Politics & Power Quote by Lesley Boone

America’s favorite self-myth is abundance: the skyscraper, the stock ticker, the packed supermarket aisle. Boone punctures that glossy image with a blunt moral mismatch - “power and wealth” set against “millions of children who go hungry.” The line works because it frames hunger not as a niche policy failure but as a national character flaw, a crack in the brand. It’s an accusation delivered in plain language, the kind that doesn’t let you hide behind spreadsheets.

Her move from “nation” to “individuals” is doing quiet but heavy lifting. It refuses the convenient dodge that social problems belong to lawmakers alone, while also hinting at the opposite dodge - that charity can replace structural change. Boone threads the needle by calling for involvement rather than mere giving. “Get involved” suggests time, attention, political pressure, community work: an ongoing posture, not a one-off donation that buys absolution.

The street-level instruction - “next time you pass someone… don’t turn away” - is the quote’s emotional engine. It shifts hunger from an abstract statistic to a moment of eye contact. The subtext is about discomfort: the practiced urban skill of looking through people. “Remember how lucky you are” leans on gratitude, but it also carries a sting of complicity. Luck isn’t virtue; it’s contingency. If your comfort is partly accident, then ignoring need starts to look less like neutrality and more like choice.

Coming from an actress, the appeal is cultural as much as political: a plea to treat visibility as responsibility, to stop outsourcing empathy to the news cycle.