Working on the real problems

Helen Keller:

So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me ‘arch priestess of the sightless,’ ‘wonder woman,’ and a ‘modern miracle.’ But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics—that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world—that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind.

Hélder Câmara:

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.

Vinay Gupta

This is why the funded organizations have so little purchase on the real problems: if you're hitting the real problems they kill your budget

Refuse to really name the problem, and The Cash Will Flow: New Orleans flood cleanup.

Name the problem: Systemic Racism. Now unfundable.

Doug Muder:

When you’re expecting a compassionate response and don’t get it, it’s tempting to write people off as selfish or hard-hearted. But many of them aren’t. Some people who look at the world this way are quite generous. They give money away. They put themselves out for others. They volunteer. But the model they put on this behavior isn’t justice, it’s charity. Justice, to them, would mean keeping what is theirs.