Miller, George: School lunch program

Abstract

George Miller: Because my own legislative career, and essentially starting in George’s office and working on many of those same issues now thirty-five years later. He was there early on thinking about nutrition, how children learn, and the importance of a breakfast program. We spent the next twenty years trying to get that developed in this country. The struggle when the implementation of social security disability came along, Phil Burton in Washington D.C. on the phone with George Moscone in Sacramento on the phone with Ed Roberts and Ralph [Alvaskow], the lawyers in the Disabled Community figuring out “How are we going to write this law to make it work?” And the change that made in the country. Again, his sense of inclusiveness put him in the beginning of these battles. You say, “What’s so inclusive about child nutrition?” For him it was about whether this kid was going to be able to participate fully in the first or second grade class if they had the right nutrition, if they weren’t falling asleep in class, if they weren’t irritable. That was his sense of inclusion. For him to bring members of the Disability Community onto the Senate floor in the middle of the night to help write the legislation as they were going through the amending process was unheard of. They wanted to throw these people out of the building. He wouldn’t hear of it. So a lot of people were taken aback how he was part of this energy that people brought to these issues in the very early days. I mean, I didn’t think of it back then, but boy when you look back where he was, what he was saying. “Think about this. Go talk to some people about that.” What the hell is he talking about?

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Type

Interview

Date Original

2011-04-21

Relation

The Moscone oral history interviews are part of the George Moscone Collection, MSS 328.

Contributing Institution

Holt-Atherton Special Collections and Archives, University of the Pacific Library

Rights Information

To view additional information on copyright and related rights of this item, such as to purchase copies of images and/or obtain permission to publish them, click here to view the Holt-Atherton Special Collections policies.

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