cross-posted from Sum of Change and check out Pam Spaulding's post at PHB for more thoughts and discussion.
Yesterday we sent cameras to Glenn Beck's 828 rally and Al Sharpton's rally and march. We posted a handfull of videos from each. But first, a personal comment, if you don't mind. My parents and grandparents were civil rights activists (not to mention anti-war activists and labor organizers). On the same grass where we stood yesterday, my mother stood 47 years ago to watch Martin Luther King Jr. declare his dream for the world. I highly doubt anyone will remember yesterday the way my mother remembers 47 years ago.
It happens about this time every year. Suddenly you realize Mother's Day is just around the corner, and you have no idea what to get for dear old Mom. Well this year the Marion Institute is offering a unique alternative to the same old greeting card and flowers. Their Mastate Charitable Foundation is currently running a campaign for Mother's Day that not only gives you a great gift idea, but helps others as well.
Mastatal is a small community in rural Costa Rica about two and a half hours from San José, and the Mastate Charitable Foundation for has been working to improve the living conditions there for the past four years. Their most recent endeavor is to build a Community Learning and Sharing Center (CLSC), which aims to serve as a social center in the town, as well as a library and meeting place. That's where you come in.
The CLSC building in Mastatal will be naturally built using local labor and resources. In honor of Mother's Day, The Mastate Charitable Foundation is selling daub bricks that will be used in the construction of this building that will help so many families. Each brick is $4, and you can buy one (or as many as you like) for the CLSC in honor of your mother for an original and unique gift idea. It takes 5,000 bricks to build the entire CLSC, and the Mastate Charitable Foundation hopes to sell as many as possible to try to reach their goal.
Perhaps buying your mom some daub bricks wasn't the first thing that came to your mind when you thought about Mother's Day presents, but the reality is that it's a thoughtful and different gift that most moms would appreciate. The mothers in Mastatal are trying to give their community and their children the best opportunities they possibly can, so why not give your mother a gift that helps other mothers as well?
For more information, follow the Mastate Charitable Foundation on Facebook.
Before I write anything else about the Clinton Global Initiative, there's something I've wanted to say about charitable corporate giving of all kinds ever since I went last year.
Companies like WalMart and Goldman Sachs who headline such well-intentioned, high-powered gatherings where so much good is done should be told every day, that if they want to really help their fellow humans, they should just pay their sodding taxes as a small demonstration of good faith.
They should be asked, perhaps, for their charity commitment next year to be that they will faithfully pay their full dues to the governments that provide the roads, educated workers, municipal utilities, free community policing and regulatory services that let customers feel comfortable buying sealed containers from complete strangers - all the things that allow them to make those profits in the first place. You couldn't have most modern businesses without these things, except maybe Blackwater Xe. Seriously. Pay. Your. Taxes.
Thousands upon thousands of homes are being foreclosed on, gas is over four dollars a gallon, the economy looks rosy only to the colorblind-and yesterday I learned that Leona Helmsley had left a trust worth between 5 and 8 billion dollars "to dogs." According to the New York Times, this sum represents nearly ten times the assets of all animal-related non-profit groups in 2005 (and I imagine some of those groups might even squander some of their dollars on non-canines).
The article noted that at first Ms. Helmsley had two goals for her trust:
"to help indigent people...[and] to provide for the care and welfare of dogs. A year later...she deleted the first goal."
Trust Ms. Helmsley to have her priorities straight.
(Another installment in this excelelnt series! - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Community organizers have been criticized for jumping from narrow issue to narrow issue without much sense of the "big picture." Too often organizing groups lack a coherent sense of the kind of social changes that would create the world they would like to have. They know how to demand discrete changes, but don't think enough about how to string these changes together into broad social transformation. In this post, I explore some challenges and tensions involved in bringing coherent actions in the present together with longer-term visions of social justice.
Those new to these posts may want to read Part I and Part II of "What is Organizing?" See the full series here. A paper giving an overview of current organizing challenges and a possible solution can be found here .
The great thing about giving to charity is that you give what you can, even if it's a small amount. I didn't always think of it this way. I used to think that my donations wouldn't matter unless I could give large amounts of money. And in fact, I didn't give anything until Hurricane Katrina. Before that I was in school, and what little money I had was earmarked for Ramen. Could I have given a dollar or two for various causes? Yes, but I figured it wouldn't be worth it. And so I waited until I was done with school, and ensconced in a job with a livable wage, until I started giving back. And even now, I'm only making enough that it's 25 here or 50 there.
So that's why I'm upset to see that now Red Cross is now requiring a minimum donation amount before it will accept your donations over the web.
But I am not upset with Red Cross. And you might recognize that sign as one similar to the ones you see next to the cash register at coffee and sandwich shops and independent convenience stores. They're all facing the same problem...
The Ron Paul candidacy in the Republican presidential primary is an interesting example of a candidate with a large online presence being ignored and dismissed by the mainstream media. He has only moved up slightly in the polls, but he has shown some impressive fund raising numbers for what originally was a long shot Kucinich/Gravel-like candidacy. The mainstream media continues to pretend that most of his online supporters are imaginary and the result of spamming online polls, so some of his supporters came up with a rather ingenious idea on how to fight back.
