee little tyke i think i was six the class we were in was first through fourth grade and then we had the kindergarteners mixed in there so it was this big age group of kids were a lot of different kids back then so there was a lot of input from a lot of different ages which helped so how did the group go about getting the contributions of the tissue that you're knocking on doors  to put out a flyer an advertisement what you do we didn't really need to go knocking on doors the congregations are usually pretty good about helping us out when we have a project like this so we just put together our video series and had our tissue two thousand and twelve campaign and sure enough they showed up so it's nice to know that they're willing to help us out with these kinds of things when they heard about the project rather invoice has wanted to make a special contribution to contribute to the effort so they get deep into our pockets let's see what happens when you're ready thank you thank you sixty here that makes over a thousand we then met with the pastor of the problem return of the brother dennis lore he shared the story of how the caring covered came into being cupboard began i'm going to guess maybe seven eight nine years ago in one of our children sunday school classes and the teachers were talking to the kids about what they thought jesus would want them to do and the kids decided that if somebody came by the church hungry that jesus would want them to have some food to share with them so they decided to take one of the cabinets in the sunday school room and they they painted it up and they called it the current coverage and they began to bring food items in to keep in the cupboard and in those days if somebody came by the church maybe once a month or once every two months asking for food that would have been pretty normal but it seemed like once there was food there and some people came by and got some that more people started to come by and then that probably went on for a couple of months and then one day somebody showed up at the church and they said well they had been to one of the other churches in town looking for some food and they said well we don't really have any food here but we think there's some food over at the church of the brother and want to go there  so they came over and we were able to get them some food and it seemed like maybe it was a couple hours later that the pastor from that church called said hey we sent somebody over to your church for some food but we're not comfortable with it just that we were wondering could we could we also collect some food and send it over so that you have that and can do that and would you be interested in some people volunteering to help out and so that began to happen and different churches began to send some food to us and volunteer and the number of people who came by for assistance began to grow and to grow and eventually what started off as just one one cabinet with some nonperishable food  probably in the matter of six months or nine months became four five or six cabinets and i think three refrigerators and two deep freezes and it got to where that there was really no longer space and the children sunday school room to have children sunday school because of all of the the food in the containers and stuff that were there so that's when we began to look for another place a place off site that the caring cupboard could move to and we began to l and just about a block away there was a man that owned a flower shop roy a flower shop and he contacted us and explain to us that they were getting ready to change their location they were going to be moving to a strip mall and vacating that building and he would have a have it for sale and he was interested in what he had heard the cupboard was doing and said that he would be willing to sell us that old flower shop at a price that we couldn't refuse and we said ok so he he said he had to talk with his with his financial people and he get back to us and he had he had shown us where the property had been its value had been assessed it was a storefront  had two apartments over top of it and it had been assessed at a value of one hundred ninety five thousand dollars and about a week later he called us and said that he was offering us the the property at less than half that price at ninety thousand  dollars if we could if we could give him some letter of indication of the amount of that gift so that he could he could take that off on his taxes so we were able to work that out within about a month's time we were able to talk to all the churches  and get them to agree to go with us because at the same time we were interested in having the caring cover not just be a ministry of our congregation but a ministry of of the area cooperation of churches and in about a month's time we were able to put all that together except for actually getting the loan that we needed for the mortgage but mr royer was willing to accept the sale the property on give us a mortgage so that we could pay off mr royer and we were just about ready to sign mortgage papers with one of the local banks when we were contacted by the interfaith man or someone from the interfa manor board which is interface manor is a is a housing project subsidized rental for senior citizens and they contacted us and said you know twenty twenty five years palmyre area cooperation churches was very helpful and instrumental in getting us going and now we want to give back we want to help out so they offered to loan to us the money that we  needed which was the ninety thousand dollars and we asked for an additional forty thousand for renovation they were willing to loan us one hundred thirty thousand dollars at zero percent interest and they said we could we could tell them how much we wanted to pay back each month what we thought we could handle and mr royer had tried to set the price so that we would be able to pay the mortgage off of the rent that we were getting off the two apartments that were above the store and so we agreed that we would pay five hundred dollars a month toward that and they said you know if you get a month where you can't quite make that payment don't worry about it just skip that month makes make the next payment because really what we want to do is help you make this project successful and that's what the relationship has been between the cupboard and the interface manner since then until a week ago and a week ago someone from the from the board at the interfaith manner contacted the director of the current cupboard and said we've made a new decision and we have decided to suspend indefinitely any additional payments on the mortgage and free those monies for the current cover to continue to build its ministry in programme so we're delighted about that and sense that sense that original cupboard was put together by the children where again if somebody came in maybe once a month or once every two months the cupboard now i think is is providing significant food support for approximately two hundred families on a weekly to monthly basis it is a it's a program begun by children maybe the scripture text and the little child shall lead them it was an important text here but it was begun by the children captivated the attention of the congregation some of the adults in the congregation and ultimately the community supported strongly by the churches by the civic organizations by the schools within the community it has a broad volunteer base as a a lot of people a lot of good people who have very deep and real needs and some are also has a lot of good people who have a lot of resources and the cupboard is a place where the good people of palmyra come together those who have deep needs and those who have resources and they're able to work together to make sure that everybody is ok that's just been a great place it's one of the places that i like to go to when i'm frustrated and it just doesn't seem like we can get things to happen because when you go to the cupboard the folk there have a can do attitude and they pick up projects and they take them on and they make them happen and it's just it's just a really rare kind of experience so the good people do good work for good people and it's a program in our community that has captured attention and meets real needs and it all started with kids i used to have a goat where did it go and went to a family who really needed it you see giving a family an animal is like giving them a business eggs all turn into income for medicine school clothing a better home a sustainable livelihood soon the family is passing on the gift of the animal saw spring to another family does the same and on and on until the whole community is lifted out of poverty that is where my code went and that's why you give to have for international they were sharing the story of the youth of the palmer church of the brother who seven years ago and this and jesus feeding the hundred today that occurred that they carried cupboard in palmyra pennsylvania for those who need food to make their lives a little less stressful the current cupboard is open three days a week for those in the community who need food to help them get through their week there's no program supported by twenty five area churches and then all volunteer staff who assist with the store and its clients we talked with terry banker director of the current coverage he showed us the workings of a caring covered this room that we're standing was the original store room when we moved into this particular building after we left the church where everything started at the palm our church the brother this room was there were small cabinets and some other little items that we could store stuff in so this became our store room we outgrew this very rapidly had to tear out all the cabinets and put in shelving and then we soon had to move out of there and when we moved out of this room for our primary supplying we then moved into the next room which is behind me i do not buy anything i cannot eat for the cupboard these are all donated for instance the poem our church the brother and i just finished up a drive where the children are collecting toilet paper trying to get a thousand rolls and the senior high is trying to get a thousand boxes of kleenex you can also see some boxes of canned goods they came from a couple an elderly couple who just got married and instead of presents i asked the foodstuffs be brought so that they could bring it to the caring cupboard there's over five hundred pounds of food was brought here every year we have a boy scout drive in the community and one of the years that we had to drive boy scout leaders felt that we didn't have enough stor and so they took this room which was i guess when the store was here i break room and they through the brother in christ church in town a group of men built the shelves this is now our primary store room as far as taking product into actually where the clients will be able to pick it up this is mostly canned goods but we do have coffee pete coffee i might add and we have cereal in this room we could not always store everything here so we had to build a third story room this is our latest store room this used to be a hot house we called it the green room because a green fiberglass roof on it but we couldn't store anything here it was too hot in the summer too cold in the winter so what we ended up doing is the first united methodist church in town decided to winterize the whole area and so we can use this now right now it's being used to hand out easter meals dry product over here but it's really used strongly whenever we have the great big drives like the boy scouts in the postal and the church some of the churches do extensive drives and so do the school the school system so we have to have a place just to dump the stuff when it comes in before we can sort it out when we started we started with  few premises we are an organic organization a larger food bank in the area the central pennsylvania food bank when interviewing me asked me what plan i used and i informed them we used the seat of our pants plan as a result we decided very early on we would not be a food bank per se but a pantry the difference between a bank and a pantry is the bank will hand you a bag of groceries was evers in that bag is what you get whether you want it or not we decided not to do that we allow the clients to actually shop we base what they can take on the size of their families and we have color coded cards  that tells them how much of what they can take and so they only take what they want and they do not have to take anything that is not to their liking that has worked very well we also decided that we were going to make an effort to serve the working poor and therefore our income acceptances are higher than what the governments would be those were all things that we wanted to make sure was taken care of when we started and we have continued to do that we're working with about one hundred  twenty to one hundred thirty families a week unlike many food banks where every every week clients can come in every week and we have four different times that they can come in to make sure that we find a time convenient particularly for those who are working but also for the elderly who do not like to come out at night now this room that you're looking at was a sunken garden you walked down four steps and they had planters all over the place another united methodist church gravel hill they came in put a floor on made a room for us they put into bathrooms we had to have bathrooms to meet the codes they put in the kitchen and we do not  cook for the clients but we do do a lot of prep work behind the camera is the only office well is the office of the client manager she is the only employee that's paid and she's paid part time and not paid enough to do all the hours are cheap puts in other than that we are a volunteer organization running about seventy eight volunteers through here every two weeks perhaps you've heard the song pass it on the word and say it only takes a spark to get a fire going and it only took the imagination of the youth group thinking what would jesus do to put into motion a wonderful way to reach out in the community that's what's happening in palmyra p s please let us know what's happening in your neighborhood this is great carlson for brother voices wishing you  i do want to point this out folks this movement and tonight's of that was not covered by corporate media at all right but i do want to give a big shout out to any of you who are watching me right now let's just acknowledge you're watching it on people's media wherever it is that you're watching me right now some unpaid volunteer took the time to record it thank you some unpaid volunteer took the time to upload this to create the people and yes to the local cable access program that this is going to be played on and also can we get a big shout out to your community radio station it is a people's own people's operated radio station so the point i'm making is this ma'am let's build alternative people's media so that we can talk to each other and let's have those kind of conversations and let's build political power that is serious that takes ourselves seriously because we have to because i just world is it stake and frankly not only a peaceful and just world but we know that the ecology that we depend upon for life itself is in the balance so let's do our work joyously but let's also be serious about peace  it was an accident at the three mile island nuclear power plant which is located on an island in the subsequent how to read about ten miles from harrisburg a cooling pump broke down and the plant did just what it was supposed to do shut itself off but not before some instantly and there was no science to warn people and as a result the governor hasn't eaten for a few days to a party that you ation i urged women and children to leave but many didn't because you couldn't smell it you couldn't you and the utility lied about it they didn't want to that myth that they had a major and that part of many more children all over the northeast to be affected by the radioactive gases that  think thirty reporters see that guy if you've been there i went into central pennsylvania i interviewed a lot of these people do you know and very were harmed by these so called safe were able doses of radiation there was a no the industry is trying to foist on the public a new generation of nuclear power plants the high temperature gas reactor unit star nuclear which is in line to receive billions in government loan guarantees for the development of the next generation of nuclear power plants as i read the wall street journal you and some others are in line now to get some government help and really breakthrough and start producing more nuclear plants tell me it's true and how long will it take you to get him gone well we did one hundred plants in about twenty five years before and we can do it again and with these loan guarantees now we're positioned actually be one of the first companies to start breaking ground you know really in the short period time a couple years and maybe see one up and running by about  twenty sixteen out of the wall street journal article said seven new reactors are on lied to do this first of all is that a good ballpark number because i was thinking we need a hundred but we definitely need one hundred if we really want to do energy security  air for human health reasons you know if we want to cut our greenhouse gases a again we should double down we've got one hundred now we should do one hundred more you're going to get political opposition as you well know and you're going to have opponents from the green movement in the environment any acts as you well know you optimistic are you investing your money i know you're getting government help but you've got to put up your own dough well remember these are loan guarantees so we still have to come up with real private sector backing and are companies going to do it in a merchant environment that means in an unregulated environment so we're very bullish on this our industry is trying to present itself as the solution to the climate crisis that's the latest public relations gimmick that the industry has come up with and they've been largely effective on capitol hill and getting their way because they spent so much money on lobbying so from one thousand nine hundred ninety two thousand and nine the nuclear power industry spent six hundred forty five million dollars on lobbying it's an incredible amount of money in addition they spent sixty four million dollars on federal campaign contribution so that has opened doors on capitol hill it's opened doors at the white house in both republican and democratic administrations to create more of these clean energy jobs we need more production more efficiency more incentives and that means building a new generation of safe clean nuclear power plants in this country to nuclear power is the last thing from green the idea that atomic energy somehow operates in the harmony with the pine it is a complete nonstarter it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever nuclear powers at least green technology ever invented and certainly for generating electricity with nuclear power does emit greenhouse gases in the mining milling and enrichment of fuel in the management of spent fuel in the transportation of radioactive waste all these things throw greenhouse gases gases into the atmosphere the idea of atomic energy is in any way shape or form an answer to go warming is completely absurd and people who argue this have simply not done their homework the reality is that nuclear power is a carbon  worse than that nuclear power sucks up the social capital that should otherwise be going to the technologies that really do fight global warming which is solar wind title geothermal oceans thermal and all that stuff the people that go into  the weak link in a nuclear power plant is not the dome of the reactor that we see in photographs it's the spent fuel pond that no one even thinks about we have a lightly guarded swimming pool in caning many cores worth of nuclear materials first looked at nuclear installations they didn't clarify precisely which installations but we know that it's indian point indian point is a commercial nuclear reactor north of manhattan it is perhaps the most dangerous miles an hour radiation now is going past the evacuation zone eaters and the temperatures will try to go up scale at three o'clock the large portions of manhattan are now being doused with radiation for the most part people will carry on their major terrorist attack has taken place and in good point however evacuation plans for new york city are not in place because new york city is outside the back you asians know what happens to the people in manhattan there's chaos people don't know which direction the cloud where they're going to be tens of millions of people flee the contaminated area everyone gets into their cars and spontaneously evacuated with or without emergency evacuation time express is the world's largest parking lot people in the outlying areas are not going to have the social infrastructure they're not going to have the beds and food to handle the millions of people that are going to be flooding out of the new york metropolitan the apologists for nuclear power and love to say that we've had no problems here with the reactors here in the united states and it's utterly absurd it's basically the blind deceiving the uninformed because the reality is that american  these reactors have a terrible track record for example the davis bessie reactor which is a clone of three mile island the irresponsibility of the operators of this reactor allowed a boric acid leak to each almost all the way through the reactor pressure vessel that contains the core reaction in a nuclear power plant another fraction of an inch and we could very well have had a child over on lake erie and we also had a meltdown  explosion at the fermi one nuclear reactor in october fifth one thousand nine hundred sixty six the authorities were actually contemplating how they would evaluate detroit when this reactor which was cool with liquid sodium actually could have exploded and put  radioactive crater in southeastern michigan we have constant leaks at the indian point and oyster creek reactors in new york and new jersey we have clear problems reactors on earth page faults and i believe very very close at the time when we should collectively have puts our energy behind authentically renewable energies like solar wind all like local said we won't give our land the local authorities and local councils rule they will not give the land then they have under the constitution the right to say no but they were not this into all of our local councils democratically elected have resigned in that area hour for example the south texas project as you go on u s government guarantees because they said they could build these two plants for five billion dollars toshiba which we know is westinghouse but there is no westinghouse anymore that the project would cost at least eight billion dollars when they apply for the u s government guarantee this is an old game in nuclear they tell you it's five billion then it's eight billion by the way the project the latest numbers i thirteen billion but guess what the u s taxpayer is now already on the hook for the money and for the first time ever the u s government has agreed to pay a project stops and you never get a dime of the money i got to tell you that the new period history spent close to one hundred billion dollars on projects that were never completed and never ran seven billion for a reactor that never even operated companies like halliburton stone webster shaw group these companies make mince knowing that they will get billion dollar contracts and never actually have to produce anything that's part of the cost of their power because all subsidized in two ways at least the number one subsidy is from you the bill payer when you turn on your lights which you are paying not only for the and the managing the spent fuel and the nuclear waste mining is a very very hazardous process in the communities we have union mines in a tribal area in the state of contaminated with radiation you have some serious illnesses caused by your rainy mining in the united states if we expand your rain use as a stop plant where we now plan to have reactors created there is a aquifer underneath a mountain which is used for irrigating a very vibrant agricultural community downstream it's also used for drinking water national wildlife refuge there's a native american reservation and a national park all downstream if radioactive waste is ever buried there there is some much earthquake activity so much volcanic activity and so much water flowing through that site it would become a nuclear sacrifice area downstream the obama administration has the project on this geologically unsuitable land that happens to belong to the western shoni indian nation so that's not happening so in a very real sense we are back to the beginning not know what we're doing with our radioactive waste could not have the funding in place to pay for it and the wastes continue to pile up at the reactors where they are generated in the first place you know every reactor in the united states there are spent fuel rods these spent fuel rods are incredibly dangerous and uniquely toxic there's nothing else on earth community approach the toxicity of the killing power of these so called spent uranium fuel rods and in fact if you had one of these rods recently removed from a nuclear power plant and stood next to it you would be dead within a matter of minutes or even worse these things cannot be tolerated by the human body and certainly have no place on this earth now what's happened is that the one hundred four reactors when the united states have about sixty thousand tons of so called spent fuel which is sitting either in pools they have to be continually circulated with some kind of alert that our running pumps or in dry casks they can go into dry casks after a certain amount of time in these pools are they moved some of their toxicity some of the radiation and they're being put in essential boxes they're metal and concrete boxes with ventilation holes that's only are very susceptible to toes and very susceptible to other problems of especially tornadoes and hurricanes but the reality is that this is no solution all these power that were allegedly depended on for nuclear power is is nonsense and it's completely expendable these reactors one by one from being built and we can install all the features that we need to survive on this planet and that is our mandate and i think we will do it in the ultimate battle between the profit motive and the survival instinct win and we have a duty to make sure all the research that we have and that people all over the world have died in the last few decades that the greatest single environmental factor that has been ignored has been bomb fallout and nuclear radiation from permitted releases from the flag and if we continue if we measure from a hundred nuclear plants in survival of life on this planet with all the alternative forms of real in energy it seems senseless that we still rely on an archaic form of energy to jeopardize the lives of  just to continue to line the pockets of a few people around the world can keep up the pressure and bring about the green energy revolution we will see the end of the nuclear power industry