Haiti – Answering the Call

Jason Thibeault

Written by Jodi

To all the people out there saying ‘I didn’t care before, why should I care now?’ …

Fuck You.

There has been a call put out for help and support and I see nothing wrong with answering that call. You’re right that half the people donating probably never even knew Haiti existed, let alone knew of the kinds of living conditions that are ‘normal’ there. And you’re also right that even more people who are donating are probably doing so to be ‘fashionable’, jumping on the bandwagon because everyone else is. But you know what? Who cares?? The point is that the aid gets to Haiti.

And yes, OF COURSE we should have all been paying attention before this all happened. We should all be paying attention to every country that has poor living conditions and trying to help them all in whatever way we can. We should we should we should. But we didn’t. We don’t. It sucks, it’s stupid, and we should really try harder to care and give aid on a regular basis instead of only when there is a massive disaster. But there’s nothing we can do to change what happened now, so why not give? Really, why the fuck not?

If everyone, everywhere that didn’t care about Haiti before, or didn’t know they existed held back and said ‘Well sorry, I don’t really feel morally correct because I should have been helping you before this all happened.’ they wouldn’t be getting ANY relief aid right now. If there was a massive, wide scale natural disaster on YOUR doorstep, and your government told you there wasn’t enough resources to go around would you not appreciate the help of other countries? I really don’t think it would matter to you at that point that they were oblivious to your existence before, would it?

So just give something already. For instance, at Mercy Corps or Doctors Without Borders.

If you don’t want to think about it, if you want to just stop watching, stop reading and go back to your normal life fine. No one is going to think badly of you, but quit trying to make the rest of us feel bad about giving to a disaster relief fund.

</end rant>

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Haiti – Answering the Call

About the author

Hi! I'm a tech guy, skeptic, feminist, gamer and atheist, and love OSS and science of all stripes. I enjoy a good bit of whargarbl now and again, and will occasionally even seek it out. I am also apparently responsible for the death of common sense on the internet. My bad.

I have opinions. So do you. You want to share them with me. I would like to do likewise. Please don't expect a platform for proselytizing that will go unchecked and unchallenged, though. Contact me via the clicky thingies under my banner.

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2 thoughts on “Haiti – Answering the Call”

  2. DuWayne
    2

    There are people claiming it is somehow wrong to give to disaster relief? Fucking seriously? What the fuck is wrong with people?

    I would love to be able to help all the time, give money all the time, to every fucking country in the world with problems – but I can’t. What I can do, is scrape up a little something when there is a disaster of massive proportions.

    And what the fuck is anyone talking about not caring before? Give money to just the two organizations you listed and you are giving something to help people in countries you have never heard of before. Give money to any of hundreds, if not thousands of organizations, and you are helping people in these sorts of places. Hell, spend your consumer dollars at particular stores or on particular products and you are helping these folks.

    Some people are too fucking stupid to live.

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