from los angeles, i am tavis smiley. withht a conversation robert egger, the founder of the -- hecommunity-based pioneered job training programs and other social enterprises that empower and inspire. we are glad you could join us. a conversation with robert egger, coming up right now. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminate hunger, and we have a lot of work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out.

>> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. tavis: robert egger is someone who looks at a problem and immediately decides to do something about it. he started the first community kitchen in the country more than two decades ago. they have provided 25 million meals to the hungry and trade more than a thousand people who have gone on to find good jobs in the food industry. dozens of cities that follow that model and now he is expanding the concept here to los angeles.

>> a pleasure to be back. i grew up out here. we grew up here in the 1960's before move to d.c. a father was a marine corps pilot. tavis: so you move around a lot. i father was in the air force, so we moved just a couple of times. we did not move around as much as most military kids. there were 10 kids in our family. division all by yourself. tavis: pretty much. tell me about the d.c. kitchen, i have been there and spend time with you and your staff and most importantly, the people. tell me how this concept came to be. >> i was observing people one night in the rain outside the state department. we were serving food that was purchased from an expensive grocery store. people lined up in the rain

waiting for this truck night after night. it was my first volunteer experience. i was just stopped by the reality, the people who were serving or outside in the rain. it was the first time i got a sense of the charity model. i just wanted to flip that around. i came back with a little business plan, saying if you get the restaurants, hotels, to send the food they don't want to throw away but they don't know what to do with, you could give more people better food for less money. let them be part of the solution and to job training. then you can repay the people who gave you the food and show them how to make more money. i was told it would not work, time and time again. i figured if they won't do it, i will do it. here we sit, almost 25 years later. i want to go back to this

charity model that he mentioned a moment ago. you went past it so fast. go back to that charity model, repeat what it is. >> it is about the redemption of the giver of versus the liberation of the receiver. to meet that is the flaw. it is well intended. as long as it is about, i give you something so you can stay where you are at and i get to go home and sleep good at ninth, that will never work. i became interested in a model that if done well, i believe everybody rises up. for the men and women we are serving, and we did a lot of work with attics, it was here when an alcohol, then crack. replacing thed by

highest they were used to. being part of the solution, being respected, that was a huge leap. we allow everybody to be part of the solution. tavis: part of what gets lost in conversation in this country, whether you are talking about christian conservatives, progressives, or liberals, both ends of the spectrum missed this point, that there is a distinction to be made between charity and justice. we get so caught up and feeling good about the charity that we in kaydin, but charity -- that we engage in. it is a different notion than the concept of justice. if it were just about charity, then you would continue feeding people and would never move into the social justice realm, which is about giving them the opportunity to learn a skill and a trade and be able to be gainfully employed in support themselves and their families.

let's talk about the difference between charity and justice. >> there is an old saying in my business, a bishop from south first they called me a saint, then they called me a communist. people like charity. i have gotten wiser as i have aged. tightlyant to hold on to these stereotypes. if it is poor, it is your fault. if you are in jail company he did something -- if you are in jail, you did something wrong and you deserve it. the we would reveal, opportunity to make people braved. i am trying to get people purposely. i set out at the end of the day to use the process of how we feed and trained to give people to open up a little bit. people were thinking i am going to be working in a basement.

they were nervous. we had a very short window to liberate their minds a little bit. when they left and went home, we always wanted to ruin them for another charity. a huge experiment. them believeaving thinking differently, that is one of the main objectives. tavis: >> one of the other things that concerns me or disturbs me, and maybe you could shed some light on this. the government was responsible for making this shift. maybe you can explain it. of late, rather than talk about er, we use this phrase, food insecurity. i am guilty of it because you want to be current in the lingo. you don't want to offend people. you want to be present in terms of language, and words do

matter, but this notion of shifting the conversation from being one of hunger. when you say food insecurity, you have to explain that sometimes. what happened in the progressive communities where we embrace this terminology where we talk about it as food insecurity, as opposed to saying what it really is, people are hungry. >> it was really hard to pin down hunter. -- hunger. we went from 25 million people 10 years ago and now we have 45 million who are at risk of hunger. that means that any given time of the day, they don't know where their next meal is coming from. i always wondered rather word whole list came from. words like this shield us from the bigger conversation. wage, housing, race, drug

addiction, there are so many different subjects. unless we have these conversations, we are not moving anywhere. that has always been the problem, americans are afraid of these big conversations, but until we talk about mental health that america, we are just trying to get out of it. tavis: i thought i heard you say in a very ambassadorial kind of be -- sometimes that can charity. i think i should perhaps rethink what i said a moment ago. if you are telling me that by using the term food insecurity he gives us a more accurate picture of what the problem really is, maybe it is not such a bad term after all. >> at the end of the day, the average american just doesn't believe it. , ran nightclubs, so in effect i am a salesman.

i watch people try and sell hunger over and over. i killed trying to politely suggest, the average american refuses to believe there is hunger is country, so you have to find a different way to get into their heads a little bit. how do you reach people? have you get the average person to stop and open up and acknowledge that maybe some of the things -- a lot of it is their fate in the system we call democracy in america. to challenge the notion that anybody can pick themselves up and move forward in america, that is a tough nut to try to crack. tavis: >> when i saw you in washington last, my friend cornell west and i were on a .overty towarur to your point about americans not believing that many people go to bed hungry every night, that there is food insecurity in this country, what is at the

heart of that? in the book that dr. west and i subsequently wrote, we have an notionnotion about this about american exceptionalism. poverty is very real and threatening our democracy. all the things that are connected to the notion of poverty, this is real. but americans for whatever reason don't want to believe that. we believe it is because we have been so caught up in this notion of american exceptionalism, that that kind of stuff does not happen in our universe. want to believe what the numbers tell us is the reality. >> americans don't want to knowledge it might could happen to them some day. i have always hated that kind of language, but it is easier to think that way. peoplesmerized by help

generally are decent. people give billions of dollars a year to charity to try to fix something. the think if i give all this money, it will get better. there is a sense of faith and generosity, but there is that missing piece that charities are afraid to challenge. this is where we have gotten a little bit off. what you have is a lot of people fighting for a smaller piece of the pipe. it is almost like watching an if theyleader -- actually do speak the truth, they fear they will lose the election. they are afraid they speak up and start talking truth to power and be more honest, they will not get a grant. that is where we stop. to me, advocacy is a real important part of this mission. we have to go out and talk about new legislation. some of the movement that were trying, they

to figure out, we are not going to stay in the back of the bus. getave to figure out how to brave enough to go and confront this idea that we cannot be part of the mainstream in a powerful way, and that we as charities cannot be the voice for that. we have told we cannot be political. you have to just sit back and take it as it is. corporations can be actively political. that is something we need to challenge. tavis: when you study this dysfunction, what have you learned about how not to be frozen by the fear dacko >> one of the great advantages right now that we have is a new media. up until a couple of years ago,

there would be a big press conference and i would be in the back. time, major all the sources of outside investment every community, it cannot make profits without us, what is our role echo that is a pretty straightforward question. the other politician does not even remotely understand that. single campaign .as an @ thing what we might not be able to be activists while we work, when we go home and there are private citizens, there are 10 million of us. america cannot move forward, americans cannot make money without defined roles from the

nonprofit sector. we create the best profit in america. not just in the figure to sens. we are out to create jobs. i am here to make some money for this city. that is what a smart mayor will start to get that. mayors who are elected to come in on day one saying you are hiring men and women who would go to prison, but now they are being pretty being paid a salary by the taxpayers. you have to deal with the federal government as well as local. whether it is federal government or municipalities, a loaded question here. where food insecurity is concerned, how have the pollen sticks gotten in the way? you can be as broad at or as little as you want to be, but

how has politics got in in the way? politicians, when you think about this, they immediately go to this side. they don't see the hybrid. nonprofits behave like business and business behave like nonprofits a little bit. i will give you good example. if you invested $1,000 in microsoft in 1986, you would have a million dollars in the bank. why not an annual tax deduction that would increase the value? if a non-profit organization has proven economic growth, if you could attain well by investing in your own product, that means

the investors who gave the money would make more money. there is a way we need to bust free of this old notion of an economy based on dots. >> it is electing a new generation. tavis: the folk in washington, they are not stupid. why cannot understand this concept? >> at a gut level, it makes sense. there is a sense of, that cannot work. anybody trust to be up front, you are trying to find those breakthrough ideas that challenge us intellectually, but once you get there, it opens up so many new doors. everything i use is already here. is underutilized.

people want in from out of the rain. it was all there. i just moved the pieces around. to show a better way in which communities can really work in a way that not only liberate. >> now the nation knows how passionate you are about what you do and how brilliant you are at the way you do it. the benefit for the work you do now of having been a club promoter. how does that parallel? >> the reason i wanted to open a club, i was 10 years old in 1968 when dr. king was murdered and a few months later, robert kennedy. at 10 when you open up and you see the world way it really is,

i cannot figure out what the problem was. a couple of months later i saw my friends at a party and they were dancing to motown. they were dancing to the same ideas put to music. for me, a nightclub was about using the power needed to disguise big ideas that i thought had to keep moving forward. i just watched my parents and their friends let go of their fears and enjoy themselves. that is what i wanted to do. when i started the kitchen, i hate to get back to the world of nightclubs. the kitchen'sed became my nightclubs. whether it is somebody coming in the back door because they want a job for the first time, they have never graduated from anything. i am trying to find a way to get them to where they want to go. if it is a young student in school, they want to do more,

they want to experience something. whether it is the president of the united states who is looking for new way to open up the economy, welcome home. that is what i am going to do here in l.a. tavis: motown is the answer to so many questions. speaking of which, i was then the conversation the other day, and i am glad this came up. as yet has not received the presidential medal of freedom. you look at all the people we have given that high honor to, berry gordy has not yet received that. i cannot begin to tell you the number of times we have been anding about x, y, or z

motown comes up. was the soundtrack of people's lives. got peoplerdy together on the dance floor of america. music has tremendous power. the whole night club thing, how do use experiential stuff to get people to place they are afraid of? he does deserve that, because he probably did more for freedom to think new ideas and experience new things and just about anybody in our generation. tavis: tell me about this expansion. tell me how you are taking the d.c. kitchen concept national. , butwas always intrigued , think aboutware l.a.. it is at the bottom of this final right out of the central

valley. you have an endless supply of beautiful, healthy fruit and vegetables that you can get for free or nichols on the pound. . am interested in that i tend to look out and see what is coming, rather than wait for it to come to me. there is a waiting list for meals on wheels. there are 80 million people getting old, baby boomers who lost 40% of their wealth between 2005 and 2010. you can see what is coming. tragically, i cannot sit by and let that happen. i am here to experiment with how to produce extremely healthy food that will strengthen older people, not just feed them, but really strengthened. whether you are somebody off the moret or an addict, important, i want to elevate the

rule. we have to have a deep discussion. economically, it is essential that as many of our elders stay home and be productive as long as possible. the deepest well of life experience in the world. the power, the potential there. but back to robert kennedy. up andime a person steps does right, there is a small ripple. you hear a lot about the silver tsunami. i believe that is those ripples and that way that bobby kennedy talked about. this baby boom generation did challenge to be a great generation, but you have to go out there and give them a way home. , comeder people in l.a. on the and let's work together, side by side. let's show america what elders

can do. tavis: your response to those who find the concept interesting and even appealing, but wonder why so many people that you serve are addicts, users, abusers. they would not be in that not gottenf they had themselves in that trouble in the first place. i am a big believer that we need to have a discussion in america about self medication. if you walk out of here and fall down and break your arm, people are going to walk over and make sure you are ok. but if you have a broken brain, people are going to push you out. we never found a way to challenge some of that amazing spirit.

emancipate them out of foster care. create job training were you put those together to mentor each other, and then we will produce thousands of really healthy meals. tavis: you see why had robert egger on the program tonight. thanks for watching. until next time, as always, keep the faith. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time for a conversation with emmy award winning actor jeremy piven. that is next time. we will see you then. >> there is a saying that dr. king had that said there is always the right time to do the right thing. i just try to live my life every day by doing the right thing. we know that we are only halfway to completely eliminate hunger, and we have a lot of work to do. walmart committed $2 billion to

fighting hunger in the u.s. as we work together, we can stamp hunger out. >> and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> be more.