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| Why We Don’t Give | |
 by Laurel Snyder, November 6, 2007
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We—the children of the boomers, the privileged progressives—have a giving problem, which is that we don’t do it. Instead, we cloak ourselves in the trappings of charity. We carve out lives that appear to be socially just, full of free range chicken and Birkenstocks. We look good, even if we don’t do-good.
Revolution: Never looked so good.Hell, we ask for money, either as non-profiteers, or as individuals with pet projects. Each year, I get a handful of e-mails from friends requesting “charitable donations.” They want to take their band on the road, or they want to fly to Nepal to read bedtime stories to orphans, and they’re asking me to fund the trip. They have feral cats to foster, and co-operative gardens to maintain, and that’s great, but it does little to repair the world. Sure it’s nice to have live music in the park, but that that just makes our lives nicer, decorates our world.
Please understand, I’m in no position to judge, because I’m worst of all. Last year, while working for a Jewish charity I “rescued” Kareem, a stray pit bull living down the street from me. Then I spent SEVEN THOUSAND dollars to kill her slowly, with a fancy veterinary specialist, on credit, and then solicited Jewish donors to fund my hopeless project. And it worked. Which is insane.
I cared enough to nurse the damn dog, just not enough to put the bill on my own credit card, or take a second job to pay the bill.
SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS TO KILL A DAMN DOG!!! I wasn’t being a do-gooder, I was sucking the system, siphoning off money that could have been going to AIDS research or literacy. I got so caught up in what looked like charity that I lost all reason, not to mention my math skills.
I realize now that for years I’ve made the mistake of mixing up my progressive lifestyle for true charity, and I think maybe you have too.
Forget dogs: This mutt doesn't need your money.
Ask yourself: Do you feel better about yourself when you shop at Whole Paycheck, or when you ride your bike to work? Do you imagine the world thinks you “look” progressive?
And how do you judge the world? Let’s say you spot a thirty-ish woman in a vintage sundress, carrying a cloth grocery bag to the farmers market while sipping a soy chai, and walking beside her is a middle aged woman in a salmon colored Capri pants-and-sweatshirt ensemble that surely came from Wal-Mart. A Disney outfit. She’s drinking a Big Gulp.
How might you imagine they stack up to each other with regard to charity? I bet the Wal-Mart mom gives a big chunk of change to her church each year, which—among other things—supports a soup kitchen. And I bet she doesn’t have a ringer-T that says so either.
Keep in mind, it’s still good to ride your bike to work, but if it makes you feel like you’ve “done your bit” there’s a problem. If your hemp pants make you feel like you don’t need to send some money to Louisiana, you’ve gotten off the path.
For some, the solution seems to be “getting involved” but that doesn’t take the place of giving either. So if you’re working in the development office of an environmental organization, however cool that is—you should be donating to that same organization as well. Because when you’re getting paid to do “good work”, it isn’t really charity. That’s just the non-profit sector supporting you.
Look up to Grandma: She was fashionable and gave to charity.
Maybe we’re screwed up because we’re just plain bad with money, raised on credit cards and take-out, but there’s an illogic in place, because we think we’re progressive. We think we want to help. We’ve taken the Sesame Street aesthetics that our hippie parents fed us, and we’ve blended them with the greed of our own me decades, and the result is a lot of bumper stickers. We buy organic milk, and then get wasted on Cosmos, or we buy ethanol for our SUVs. The image of progressive living has a price tag., and so we don’t ever have enough to give to charity. Our appetites always exceed our resources, no matter how great our resources may be.
Face it. We just really like to buy stuff, and we live in a world designed to feed that passion. Despite our aesthetics of charity, despite our rocking of the vote—what does our generation value? TiVo. High speed Internet. Very pale beers with slices of citrus fruit floating in them. Whatever the billboards tell us to value, which means our discretionary spending is beyond belief.
Three years ago, a study based on more than 7000 households showed that just over one-half (53 %) of our generation made donations of $25 or more in 2000. Compare this to our post-Holocaust/Depression grandparents, 80% of whom gave at our age. Or our hippie parents, who donated at a rate of 75%. Bubbe and Zayde gave an average of $1,707. We give $532.
But Generation X, Y, and Z?
We refuse to share our good fortune. Despite the fact that a 30-year-old today (we’ll call him Mike) is 50% more likely to have a college degree than his dad (Steve), and despite the fact that Mike earns $5,000 more a year than Steve did 30 years ago (even adjusted for inflation), he isn’t giving any of it away. In fact, Mike probably doesn’t believe he can afford to give. Like many of us, he think he’ll have the money someday, talks about what he’ll do when that day comes, and then goes out for dinner. Like many of us, he thinks he’s “just getting by.”
Gen-x: Spending all of our money on cosmos.
But our generation has a strange concept of what it means to “get by.” We spend more on vacations than our grandparents ever dreamed of, and per trip expenditures have increased 66% over the past 5 years. While Steve spent a well-earned week in the Poconos, Mike flies off to Mali, and even if he has to slap it on the credit card, he feels totally entitled. In 1997, Generation X spent approximately $30 billion eating out, and we’re the highest consumers of fast food, beer, wine coolers (ugh!), and booze. When it comes to food, we lead the way with soda, chocolate, chips and beer, so then of course we spend a lot on gym memberships too.
So I’m making a resolution now, and I’m asking you to hold me to it.
I’m going to do better. In fact, I’m going to try to give away 7K next year, to make up for Kareem the dead dog. I’m going to research giving, and I’m going to stop eating out so fucking much. I’m going to try to figure out how the people who give make it work. That’s right, I’m admitting my ignorance and facing the music. I’m going to talk to my grandparents, and maybe a banker, or a rabbi, and I’ll get back to you when I have some answers.
In the meantime, what are you going to do?
* * *
Short quiz:
1.) Do you have bumper stickers or T shirts that advocate missions you haven’t actively contributed to in the last year?
2.) Do your organic purchases each week outnumber the quantity of organizations where you’ve volunteered?
3.) Have you traveled in a developing nation and then come home and bought items made in China?
4.) Is the amount of money you spend on alcohol each week more or less than the amount of money you spend of charitable causes?
5.) Do you belong to Working Assets? If so, how often do you actually make an additional donation when you pay your bill?
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zbird
we can definitely give more
I think people our age somehow don't like the notion that cash can be the most effective tool for social justice sometimes. We've been raised to reach for the volunteer-work, the internship, the educational mission, and somehow writing a check seems like a crass cop-out. In fact the truth is more likely the opposite. Lots of charities waste tons of money, but if you find a good one run by effective people who are getting results, they probably need your money a lot more than they need you.
As for your quiz, here are my answers. I'm not sure what they're supposed to mean:
1. Yes--how can I not? Bumper stickers come in the mail whether or not I ask for them.
2. Well, I don't go shopping every week but yes, my organic purchases this year outnumber the number of orgs I volunteer for. I like variety in food but prefer to focus on a few places where I can make a big difference when it comes to charity.
3. Yes, and Yes. And I'm not embarrassed by it one bit. Without even knowing it, Americans have done more to help poverty by buying cheap Asian goods over the past 3 decades than all the charities and government agencies combined have done throughout history.
4. Less
5. Not in working assets.
--Z
Adam Shprintzen
Great post, though there is
Great post, though there is this side of the angle...
(For once I am going to defend our generation that I normally see as being depressingly uninvolved and often selfish)
There is the question of precisely where the money is going to. Is it actually going to support a worthy cause, or to help pay the exhorbitant salary of Established Charity X's CEO? In more instances than not, are we just helping to self-perpetuate these organizations by paying for their operating costs? This is not to say that we shouldn't be living a tzedakah-driven lifestyle (even as a full-time student, I am lucky enough to be able to donate, though with a level of discernity)...I just wonder if the statistics about giving that you pointed towards are in some ways reflective of the realities of the big time non-profit world?
zbird
good point, Adam
I would also add a more mundane explanation: our generation tends to marry and settle down a lot later than our parents. That means we're less likely to own a home, which in turn means we're less likely to itemize our deductions. Therefore, we are probably less likely to be able to deduct charitable donations than our parents were at the same age.
--Z
Anonymous
hmmm
Adam, that makes a kind of sense. But nothing's to stop people from making some sandwiches and driving around handing them out. Or volunterring in the public schools. Or whatev...
Z, that makes a kind of sense too, but I'd like to think my grandparents would still have given without the deductions. Not to mention that we have far more disposable income then they ever did...
xoLaurel
Joey Kurtzman
Quiz answers
1.) No, I only have one bumper sticker (says "meat is murder" in Hebrew) and no activist-y shirts.
2.) I rarely purchase anything organic (or at least rarely make a point of doing so), so no.
3.) Oh gosh, yes. If I could contract directly with a periodically-monitored Chinese factory to supply all my personal goods, I would do it.
4.) No, not a big drinker and give as much as I can to charity.
5.) Not in working assets
Rebecca
Are we really that unusual?
Here I thought my husband and I were typical. We belong to a synagogue. $1200 per year. We give to NPR. $120 per year. Every grocery shopping trip, we donate $5 to the local food pantry (I bet your local grocery store has a similar system, look for the little cards up at the register), minimum of 52 trips to the grocery per year (who am I kidding, more like 104 minimum) so that's another $500 right there.
We give to Miseracordia, Lions Club, and Kiwanis. $25 per month to one of the above each month, so another $300.
The Susan G. Kolmen fund gets about $200 - $400 dollars from us each year because my mom does the 3 day walk. Whoever it is that does the Labor Day telethon gets a small donation because we have too many friends who also raise money in the community for it, and I can't help but give to the humane society whenever they have a dog out there that they are collecting with. I'm a sucker I guess.
We also give used clothing, computer equipment, and stuff to Amvets. I don't have the totals for last year handy, but it was about a bag a month.
Oh, and I'm 28 and he's 35.
Yes, we are "progressive", we shop at TJ's and drive a hybrid SUV. We also spend way too much at Starbucks. So how do we give so much away? We make it a priority. Our temple dues are a bill, just like the electric bill every month. We budget our charitable giving, and plan for it.
Tzedakah is more than putting your pocket change in the pushke box before lighting the candles on Friday.
Are we really that strange?
Oh, and before you ask, no, we aren't Orthodox. We're just two liberal, progressive Jews trying to do better.
It really isn't that hard.
stacy
holding charity organizations accountable
you and i have talked about this before. for all the people posting wondering how their donations are being spent by the charity they're looking at supporting, there's a great website that does all this work for you: http://www.charitynavigator.org
it breaks down how each charity spends their reported donations, and rates them on a scale whose terms i can understand and agree with.
Berel Wein
The recent spate of
In the Middle Ages it was common non-Jewish practice to periodically proclaim boycotts against Jewish commerce, work and professions. The Church in its heyday encouraged such boycotts as a means of encouraging Jews to convert to Christianity. No Jews were allowed to belong in the trade guilds and various forms of discrimination against Jews were instituted through legal and economic boycotts.
However, in many if not most cases, the boycotts were relatively short-lived and not very effective. The Catholic prince needed his Jewish physician and financier as much as the physician and financier needed the Catholic prince, so even though, in theory, the boycott attempts were meant to be all-inclusive in practice they were not. Many a non-Jew had his or her “good Jew,” whose services and abilities were necessary for their own welfare and well-being.
Jews fulfilled so many vital economic roles, such as keeping stores open on Sunday, that the general non-Jewish population after a time realized that it could not do without them. Thus, boycotts, painful and psychologically disturbing as they may have been to the Jews, were not, in the long run, really
an effective weapon against Jewish interests. It was simply a counter productive tactic.
In the sixteenth century, after the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian peninsula, Jews scattered all over the Mediterranean basin. Jews settled especially in Italy and were active in commerce, competing now with established Christian firms and economies.
In the port of Ancona prohibitive measures against Jews and Jewish concerns were proclaimed and enforced by the authorities. Dona Gracia Beatrice Mendes, the famed and pious Jewish financier and influential adviser to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, retaliated against the port of Ancona by announcing a Jewish boycott of the port, its facilities and commerce. Due to her wealth and influential standing, she felt confident that her backing of the boycott would have its desired effect.
However, in spite of her Herculean efforts to enforce the boycott, it soon proved to be ineffective. Jewish merchants, themselves more interested in their immediate financial gain, refused to abide by the boycott and it soon became obvious that Ancona had little to fear from Dona Gracia Beatrice Mendes’ boycott proclamation.
Various other smaller, more local, boycotts were proclaimed by the Jewish leaders over the centuries to help ameliorate the terrible conditions under which European Jewry labored. Eventually, these boycotts failed, again because Jewish merchants themselves were unable to sacrifice their own self-interest and attempt to uphold the boycotts.
Just as in the case of the Christian boycotts, the Jewish boycotters soon learned that the boycotters needed the services and wealth of the boycotted as much as did the boycotted need the boycotters. It is hard to repeal human nature.
As the Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany in the 1930’s intensified, American Jewish organizations and commercial firms called for a boycott of German products and services. The boycott was not really effective, since America was then in the midst of its great economic Depression and was not really positioned to boycott anyone in the world.
Nevertheless, Hitler used the excuse of the Jewish boycott initiative to further increase the persecution of German Jews. He declared it to be an act of aggression by world Jewry against Germany, thus justifying his claim that international world Jewry was at war with Germany and the Aryan Race. Jews were therefore caught in a catch-22 situation regarding the proposed boycott and it soon disappeared from the political and organizational scene.
After the Holocaust there was a further attempt to boycott German goods and services. Many individual Jews maintain such a boycott even until today. However after the German restitution agreements were accepted by the State of Israel and the Claims Conference, no mass boycott against Germany by Jews materialized.
From all of the above, it seems that boycotts, unpleasant and frustrating as they may appear, have little effect in the long run. The Arab boycott of Israel has proven to be woefully porous on an individual basis. Again, self-interest on both sides trumps the nationalistic, ideological or religious fervor that instituted the boycott pronouncement in the first place. The English boycott of Israeli academics has also fizzled. Apparently, boycotts should not be the weapon of choice in conflicts and struggles.
Ian ODoherty
It's always hard to
It's always hard to see something you used to respect and believe slipping into a mire of mediocrity and dishonesty. But it's something that cannot be ignored.
This has certainly been the case with the BBC, where the recent phone-in scam has shocked only those who haven't noticed the bias and dishonesty of their newsroom.
It's a newsroom where someone like Orla Guerin who has been exposed as lying about the total destruction of the Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil by the Israelis during the war last year, among other things, can still keep her job.
And now that other bastion of self-regarding liberalism, The Guardian, has been exposed as playing equally fast and loose with the facts when it comes to Israel.
In last Thursday's edition, The Guardian's Seamus Milne wrote about Gaza and the suffering of the people there.
That the citizens of Gaza are suffering is not under any doubt -- the deprivations brought about by the civil war between Hamas and Fatah have wrought terrible consequences on the locals.
But according to Milne: "This week the collective punishment of the people of Gaza reached a new level, as Israel began to choke off essential fuel supplies to its one and a half million people in retaliation for rockets fired by Palestinian resistance groups."
Milne then went on to incorrectly state that: "Israel continues to control all access to the Gaza Strip," conveniently forgetting the Egyptian side of the border.
But while The Guardian has form on this issue (blithely anti-Israeli and utterly myopic when it comes to the issue of Islamic terrorism), to describe the constant rocketing of Israeli towns like Sderot, which is currently the most regularly bombed town in the world, as being carried out by "Palestinian resistance groups" is the kind of fatuous rubbish which we have come to expect from professional liberals.
Referring to the homophobic, misogynistic, murderous savages of Hamas as "resistance fighters" is particularly nauseating. As is the suggestion that Israel should simply accept the rocket attacks on their towns and the mortar attacks on their roads and the shooting of their border patrols.
What other country in the world would be expected to tolerate such hostile acts and not retaliate?
The reason why enough humanitarian aid is not getting through to the locals is because their masters, Hamas, keep attacking the access routes into Gaza. And yet this is all meant to be Israel's fault.
Milne even goes so far as to say: "Unless Hamas recognised Israel, renounced violence and signed up to agreements it had always opposed, the western powers insisted, the Palestinian electorate would be ignored. No such demands, needless to say, have been made of Israel."
This is the kind of moral equivalence and weasel words observers in the region have come to expect.
The Israelis have not been asked to renounce violence or embrace democracy because it is already a democracy which only uses violence to defend itself.
To liken a group like Hamas, with their pavement executions and battering of women who don't wear sufficiently "modest" clothing, to the only democracy in the region is not just reckless it is positively wicked.
It has always been a genuine mystery to me how liberals, and particularly feminists, can embrace a culture that treats women and minorities with murderous contempt while condemning the one country within hundreds of miles where women and minorities are treated equally.
This bizarre double-think and reflexive hatred of Israel and America can be seen in the words of kidnapped reporter Alan Johnston.
Talking about his ordeal, Johnston claimed that: "Whatever else it was, my Gazan incarceration was not what Iraqi prisoners had been forced to endure at Abu Ghraib jail."
That may or may not be the case, but surely a more appropriate comparison would have been to the murdered kidnap victims Daniel Pearl, Ken Bigley et al?
But on Planet BBC, a reporter like Johnston can openly claim to be "a friend of the Palestinian people" and still be considered unbiased.
Having an opinion is not the problem.
Many of my friends have completely opposite views on the issue of Israel and we manage to get along anyway. No, the problem is the wilful misrepresentation of the facts.
The likes of Guerin and Johnston are reporters, and are meant to keep their private views private. That's the difference between them and someone like, for instance, the appalling Robert Fisk who, to his credit, at least makes no pretence of non-bias.
With Fisk, and others on the opposite side of the debate, you know what you are getting and you can choose to either accept or deny it.
But with the BBC we have been conditioned to accept what they say as unbiased gospel, even when someone like Johnston has openly declared his affiliation in the region.
It seems that deceiving children who phone Blue Peter is the least of their sins.
uplift
Not the whole story
If you can really give away $7000 of your own money next year, fantastic. That's awesome and good luck.
But "how much money do we give" is misleading. I quit my job in software - where I was making upwards of 80k/year, and would have gotten raises over the following years - to go into international health research. In the last four years of school, then, I have voluntarily passed up on the order of $335,000 in salary. Substantially more counting potential bonuses and stock options: probably above $400,000, maybe even more.
How do you factor that into "how much" I've given to charity? So, given that, I don't feel a strong obligation not to eat out or to buy organic food - or for that matter, to volunteer anymore of my time to other organizations.
1. Yes.
2. Yes. That's a little bit silly of a comparison. What if you volunteer at a single charity, 10 hours a week? You're only allowed to buy one organic product?
3. Half the things you can buy in developing countries were themselves made in China.
4. About equal.
5. No.
Lys H
Confused?
1. how is the boycott comment relative (is this Jewish history spam?)?
and 2. in the interests of openness, shouldn't crossposting be acknowledged?
(Getting ready for TAing has made my Google-fu work overtime on suspiciously formal-sounding writing...)
Moshe Feiglin
Since the advent of Oslo,
zbird
any chance we can institute a word limit for jewcy comments?
I know
there's no way a computer could siphen away long-winded rants by people with
chips on their shoulders that have nothing to do with the original post
("LWRBPWCOTSTHNTDWTOP"). But it seems those rants are always
about 10 times as long as normal, relevant, comments--so maybe a word limit
would help filter them out.
Just to
counteract the inevitable cry of censorship, you can start a
LWRBPWCOTSTHNTDWTOP post and let everyone comment to their hearts' content over
there.
--Z
Alison MIlitano
http://media.www.udrevie
http://media.www.udreview.com/media/storage/paper781/news/2007/11/09/News/Controversy.Surrounds.Speakers.At.Middle.East.Panel-3089342.shtml
There is growing confusion concerning recent actions that involved a discussion panel at the university on Oct. 24.
Lara Rausch, president of the College Republicans, said the group hosted various events as part of Terrorism Awareness Week. One event that occurred on Oct. 24 was a panel titled "Understanding Anti-Americanism in the Middle East," co-sponsored by the College Democrats, Students of Western Civilizations and the Muslim Student Association.
Political science professor Muqtedar Khan was invited to speak at the panel, but after learning Israeli Defense Force veteran Asaf Romirowsky would also be speaking, he sent an e-mail message to Rausch explaining he was hesitant to appear with Romirowsky.
Khan said he never approached university officials with his concerns and instead directed his response to the College Republicans.
"I never e-mailed the university," he said. "They were never involved."
Khan said he e-mailed Rausch when he first received an e-mail message from her concerning the panel.
"Mr. Romirowsky was confirmed the night before the event," Rausch said. "I sent out an e-mail [message] to our three confirmed speakers about Mr. Romirowsky's confirmation and final details about the panel, when Dr. Kahn replied back to be with his e-mail [message]."
"I am also not sure how I feel about being on the same panel with an Israeli soldier who was stationed in West Bank," Kahn stated in his e-mail message. "I am not sure that I will be comfortable occupying the same space as him. It is not fair to spring this surprise on me at the last moment."
After Kahn's e-mail, Romirowsky's invitation to the panel was rescinded.
Romirowsky, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, said he believes it was an act of intolerance that his invitation was withdrawn.
"The panel is trying to show a wide range of opinions from all walks of life," he said. "It's important to hear what all people have to say. It just makes sense to me."
Kahn said he was not against debating with people of opposing views, but needed more time to prepare for such a situation.
"I have no problems in debating," he said. "I would just need time to adjust my lecture and topic depending on who the people were on the panel, and I didn't have time to do so."
Romirowsky said the topic being discussed was broad enough for anyone to respond to what he had to say.
"Who's to say I was even going to discuss Israeli-Palestine relations?" he said.
Kahn said he is receiving criticism for his hesitation and said his actions are being misconstrued.
Romirowsky reiterated that every Israeli citizen must serve in the Israeli Defense Force a minimum of two years.
"The decision to withdraw my invitation is objectively based on the fact that I served in the IDF," he said. "Service in the IDF is mandatory and it is important to note that it is regardless of your own politics."
Kahn said he was not aware of the mandatory service.
"I did not know that at the time," he said. "And, I don't know whether or not he is a supporter of the occupation or not. All are just conjectures."
Romirowsky said he has a hard time believing Kahn is not familiar with the mandatory IDF service.
"It's hard to believe that he had never come across this fact before, especially considering he specializes in Middle-Eastern affairs," he said.
Rausch said Kahn's e-mail message concerned her.
"I did not want our already confirmed speakers to drop out as I felt uncertain about the status of Kahn continuing to be our speaker for the next day as well as the other two speakers, as I had not received any reply from them," she said.
Rausch said Romirowsky's invitation was not withdrawn and that he was simply asked to come and speak at a different date.
"We respect Mr. Romirowsky very much and had wished was part of our panel, but I had ordered one of my members, whom was our correspondent with Asaf, to ask him if he would come and speak at a later date," she said.
Kahn said Romirowsky is now attacking his character.
"Asaf is accusing me of being associated with terrorist organizations," he said. "This was not about all Israelis or all Jews."
Kahn said the accusations are upsetting and does not know if the attacks will continue.
Romirowsky said he was unfamiliar with these claims.
"I never made those accusations," he said. "That has nothing to do with me."
Anonymous
It's You, Not Us
Get off you f-ing high horse. Just because you live a vapid existence gives you no right to judge others.Start using more "I" instead of "we"...because you are living your guilt ridden yuppified life and trying to justify it. I am apart of Gen X but I am not apart of your "we". Sure I am not writing checks of six figures to Jewish organizations so they can do something vague with my hard earned dollar but I support the Jewish community by regularly attending and organizing events.I give people jobs so they can pay their rent. I give to street musicians, panhandlers with children, support local businesses, grassroot Jewish Organizations, places where my dollar is probably making a difference. Question: Is your job putting you up to this?
Gordo
Action Not Donation
I normally don't respond to articles but this one really annoyed me. I agree that many in our generation are superficial and self-centered and I think your call to self-sacrifice is noble but there is an unproven assumption that charitable donation is the solution.
I want to be the change I want to see in the world, rather than pay other people to do it for me. Too often charitable giving is an easy way to assuage one's guilt. You can write a check and feel like you've done your part without actually educating yourself, changing your lifestyle, or lifting a finger to make a real difference. That may fund band-aids, but it does not produce fundamental change.
I also did not appreciate your potshot at non-profiters. While it's true that many non-profit employees are still earning more than many Americans, they are also passing up far more lucrative careers in order to make a difference. In general the percentage of income that a person gives aways is inversely proportional to their total income. So until our society stops taking advantage of non-profiters and starts to compensate them for the true social value of their work, why don't you save your criticisms for the I-Bankers.
Anonymous
Okay, okay...
Here's the thing, guys...
Just because you aren't the person I intended this for doesn't mean that they don't exist. I can only speak from my own experiences. Such as they are.
And yes, I *am* yuppiefied, and I'm trying to take issue with some of that in my own life.
And as far as I'm concerned, panhandlers count. I never said "Jewish agencies". You read that into this.
Really, I'm just trying to say that we've created a culture where a veneer of progressive politics (and accompanying aesthetic) sometimes passes for good work/ volunteerism/ charity, etc. And that makes me feel crappy. But that doesn't mean EVERYONE is that way. Just that I see it, see myself as affected by it, and want to make a change.
Everyone has the right to choose how they spend their time/money. And I'm not trying to judge YOU, just noticing a trend.
xoL
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