Posts Tagged ‘charity’

It has been a while since I went all naggy on you readers. I know times are tough—Seattle is looking at a strike among the Teamsters who drive he garbage trucks. And 1600 applications were received when the truck company asked for scabs! That is a lot in a town with a lot of feeling for labor unions!

So, no, I don’t live under a rock and I know times are hard. But think how very hard it is then for military families who are dealing with travel to military medical centers to visit wounded and shattered military members? Extra expenses while trying to hold together normal life, children, and adjust to terrible changes and life threatening injuries from the war? This is why Fisher House is so important: They use at least 90 to 95 cents of every dollar you give to provide a home away from home for such families.

That is only part of what they do, and the need grows daily as the wars continue. I give Fisher House a $50 check every other month; I alternate between them and The Remote Area Medical Foundation. When I first put the banner-widget up here on the blog, I asked readers to match my donations. I’ve had very few takers; but I am asking again! Get together teams, maybe? Five of you give $10 each…only $5 per month to help military members and families.

Please. On Easter Sunday, this is your pagan blogger on her knees begging. Match me, catch me, make me sweat at being able to keep up with YOU! Click on the Fisher House block just to the right of this nag-post; it will carry you away to do a good thing.

I am tired of certain emails.  And certain snail mails, and phone calls.  You all know the ones, the ones beginning with “Thank you for your long and generous support, but now…”

Please.  I gave your organization $20 five years ago.  Go away,now. Buh-bye.

I really AM a big proponent of putting one’s money where one’s mouth is; we DO budget a painful amount each month to the causes that matter to us.  But there are limits to a single income family with a lot of debt and responsibility and no savings, no investments (not a bad thing just now), and no way of increasing the intake of cash.

So, I am tired of emails asking for political contributions to candidates in states across the nation from me, people I have never even heard of, or heard speak.  I am so going with the “act locally” command here.  I contribute to Obama when I can, but this month, I have to pay for brake jobs on our two vehicles…and before winter hits.  But a host of female candidates in places on the (to my Western sensibilities) wrong side of the Mississippi River?  Don’t you think it is sexist of you fund-raisers to consider I should give just because they are women?  Palin is female, too, and I wouldn’t piss down her throat if her heart was on fire.  Fuck off.  Motivate voters closer to home.

And NARAL called, even though they fill my roadside rural mailbox weekly.  When I told them I don’t like phone calls, they apologetically said they weren’t in charge of removing names from the list.  Really?  Way to piss off someone who sends what she can when she can, folks.  Are all fund-raisers this stupid?  You been taking lessons from Wall Street or something?

I am not only hitting cash prostration and cause exhaustion, but a getting-angry level of “just who do you think I am, Bill Gates’ second cousin or someone?”   E-fucking-nough.

My personal year ‘ends’ at the end of this month.  It is a bit like the fiscal year of the federal government; I will now select the charities that WILL be on my monthly ’send a check’ list.  NARAL and a dozen political action committees are not on that list.  And being stupid, badgering, annoying fools is one reason why.  Other folks, like the Environmental Defense Fund are on the list on my pledge….but only for one year.  They pissed me off with “bill tactics” that are scrungy.  They send the contribution form, dated “due” the month BEFORE I even made my pledge.  Big mistake.

Guilt tripping the well-intentioned is a bad move.  So, Fisher House, IAVA, IVAW, RAM, Habitat, and Heifer Project will continue as our mainstays of financial action to change our world.  You other ghoul-acting pains in my ass can take a hike.   And yes, kiss my duteous, charitable ass!

Ok, I’m not a rich woman by American standards.  We barely make old fashioned middle class….we have no savings, no stocks & bonds, no real estate save the home we live in and it isn’t paid off.  We are pretty average.  We are not Christian, yet I believe whole-heartedly in charity.  I believe if you are blessed with a good job and a secure bed and sufficient food, it is just common sense that you should help those things be part of other people’s lives, too.  So each month, I write checks to several charities that I usually select at the end of each October.

October or early November is when my “ritual” year ends, so I plan the next years financial efforts then, too.  I give money to Habitat International, to Heifer International, to the Iraq Veterans Against the Way, to Fisher House, and now to Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America, too.  I also contribute to Amnesty International, ACLU, and the Environmental Defense Fund.

I get phone calls every day; and I admit I am quite snappish with some of them, especially the falsely hearty same-old-joke hired fund raisers who want to raise money for police and firemen’s widows and other assorted stuff like that.  It isn’t that I am anti-widow, it is that when I checked these charities out I found the fundraising company gets about 80% of the money.  But not every charity is a con game.  Many are quite legitimate and doing necessary work, providing various sorts of safety nets as the government finds it can’t even repair bridges.  So, I am often quite sorry to tell the phone crews “I am sorry, my charities are selected for the year, I cannot afford more.”

But when does it end?  Food banks need more money and food now, and more and more families end up on the streets and there are not enough shelters.  It is going to get worse.   I quit working my part time job out of injury, but then didn’t go back when I was better—because my ‘fill-in’ was a woman who cleans house for a living.  I am pretty sure she needs the money from MY former job, because with all the money crunch, fewer folks hire house-keepers.

To give more to the charities that solicit daily, I would have to find some horrible job at a fast food place, because my budget is stretched to it’s limit.  But other people need that job, don’t they?  My son is employed now, thank all the Gods, so we don’t have to support him completely and my step-mother no longer needs my financial aid since she has a financially secure boyfriend who insists on caring for her.  My pet population of rescued animals is down to a manageable number, so that money goes into the Environmental Defense fund now.

I know a lot of folks who don’t believe in giving to ANY charity.  Sure, sometimes big disasters like the tsunami shake the checkbook loose for the Red Cross, but there is no regular thought of it.  And many are quite resentful about churches that demand a tithe of 5 to 10%.  Is that really so bad, though?  Sure, perhaps you don’t care for how a church might allot your money, but is it so bad to think of a percentage of your income as giving to others in dire need.

You see, it isn’t just the big newsworthy tsunami out there…..there are big emergencies in smaller lives EVERY day.  I don’t fool myself that I can fix it all, and this isn’t a Lady Bountiful “because I can” will to power Neitzchean thing either.  It is, although I am not Christian, truly a “there but for the grace of others, go I” thing.  For all I know, the only reason my life is relatively secure (yes, yes, a mere three months from disaster and the streets), is so I CAN help someone else?

My husband accuses me of having “Franciscan moments” and maybe he is right to so tease me.  I don’t own a brown woolen robe…..I can’t afford one.  Consider just one charity, just one small check a month.  You see, charities don’t really get most of their money from the rich—it is the middle class and below that usually cares enough to give.  It is many small amounts that fill those coffers of hope!

So, on my “Franciscan” pagan knees again, I am asking you—-pick just one thing you care about, not even necessarily from my list, although I think all of my causes are excellent.  If the environment speaks to you, cries in pain—consider the Environmental Protection folks, or Sierra Club; if the suffering of your fellow man haunts you, Doctors Without Borders or Heifer International work tirelessly to succor that need.   If the plight of returning veterans makes you clench your jaw when you see them on street corners, consider Fisher House or IAVA, please.  Just think of writing ONE check a month for $15, please?  That is less than a family of four spends going to a fast food joint for lunch.  That is less than the price of two movie tickets.

Compassion is more than an emotion…..it is an action.

So, the latest rumble on the American economy is that Bush wants “every American who gets a paycheck” to get about $300.  Wooooohooo, hold me back!

Really, that is the saving grace?  The “Hail Mary” of American economic life is $300?  Not to be dismissive, ’cause, my goodness, that once filled the cupboards here with a month’s groceries.  Not now, tho’ we have fewer mouths; cause prices are UP, UP, UP.  But still, that is the best they can imagine?  Give everyone a handful of $20 bills and hope they go shopping?  Hmm…and then put more money BACK into the hands of the corporate rogues that George has Sunday tea with?  The corporate guys who have trashed the economy by exporting jobs to make more money for themselves?  The corporate weenies who have crushed unions, and answer to stockholders instead of seeing that their employees have good jobs or health care?  Those guys?  That is where we are supposed to see that measly three hundred bucks go?

I’ve got a lot of nothing for that.  They don’t want you to save it, or pay a bill, ladies and gents.  They want you to go SHOPPING.  Because their little “we fucked you all over so much that we don’t have any fresh ‘fuckees’ left” world is trembling.

Not doing it.  I have plenty of bills to pay, but here are some other ideas that entered my mind as I tossed and turned last night.

How ’bout some real economic stimuli—like giving the money to the Presidential candidate of your non-GOP choice?  Could you imagine the shit storm if even 30% of Americans gave the money to Edwards or Clinton?  A thing of beauty to contemplate—the horror of it on Bush and his buddies; like a bad dream at mid-day.

Or we could try mending lives broken on the wheel of American life.  What about charity?  Like Habitat for Humanity or Fisher House.  Everyone knows the first builds houses in America and elsewhere  for those folks the government cares less about.  And Fisher House spends 97 cents of every dollar helping vets of the war and their families through the trauma and difficulty of long hospitalizations, and they have scholarships for the children, too.

Or, since America is becoming so hated abroad, perhaps that $300 could buy back a bit of love?  There is the Fistula Foundation that pays for life-changing surgery for African women suffering the result of sexual trauma or too many births and the resultant damage.  These women are abandoned by husbands, and barely leave their homes because of shame, pain, and fear.  Or you could almost buy a water buffalo through Heifer International and give an entire village the power to plow, irrigate, and take charge of THEIR economic lives.   Doctors Without Borders could do a lot of things with a mere $300, too.

So, yes, if the cupboard is bare when the check gets there, fill it.  But please, please, please?   Don’t go buy yourself a toy while Rome burns, ok?  Don’t be the frivolous ‘bought off with shopping circus’ plebeians your  “masters” in Washington D. C. think you are, alright?  Save the money or spend it in a way that betters yourself AND your world.  If it sends a message back to the asshats in D.C. about what you think of their management technique, so much the better.