For the Love of Humanity: Philanthropy & Privilege (Jake Goodman | Sh'ma blog)

[struggle4progress]

... I think it is appropriate to discuss how people with economic privilege can help those who are not so privileged to engage in their own type of philanthropy, which they are doing with their feet on the street.

The first way, of course, is to join them. All people who share a love of humanity should actually make the effort to disrupt the routine of their own lives and take the time to put their feet on the street. It’s a shanda—a shanda!—that, so often, the people who can actually afford to show up choose not to. So many different movements, causes and protests suffer solely from what I call the Tinker Bell Syndrome: they cannot exist unless you believe in them, and the media/general public will not know you believe in them unless you actually show up and make the crowd look larger. Truly, sometimes all you have to do is show up.

Second, people with economic privilege can find out what the needs are of the people who are actually philanthropizing with their feet, and do their best to meet those specific needs – to enable them to actually do the work. For example, I know that the people at Occupy Wall Street need the following: sleeping bags; sweat shirts; sweat pants; connections to local food businesses who will accept credit cards. You can find out more by clicking here. It’s not right that people have to go broke and get sick to fight for rights.

People who love humanity should use their personal resources to to financially enable people without economic privilege to engage in work that transforms some part of their (i.e., the philanthropists’) ethical ideal into tangible reality ...

http://www.shma.com/2011/10/shma-blog-for-the-love-of-humanity-philanthropy-privilege/