Yeah yeah yeah… impressive, perhaps.
By: Joy Ellen Sauter
Tags: Life, Life Lessons, Charity, Amazon, Family

Yeah yeah yeah… impressive, perhaps. Noble, probably. Human and soft, not really. I don’t believe in the Carnegie style of philanthropy, to be honest. The idea that to get help from the rich one needs to be ethical and deserving. Deserving poor in America is only served to hurt those who needs it most, a system of antiquated meritocracy. A society is only great when we lift those from the very bottom, when we expand our safety net, and fight for systemic change so we (the working poor) don’t need to beg for mercy.

Your charity is noble, and decent, and I don’t want to discourage discourse on the idea if giving Amazon money away. Still, the gifts were based on statistics and cold facts about “doing the most good" and not the human part of giving.

Recently, I was asked to help a man named James. He is homeless in capital hill. He likes sandwiches, and needs socks.

I adopted two special needs children through foster care. My youngest has permanent brain damage and developmental disabilities. I was saddened to learn kids with developmental disabilities currently in Foster care are living in motels in king county, without a caregiver. In a system overwhelmingly filled with children of color. I wish I had to position to meet them, to go down there and see where they are living. To put that injustice on the map of people’s conscious.

I know struggle in 2020 living paycheck to paycheck and trying to fight a school system refusing to provide the support necessary to help pur family cope with a behaviorally challenging child. Lots of days of frustration and exhaustion. I am lucky, though, and all I have to do to remind myself is to walk my dogs around green lake to count now almost 100 tents that have appeared since July. People like James.

Giving your money away is good, better than nothing, I suppose, but it is not entertaining a system that will really benefit people in the long term. Really humanize the fight for equality for everyone, including those incarcerated and those on the streets fighting addiction. Even humanizing the ugly parts of poverty no one can look at, kids in motels, people like my new friend James. We can’t fully change the system if we undertake it like a math equation.

Money to historically black colleges is also noble, but it doesn’t change the systemic systems of over priced college tuition and racism. The institutions of higher learning we aim to help will he reliant on charity in order to function, instead of encouraging and focusing on the costs to students and systemic racism. These may also be political issues, but they humanize the struggle in a way a charitable gift could never achieve. They go the long way to improve people’s lives.

As a mental health advocate, I saw so little giving to mental health services helping the most vulnerable and the leading cause of homeless and poverty. Again, the giving was cold and calculated.

Who am I to say. I am not in your position. I just know something, desperately needs to change. So much suffering, so much hunger, so much pain. My heart is always so broken.

Thanks, I am sure you will never read this response. Still, it helped me to write it.

I am a writer, too!