Vernonia
What I did last weekend:
Here's the thing. As somebody who works for a small nonprofit that aims to improve people's lives, it's easy to get out of the habit of, well, actually working to improve people's lives. Sure, I spend a ton of time firing off emails, coordinating meetings, and moving projects forward. But rarely do I do anything, work-related or not, that I can say has had a demonstrably positive impact on anyone. That's kind of the nature of organizing, it's a lot of slogging and hard work for every small step, and you don't always see the results quickly. It can get you down.
So I'm really glad I went out to Vernonia last weekend. Some of my RARE friends organized the trip. Vernonia got hit by a major flood last December - hundreds of homes were underwater and many rendered permanently uninhabitable. The work we did to help was meager when compared to the long-term needs of the community, but it was tangible and legitimately helpful. We spent most of the day crawling under houses, ripping out ruined insulation and plastic, for individuals who are unable to do that work themselves. It's an important first step to getting one's house elevated and re-insulated to prevent against future floods, and it's damn expensive if you want to pay somebody to do it. We also helped load and unload FEMA-supplied sheetrock for folks who didn't have an extra pair of hands to help do it. Things we as 5 strong adults could do in 10 minutes would take one person several hours.
If it's been a while since you've gone out and done some direct-assistance volunteering, give it a shot. You're not going to fix any of the systemic problems that caused people in Vernonia to be too poor or unhealthy to clean up their own flood-damaged homes, but you're going to help some real people for one day. Likewise, we can talk all day about whether food pantries and food handouts help poor families get by or merely enable poverty and poor nutrition - but either way there's people going hungry every day and is it not better that they get to eat while we argue about how to fix things?
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