Mistake in Last Week’s Article,
“Introducing Young Americans for Liberty”
Dear Editor,
There was a misprint in last weeks article, “Introducing Young Americans for Liberty.” The article says, “On Saturday, Dec. 2, six [YAL] members volunteered their time and effort at Eva’s Soup Kitchen in Paterson.” The mistake is, those were not six YAL members; two were from SDS and do not want to be associated with YAL. YAL reached out to various organizations, including SDS, through a Facebook event about the volunteer work. The Facebook event did not say the event was exclusive for YAL members, and those from other organizations would not be acknowledged for their attendance. The fact that YAL did not want to admit that almost half of the people who volunteered do not want to be associated with their super conservative, individualistic, and self-serving values suggests the reason why they wanted to volunteer in the first place—media attention and to feel good about themselves.
The Young Americans for Liberty believe that charity will solve all problems amongst the poor and therefore want to cut all social services to them. They are quoted saying, “Why occupy Wall Street when you can help those in need through volunteering?” I’d like to offer an answer to that question that maybe YAL did not think about. Occupy Wall Street tries the root cause of problems such as poverty by restructuring the system to help the underprivileged and poor. While volunteering is good, why stop at that when it is obvious that volunteering doesn’t solve any structural problems? I think history has proven that throwing a few bucks (or pieces of food) at the poor cannot solve poverty. Doing this only lets the privileged feel good about their selves and allows them to go back to ignoring the poor, while living their greedy and privileged lives.
Sincerely,
Lisa Grab
Click here to view the letter in the Montclarion.
No comments:
Post a Comment