Still striking at hunger

First, that voice, worn to coarse gravel by two packs a day. Next, the grip. Pushing 83, Tiernan still says hello by grabbing your shoulder and drawing you to her with such force that you wonder if you will ever be released and, if so, whether blood will ever reach your hands again.

To meet her is to understand how Tiernan has rallied so many to her causes, giving her as much influence over Boston as a John Hynes or a Kevin White. Those mayors built the city we see. Tiernan built its heart.

She started Rosie's Place - the first women's shelter in the country - in 1974, a time when everybody thought of homeless people as drunk men lying in gutters. The Greater Boston Food Bank, whose huge new warehouse just went up in Newmarket, that's Tiernan's too. She helped start the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, Health Care for the Homeless, and the Boston Women's Fund, which funnels grants to groups that help women and families.

These days, she spends most of her week at the Old South Church, where she and her two longtime partners, Fran Froehlich and Georgia Mattison - "People make the mistake of hanging this only on me, cause I'm the mouth," Tiernan said - run an outfit called the Poor People's United Fund, fielding calls from families who have no idea where their next meals are coming from.

The durability of these institutions is a testament to Tiernan's influence - and a reminder that we haven't even come close to solving the problems she has railed against all these years. The Greater Boston Food Bank feeds 83,000 people a year and they're planning on feeding many more. That giant white building you can see from the Southeast Expressway is a 117,000-square-foot monument to the intransigence of hunger in the richest nation in the world.

Which is why Tiernan was standing in front of the altar at the Old South Church on Monday, the pockets of her trademark safari jacket stuffed with notes. Tiernan is angry that after all her years of work, people are still hungry. She's angry that the privately funded charities she and her friends started have saved the government millions of dollars over the years, but that this year, legislators desperate to save money threw poor women and families under the bus.

"I'm here to beg the poor for forgiveness for what has been done in my name," she said.

A decade ago she would have been in those legislators' faces. In 1998 she and others were arrested after a sit-in in then-Governor Bill Weld's office to protest stricter welfare rules. These days, she mostly gives speeches and lobbies politicians by phone.

And this week, she is fasting to draw attention to her causes. She has done this before. One time, she got shingles from it. This year, Froehlich insisted Tiernan go only 72 hours, that she drink protein shakes, and that she not spend whole days in the church praying and speaking.

Even though the economy is in shambles and more people than ever need the food and shelter and other services Tiernan has provided, the church has not exactly been packed with supporters. On Monday afternoon, there were about 20 people scattered in the pews.

Maybe people are too busy trying to make it through the day to stop by. Maybe Tiernan's firebrand activism isn't fashionable anymore. Maybe people are just waiting till this afternoon to go and thank a living legend for so much of what makes this city great.

Whether they come or not, Tiernan will be there, between noon and 6:30.

"We're prisoners of hope," she said. "You get tired, but you can't stop."

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.