Like I said, it makes me feel like a complete asshole. We have a HUGE Haitian population here. Most of our forms have English, Spanish and Creole on them. Trust me, I know most of Haiti lives in, and below, poverty.
It isn’t even just Haiti that pisses me off. I have nothing against Haiti. I get my feathers ruffled about this every time something happens somewhere else in the world and it becomes the “Raison D’Etre” for all of five minutes before it’s forgotten. Why not focus that attention inwards and heal ourselves before we pretend like we can heal the world? A new mother cannot take care of her infant if she isn’t well herself. Same concept here.
Sure, after hurricane Andrew, Wilma, and those are the only two I can think of in my lifetime, we focused inward… for five minutes. Then it was forgotten. How much of NoLa still needs to be rebuilt? How much of SoFl needs to be rebuilt? How much of everyplace in between that didn’t get major press coverage? But no, their five minutes is up, move on to a new cause now.
When I was a kid, I had to eat all my food because some kid in China was going hungry. Then it was some kid in Africa who broke our hearts with a swollen and distended belly. Is it some kid in Haiti now? Why didn’t we care *before* the earthquake hit? Why didn’t feed our own stateside hungry children before we worried about everyone else? If 20 cents a day can feed a child every day for a month in India, why can’t it feed one here too?
So like I said, I’ll send in my donation, because that’s what you do, but it will be tangible goods. I try not to donate money because so much of it gets wrapped up in overhead anyway. Hopefully my food has a better chance of making it.
