Earlier this week, Google changed the rules of the online game a bit by merging its powerful search engine with its nascent social network, Google Plus. Per Google’s announcement:

We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships. We began this transformation with Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step in this direction by introducing three new features:

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page; 
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

This, of course, angered Twitter, who sent a response to TechCrunch’s MGSiegler:

For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.

Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again,news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.

We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.

And just in case you were wondering if Google felt hurt by this response, well, they responded to the response:

We are a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer (http://goo.gl/chKwi), and since then we have observed their rel=nofollow instructions.

After all this tit for tat for tit going on in the online world (we’re all still waiting for Facebook to enter the fray) got me thinking: If there were a global thermonuclear war between Google (and all its services) and Twitter, and only one survived, which would you rather see? In other words, if you had to choose one to give up, which would you choose? I posted this question on Tumblr and Twitter last night, and here are the results:

On Twitter: 7 would give up Google; 6 would give up Twitter; 1 said it was a false choice; 1 said it was a stupid question.

On Tumblr: 1 would give up Google; 13 would give up Twitter; 1 said MySpace.

In total, 8 of 30 (27%) give up the search giant, 19 of 30 (63%) give up the ubiquitous social platform, 3 of 30 (10%) didn’t care to play in my reindeer games. Here are some of the responses:

I would give up Google. Without blinking. I can always ask someone on Twitter to look something up for me. It’s like asking if I’d rather talk to someone on the phone or deal with an (granted, very sophisticated) automated message menu.

I’d give up Twitter, if only for Gmail and Gcal. They pretty much run my life.

Twitter. In a heartbeat. Google has too many different, valuable services. Twitter is just 140 characters and maybe a link.

Google; I’m sure I could find another search engine, if need be. There’s nothing that replicates Twitter for me.

Google, because whereas not as good, there are other search engines and not really another twitter.

Twitter. In a New York minute.

I could ask Twitter all the things I’d ask Google, and probably come up with just as good if not better answers!

So what say you? Which would you give up?

As we ring in 2012 and close the books on 2011, we take a look back and assess stories that had major impact on our society. Current.com asked me to put together what I thought were some of the stories that flew under the radar.

Via Current:

This time of year, media outlets publish their year-in-review articles and lists, looking back on recent history and reflecting on the major events that shaped the past 365 days. In fact, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted a study of the year’s top stories and the frequency of each reported story. 

However, for a variety of reasons, there are always some stories that slip through the cracks and don’t get as much attention. This is our list, in no particular order, of five stories that went underreported in 2011. 

Links to each underreported story:

Number of homeless children highest in American history

Food prices trigger revolution

Big business behind solar power

More troops commit suicide than die in combat

U.S. military infiltrates social media

Media’s use of Tumblr has helped the service increase its user-base by bringing media outlets’ information-hungry audiences to Tumblr, where media consumers can read (and in some cases watch) news from their favorite newspapers, magazines and TV programs. Media has been able to use the Tumblr ecosystem to cultivate a community tied to their content.

I think there’s another aspect that has contributed to Tumblr’s growth: the community manager.

Community Manager is a title that emerged from the evolutionary tar pits of social media, but has its definition varies from company to company, person to person. Tumblr’s community manager/editorial director/dinosaur aficionado, Christopher Price (Topherchris), has become something of a cult hero among the Tumblr user-base, infusing his abstract design and love of experimentation into his wildly popular Tumblr blog.

He says he’s not sure what it means to be a community manager, only that he “knows how to do it the Tumblr way.” The Tumblr way is one of the reasons the site continues to grow.

Price flew up to New York a few years ago to attend a Tumblr meet up, and after two years using the service, was offered a job by David Karp, Tumblr’s CEO. “David said he wanted to hire me for editorial. Up until that moment, I thought I was going to be a programmer,” he told me while he and I (and Tumblr’s Media Evangelist Mark Coatney – whom you can read more about at Digiday) sat in a white, sunbathed conference room in Tumblr’s annexed office space on 21^st street in New York City. The company recently expanded to a second floor in the building they currently occupy. When Price came on board, he quickly realized that Karp was going to allow him to experiment, to use the system in a creative way. “He just turned me loose,” Price said. “It’s really great in hindsight to look back and think, maybe that was a really smart decision.”

When comparing the other social networks, specifically the behemoth Facebook and the ubiquitous Twitter, Tumblr’s approach to community management is wildly different. Instead of a ‘how do we keep people in line’ mentality, Tumblr, and Price, take a ‘how do we challenge people’ philosophy.

“It’s not interesting to me to just make (users) laugh or entertain them,” said Price. “I want to set up little challenges and have them make things; have them go off, come back and throw it into the zeitgeist. To me, that’s what Tumblr’s about.” The ability to ‘make things’ is how Tumblr differentiates itself. Using the platform, one can be creative. “I’m hoping that what I can do is sort of trickle down and set a tone that this is a place of open, free expression. And creativity.”

While much of Tumblr’s success is this creative, community driven philosophy, it wasn’t exactly a key executive strategy. The company had very few discussions of this particular growth strategy, but fundamentally understood that in order to grow, there needed to be someone to grow and cultivate a community.

“None of this was on any kind of roadmap,” said Price. “It was just, like, let’s just turn me loose. I’m so lucky to have the freedom. David just trusts what I’m thinking, which is crazy.”

Price’s role as community manager is rooted in what makes social media, well, social: the idea that engagement with an audience, the ability to cultivate a community, will lead to users, advertisers and investors.

Based on my experience representing many tech companies, and getting anecdotal evidence from tech reporters and other PR pros, oftentimes tech startups find themselves missing the forest for the trees when it comes to building ‘momentum.’

Click through to read the post in full. 

Zuccotti Park - photo by Josh Sternberg

This article originally ran on Current.com.

Since the first residents descended upon Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, the Occupy Wall Street movement has grown from a few hundred supporters in this tiny enclave to an international discussion. With thousands of people in cities across the globe – from New York to London to Sydney to Rome – announcing their support for economic parity, it’s not all surprising several narratives have emerged.

In the past week, New York City’s mayor, Mike Bloomberg, ordered NYPD to remove the protesters by force, UC Davis police officer John Pike needlessly and cowardly spraying pepper spray at sitting, peaceful students, and Seattle’s Finest shocked the world by pepper-spraying Dorli Rainey, 84-year-old who was at an Occupy Seattle protest. These provide yet additional stirring narratives, but ultimately, as in any public relations campaign, narrative and message need to be focused.

They Have No Message
One of the early narratives has been that, ironically, the Occupy Wall Street supporters have no message. Politicians and business leaders are always advised, “It’s about the message.” The same holds true for the Occupy Movement. But what happens when there are no specific, actionable messages, but broad, and often divergent messages? What happens when the messages aren’t created by the organization, but those who write about them? Does having a message even matter? The short answer is, yes, messaging matters. The longer answer for this particular case is, unfortunately, not as simple. What does matter, however, are the narratives created through the actions of the actors involved and how the audience perceives these narratives. In other words, will the Occupy Wall Street movement get support because of, or despite, these narratives? Up until now, there really has been one main narrative. But that should change.

The Main Narrative
So far, the protests throughout the nation have focused their ire on those they believe have, because of their greed and malfeasance, destroyed our society. The narrative from the protesters has been about holding those in charge of particular companies (Goldman, BoA, etc) accountable for making the vast majority of Americans, in one way or another, suffer – to lose their jobs, their homes, their sense of self-worth.

The protesters aren’t expecting money back or to right all the wrongs through financial gain or even stern justice. The goal is to make life more equitable, to make sure that those who made obscene amounts of money off the backs of masses can never repeat their offenses. This appears to be the main narrative of the protesters, one that is both easily understood and difficult to pin down. In order to help push this narrative, a slogan was created.

We Are The 99%
“We are the 99%” is a powerful slogan. But it’s also a dominant narrative, creating storylines – many of them heartbreaking, all of them relatable – about the economic disparity between those who reside in the top 1% of the wealth food-chain and the rest of us, the 99%. In broad strokes, this slogan sets the tone, and argument, that no matter where you fall – whether you make $23,000 a year or $230,000 a year, it pales in comparison to those in that top 1% (which according to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, is, at the minimum, $516,633 per year – but let’s be real for a second; those at the bottom of the top 1% are not in the same league as those who make millions+). The implication of the top 1% is that not only do they have the wealth, but the power – or, more acutely, the ears of those who sit in power – to push forth policy and shape how business is done. Or, to put it a different way, to help the top 1% remain the top 1%, to let money beget money, and to widen the chasm between them and everyone else.

This narrative, of course, has its detractors, and not just from the 1%, but also from people who misconstrue the message. Groups such as the “We are the 53%” have arisen to try to put the Occupy Wall Street protesters down by expressing their view that, while they may not be the wealthiest of people, what they have is because they work hard and abide by the rules. This group misses the point of the 99% message: everyone (except the 1%) is in the same boat – we’ve been, to put it colloquially, screwed.

One of the reasons this message has stuck is because of the populist implication. If “We are the 99%” exists, it means, by definition, it crosses political, societal and economic boundaries. A progressive who earns $75,000 a year in New York City is in the same position as a conservative who earns $45,000 a year in French Lick, Indiana. This is the ultimate ‘us vs. them’ message. But how do you deliver a message that does not get diluted and reaches a wide range of ideologically different people?

The Occupy Movement has taken advantage of today’s message disseminating tools. Understanding large media outlets will either ignore or confuse their message, the Movement has taken to the social networks with compelling stories to support the 99% narrative. They’ve created a Twitter account, Tumblr feed,Facebook page to help tell their stories.

However, as any politician or corporate executive faced with a determined media can attest to, distributing the message and controlling the message are two different things. Especially when uncertainty within the media runs high.

Media Create Narratives, Too
According to The New York Times’ Nate Silver, on the first day of the protests, September 17, there were 10 “traditional news accounts” and remained just as low for the next eight days. (Conversely, the first day of Tea Party protests, April 15, 2009, there were 769 media hits, or mentions.) The first big burst in coverage was when NYPD used pepper spray for the first time. This is where the media narrative begins.

These early reports were quick to deride the protesters and their ideas as nothingmore than hippy drivel. When, on October 1, protesters shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and the NYPD arrested many, including a Times freelancer, mentions of the movement skyrocketed and media’s questions of the movement went something like this: who are they? What do they want? What do they stand for? Are they serious?

However, as the days turned into weeks, and the movement spread from Manhattan to other parts of the nation the media has settled down and have become a bit more intellectually honest in their reporting. We’re watching the media change the narrative, as many of their own are being arrested and more importantly, blocked from covering protests. Nor Hell a fury like a reporter scorned

The media often creates the narrative through their reporting; the descriptors they use, the frequency of these words and pieces, all shape how the audience perceives the story. As the Occupy movement spreads across the nation and local and national media pick up on these protests, a shift will occur. In favor or against will be determined by how the press frames these stories. Will we see police brutality on protesters or will we see inarticulate protesters interviewed as spokespeople of a movement?

Police Brutality
As mentioned earlier, this week saw a rise in intensity of the ‘police brutality’ narrative. Police departments in New York City, Oakland, Portland, Ore., and at UC Davis, through their actions of apparently random and particularly vicious acts of reprobation, have created (or, sustained, depending who you speak to) the image of the protesters as defenseless voices participating in non-violent actions. When our nation’s top diplomat espouses words of warning to despots around the world about allowing their citizens to gather peacefully and exchange ideas, but law enforcers in the United States seem to find them inconvenient at best, meaningless at worst, the ‘police state’ narrative only strengthens.

The images from Oakland – those of protesters shot point-blank in the face with rubber bullets, those of smoke-filled streets, the images from New York – those of protesters bending over in agony from being sprayed in the face with pepper spray, those of thousands of people in the nation’s densest city walking up Broadway – do more to inspire empathy from people than demands of inequity.

Couple these images with stats of economic disparity, as well as language from ordinary people who have lost everything, then have them spread from platform to platform, from device to device, and watch how angry people can get. The whole world has the ability to watch. Then think about how, after coming home from work or school, people sit around the dinner table talking about what they saw online: “Hey, did you see what happened in San Francisco today?” much in the same way people sat at the dinner table a generation ago and watched the mass medium of the day, television, as their brothers, fathers, neighbors come home from Vietnam in body bags. Images matter. They tell a story.

The protest movement has migrated to scores of U.S. cities, and besides the general debate within the group (how do we define ourselves? Where do we see this going? Etc), the underlying current is not the what, i.e. the message, but the how. With the use of social tools to exponentially deliver both the protester’s messages and aggressive response from police and politicians, Occupy Wall Street is creating a narrative that is relatable: we are pursuing our First Amendment rights and look what the government is doing. They’re shooting at us, arresting us for peacefully assembling. This narrative is a strong one.

The narratives of Occupy Wall Street are at an inflection point, where the story intertwines with the outcry of the public, the vitriol against business leaders and the repudiation of our elected officials. Make the story about bad business and bad politics, where even if you like your representative, admit they have failed you. With mayors across the nation taking action to rid their cities of protests, the Occupy movement can now focus its attention on affecting real change by shifting the narrative to those in office.

Both were ousted by a board of trustees fed up with the damage being done to the university’s reputation by a child sex-abuse scandal involving Paterno’s one-time heir apparent.

What is also disturbing, however, is how the press operated during these two press conferences. Journalists pride themselves on their objectivity, or at least the ability to put their emotions and philosophies in check when reporting. But the display from the press corps at both of these conferences is a slap in the face to the industry, and more importantly to the victims of the sexual assaults.

At the very end of the Herman Cain press conference, reporters did something that should raise people’s eyebrows: they clapped (at the 12:28 mark).

Applauding Herman Cain, especially in circumstances like this, make one wonder how a press corps can accurately report on news of the day. By clapping for a candidate – no matter at what level of politics – signifies approval of what he or she just said. We see tech reporters frequently applaud the CEOs they cover (watch a Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg keynote at a conference and you’ll see media clapping along with the other attendees) and it makes people question the motive of the reporter: do they have stock in the company they are covering? You will not see a White House Press Correspondent applaud the president or press secretary after a speech. The would get fired on the spot. So why did the press applaud at Cain’s conference?

In the sporting world, at least at the professional level, the notion of objectivity is embedded into the reporter. They don’t clap or cheer an athlete or a team…in public. I’m sure sports reporters have their favorite teams, but their job is cover their beat, not be a fan. At last night’s Penn State press conference, something weird was going on from the media.
From SB Nation:

As I mentioned in my last post, a number of these journalists sound downright agitated – like angry students, not like journalists. It’s incredible, really. Many are asking pointed, and obviously-angry, questions, about Joe Paterno’s legacy with Penn State and about, for example, whether the Board of Trustees has been “gunning” for him for years – as if anyone who isn’t connected to Penn State would possibly see these events that way. Pointed questions are fine, clearly, but this press conference is heading into the realm of the bizarre, as if Surma were answering questions from season-ticket holders rather than journalists.

We see two different worlds – politics and sports – enmeshed in sexual assault allegations and a press corps that seems to be crossing lines from professional journalists to everyday consumer. Are the applause and misguided questions effects of a changing media landscape where objectivity doesn’t sell papers or increase pageviews? Does this behavior from the media reflect a more confused and vitriolic society? Whatever the answers are, if there are any, it doesn’t excuse reporters for not being professional.

David Crosby and Graham Nash at Zuccotti Park - November 8, 2011

David Crosby and Graham Nash appeared and performed in Zuccotti Park this afternoon to a couple hundred people. Without amplification – both for instruments and vocals – it was difficult to hear them, but they were audible enough to hear their melodious harmonies (even though they were missing the third of their triumvirate). As they were playing songs of protest, it was hard not to imagine it was 1968 where groups of longhairs would sit cross-legged, smoking a joint and passionately discussing the evils of war, of government, of society; how they were the new generation, the generation that would change the world for the better.

While waiting for the aged rockers to make their way to the make-shift stage, beside a bed of flowers just a bit west of dead-center in the park, I spoke with Karen, a woman who is a member of that counter-cultural generation (“we were occupying our universities!“), about some of the differences between the late ’60s/early ’70s and today and highlighted the focal point of the rebellious ire of that era: the military.

“People were constricted,” she said. “And everyone had to go. Those variations in culture are hard to understand.” When Americans watched their fellow Americans – brothers, husbands, friends, sons; those who did not sign up for the Southeast Asian jungles – come home in body bags night after night while sitting around the dinner table, anger set in. And with that anger, mixed with the energy of the concurrent Civil Rights movement, the American culture – particularly music – altered the landscape. Thousands descended upon Haight-Ashbury; hundreds of thousands trekked up to Saugerties. Musicians were given a power unlike any they had before. They were influential and infallible. They led a generation. They were rock-stars.

A couple of weeks ago, two musicians from an even earlier generation participated in an Occupy Wall Street march, as if to say to us young folk, “This is how you protest.” Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie, voices of many, are the progenitors to Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Bono, Bruce. But where are these voices today? My generation, a generation marked by bubbles and terrorism, commercialism and mass production, prescription drugs and bike helmets, doesn’t have a voice. What artists do we look to to push us, to calm us, to inspire us, to lead us? All the musicians we ask to do this – think of the MSG 9/11 concert – are those very rockers our parents grew up with.

Of course, there are more genres of music today and more money to be made. A fragmented audience and an artist who may not want to trade his or her potential earnings in advertising for a political movement may play a part to the lack of voice for my generation. A superstar like Jay-Z can walk through Zuccotti Park and even wear a shirt supporting OWS, or Puff Daddy can get send out a message: Vote or Die (from the ’04 general election), but can they represent and speak to a generation? But even they’re older – Jay Z is 42 and Kanye is 34. For comparison, John Lennon was assassinated at 40 and Dylan wrote “The Times They Are A-Changin’” when he was 23.

Maybe it’s not the artists themselves who don’t have a voice, but the flock, instead. Voter turnout among 18-30 year olds is anemic. In the 2010 midterm elections, only 20% of eligible voters went to the polls. Maybe my generation has become apathetic. We grew up in relative peace and strong economic cycles. We were coddled by the very generation who hoped they died before they got old. My generation had no cause. Until now.

While no one can accurately predict how OWS will turn out, I hope we can turn some of this energy into creating not only lasting, but moving music, where 40 years from now, we pop on some artist from 2012 that has taken on the voice of a generation. My generation.

Maybe I’m grasping here, but over the past 30 years, as we’ve seen the inequity between haves and the have-nots (or, in today’s parlance, the 1% vs the 99%) rise, it’s quite amazing how the fans, those who ultimately pay the salaries of the rich (the athletes) and the uber-wealthy (the owners) remain loyal to these non-essential industries. Perhaps there’s a story in here for an economist to see if there’s some type of connection between the rise of sports (from popularity to revenue) from the late 1970s on to to the rise in inequity.

Of course, there’s a deep connection between fan and sport. Love for a player and team connect generations, as parents and children can bond over a hot dog at baseball game or at tailgating parties at football games. But what happens when these rituals get suspended? Baseball suffered through low ratings and low ticket sales after the 1994 strike, only to pick up after the steroid-tainted home run derby season of 1998. The NHL hasn’t bounced back from its 2004-2005 season loss.

In these dark economic times, there’s somewhat of a dialectical tension occurring for fans: on one hand, sport is an escape from the troubled news of the day; on the other, it’s become cost-prohibitive for many to actually go to a sporting event. Yes, we can watch on TV or the Web or listen on radio, but there’s nothing like walking through a tunnel at your favorite stadium and seeing/smelling the greenest grass or polished hardwood. And when we see the millionaire athletes and billionaire owners squabble over economics (no matter if you agree with the players or the league) while the rest of the nation is hurting, it becomes a tough pill to swallow.

Sports are intertwined with our nation and our culture. The actors upon this great stage are heros to kids, youthful remembrances for adults. And when the producers of the play tinker with the actors, the audience gets unnerved and responds by keeping their wallet in their pants.

No matter how the NBA lockout ends, will fans come back? Yes. But it might take longer than the owners and players realize.

*years indicate work stoppages that affected seasons, as opposed to work stoppages during the season where games were eventually made up, like the 1985 MLB strike.

Photo Credit: http://www.fotopedia.com/items/flickr-1428890975

Yesterday was the Jewish Holy Day Yom Kippur (I always have a hard time calling it a holiday, as in today’s parlance, holiday implies fun, vacation, day off from work; and Yom Kippur is the antithesis of fun), a day where we step into Shul carrying the weight of a year’s worth of sin and exit, upon the Shofar Blast, with a clean slate, atoned for our wrong doings and hopefully inscribed in the Book of Life.

As with other religions, there are symbolic interactions of faith during the holiest of days, and the most well-known of Yom Kippur is the fast.

As stated in Leviticus 23:27 – 23:32

23:27 Also on the tenth [day] of this seventh month [there shall be] a Yom Kippur: it shall be a Mikra Kodesh unto you; and ye shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by eish (fire) unto YHWH (יהוה).

23:28 And ye shall do no melekhet (work) in that same day: for it [is] a Yom Kippur, to make an atonement for you before YHWH (יהוה) Eloheichem.

23:29 For whatsoever soul [it be] that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from among his people.

23:30 And whatsoever soul [it be] that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among His people.

23:31 Ye shall do no kol (manner) melekhet (work): [it shall be] a chukkat (statute) olam (forever) throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

23:32 It [shall be] unto you a Shabbat of rest, and ye shall afflict your nefashot (souls): in the ninth [day] of the month at erev, from erev unto erev, shall ye celebrate your Shabbat.

We fast on Yom Kippur, it is said, because we (humans) are like Angels to God and since Angels don’t eat or drink, well, neither should we on this day. But mainly we fast because God told us to and I guess you really don’t want to piss off God. We are meant to afflict our souls, and it is during this time we are supposed to be introspective, to think about sincerely apologizing for our misdeeds over the past year. By doing this, we wipe the slate clean.

Jews fast out of choice on Yom Kippur. One day a year (while there are several fasting periods throughout the Jewish year, Yom Kippur is the one where most Jews participate), we purposefully go without food and we bitch and moan that we cannot eat (in this technological era,  “Yom Kippur” was a trending topic on Twitter, with many tweets about how we can’t eat). But it’s a choice. And for most of us, we spend the time either napping or in Shul, or both, so it’s not like we’re being active.

There are millions around the world who fast every day, not out of choice, but out of circumstance. They were unfortunate to be born in a part of the world – and many, suprisingly, in these United States – where there is seemingly no difference between 2010 CE and 2010 BCE, where there is no running water, where people live on rations.

With modern advancements in technology, food engineering and distribution the sad fact that 1 in 7people on this Earth go hungry every day is something that doesn’t make sense. According to the UN’s World Food Program,

More than one billion people are undernourished worldwide — 1.02 billion people go hungry every day.

• Almost all of the world’s undernourished live in developing countries. In Asia and the Pacific, an estimated 642 million people are suffering from chronic hunger; in Sub-Saharan Africa 265 million; in Latin America and the Caribbean 53 million; in the Near East and North Africa 42 million; and in developed countries 15 million in total.
• One in seven people (adults and children) go to bed hungry each night.

Some stats about the U.S from the USDA (via FeedingAmerica.org):

• In 2009, 50.2 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 33 million adults and 17.2 million children
• In 2009, 14.7 percent of households (17.4 million households) were food insecure.
• In 2009, 5.7 percent of households (6.8 million households) experienced very low food security.
• In 2009, households with children reported food insecurity at almost double the rate for those without children, 21.3 percent compared to 11.4 percent.
• In 2009, households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children (21.3 percent), especially households with children headed by single women (36.6 percent) or single men (27.8 percent), Black non-Hispanic households (24.9 percent) and Hispanic households (26.9 percent).
• In 2009, 7.8 percent of seniors living alone (884,000 households) were food insecure.
• In 2010, 16.4 million or approximately 22 percent of children in the U.S. lived in poverty.

These numbers are alarming to anyone, but when I think of the one day a year I forgo food on purpose, I feel extremely fortunate to have been born where I was born.

So how can we help? There are many food banks around the nation. A good start to finding where there’s one in your area is FeedingAmerica.org. Additionally, many houses of worship can help point you in a direction to help. The temple I grew up in, Temple Rodeph Torah, donates to Mazon.

With the Occupy Wall Street movement spreading across the nation, we cannot ignore that for many parts of the world, the United States is the 1%. We can all do a little part in helping those who go to bed hungry every night.

As we walked around the outskirts of the encampment, we had an idea: let’s talk to one of the food carts that seem to be a permanent fixture. When I went the first time, I noticed “There’s somewhat of a Shakedown Street with Halal carts, fresh fruit stands, smoothie hut and a bread stand. Oh, and a typical New York souvenir stand.” Here’s the story of one of the vendors.

Abdul Mubarek has been operating his Halal stand in Zuccotti Park for the past six years and while he supports the Occupy Wall Street protests, his business has been suffering losses. As the protesters have gathered in the park for the past three weeks, one would think his truck would appeal to the hungry crowd.

Instead, he says, they are eating the food that has been donated to the cause. He says they’re getting everything from water to pizzas from donations.

“Business is slow,” he told me. “From $300, $500 to $80. They don’t buy from here.”

Mubarek said that before September 17^th, when the protesters first showed up at Zuccotti Park, business was good. But now, because of the growing movement – which has led to a decrease of tourists – business has turned south. Nonetheless, he still roots for the protesters.

“This (sic) guys lose jobs; lose houses, that’s why they protest.,” he said. “But I support them because they’re right. The rich people, they blame them. They lie to them. Obama is (sic) beautiful liar. It’s good for a woman but not for citizenship.”

When asked if he sees any parallels between these protests and of those from Egypt, his home country, he said yes.

“They got this idea from my country. From Egypt. They got it from Tahrir Square.”

Mubarek commutes every day from across the river in Jersey City, and while he can move his cart, he chooses to stay.

Click here to listen to the interview Dan and I conducted.

Click here for a Flickr set of images from today.