Okay, this is likely to get me labeled as a completely horrible person by a lot of my friends, but I am quite annoyed at something, and given that this is MY webspace, I am going to rant about it. If you don't want to read me snarking, then go somewhere else and don't read this post.
Believe me, I have no end of sympathy for what happened on December 26th in Southeast Asia. I can't even begin to fathom the destruction, really--and my god, 150,000 people is just staggering to me. The entire population of the city in which I live is just over 100,000, I believe, so to imagine every single resident of this city--and another more than half on top of that--is just...well. Staggering, unbelievable, incredible--and not in the good connotation of the word, either.
Yes, I have sympathy. Yes, I've seen video footage and pictures of the destruction, I've read eyewitness accounts, I've followed a couple of news stories about a couple of specific families. It's heartbreaking.
However.
I'm really starting to get annoyed at being continually bombarded with requests for money. Yeah, actually, I *do* get that these people's lives have been pretty much destroyed, believe it or not. And hey, guess what, I made a donation to the Red Cross through Amazon on the first day they had the link up. I'm trying to save for school and a honeymoon and support myself as well as try to finance a home-based business, but all of that is really small potatoes, in the end, so how could I not give money? For me, it was a given.
I am, however, extremely tired of having to explain this part to the people who are constantly hitting me up for money.
There are links *everywhere*. Amazon still has theirs up, but it's not the full page thing. Weight Watchers has a link. CNN has a link. There are radio commercials for it all over the place. The local TV stations are carrying commercials as well, and the TV ads annoy me *almost* as much as...
...the group of 20 or so people who are on my college campus EVERY SINGLE DAY. The TV commercials show pictures of the destruction and the children and won't you please consider giving money, and here, let us show you all this stuff so that we can make you feel guilty for being what you are, for having what you have, for living where you live, because we KNOW that if you feel guilty, you'll give us more money. At least I can turn those off.
But the people on campus are even worse. They've also got pictures, but not only that, they've got sob stories, and they've got this way of looking at their prey that is designed to make people feel like they're utterly horrible if someone should happen to say no--and that's exactly what I feel like. Prey.
I've seen it happen to other people, I've seen it directed to me. 99 percent of the time, everyone who walks by says that they've already donated--and while I'm sure that there may be some who haven't but are just saying they have to make the solicitors go away, I think that, for the most part, people are being truthful.
Except that's not enough. "Are you sure you can't give more? Have you seen..." Cue the flashing of the pictures, and the horror stories about the children, or disease, or lack of food and shelter, or lack of medical care, everything.
The campus is still blanketed with them, and not only that, but there are a ton of them from different groups--and again, it's not enough that you gave money to the Red Cross, but no, Save The Children also wants money, as does UNICEF, and CARE, and Habitat For Humanity International. Each time anyone passes, they're solicited for a donation, no matter if they just said no to another organization not two feet away, or hell, even the SAME organization two feet away.
Worse than the ones who line the walkways are the ones that come into the cafeteria--three nights, I have been in the cafeteria between classes, and each night, the SAME WOMAN has made the rounds of the room at least four times in the 45 minutes that I sit there. Every single time, she hits me up for money, even though she's already done it before. I don't expect her to know that she saw me last Tuesday, of course--how could I? But that I'm sitting in the same spot in the cafeteria all four times she passes by? I mean, come on.
It's horrible, it makes me feel like an awful person, but jesus christ, it's enough to make me NOT want to contribute the next time anything like this happens, because I am just SO TIRED of this. If they were more polite, I'd be fine with it, but the presumption from some that I'm lying when I say I've already donated, and the flat out rudeness of others, it just galls me.
Ugh.
Posted by Liz at January 14, 2005 07:01 AM