"What's amazing about this is people who've come to donate have stayed and volunteered," said Chloe Drew, Lee's campaign director, who organized the drive for the NAACP Disaster Relief Fund. "The people who have the least are giving the most."
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This is not the least surprising. The poor are always more generous than the rich. As Jack London once put it, in his little known work "The Road," "Generosity is not tossing a bone to the dog; it's giving the dog a bone when you are just as hungry as the dog." (quoting from memory.)
I've actually had two experiences of begging in the U.S. and, oddly enough, they both happened when I was nine months pregnant with my first child. The first time I got stranded on the freeway in Southern Calif. when the car we were driving in gave up the ghost. So, there we were: my ex, my sister, and I (big as a house) with our thumbs stuck out. Did anyone stop? After about a twenty minutes, a very tiny car with a couple of Russians gave us a lift all the way to where we were going. The next time, our car battery was stolen and we were left with no wheels and completely broke, after midnight, in downtown Oakland. So, we started begging for bus fare. The second person we asked gave us a few dollars and twenty minutes later we were home. This person looked pretty threadbare to me. They also asked us in a kindly way if we were scared. We weren't scared, but it would have been a long walk home.
I just remembered this while absorbing all the news about unofficial generosity and official "brutal incompetence." I think it would be really great if the ACLU could do a class-action suit based on the way people are being treated now, basically because they are poor and black.
Joanna
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