You can't help everyone, but we help where we can. Family of three, Venezuelan mum & two kids who've been out begging on the highway all day in a muggy heat.
Took them to the discount store. $15 Canadian stocked their household for at least a week.
It is staggering how little can help so many. I'll be in ayunos most of May (for writing clarity; it helps with focus), but it's super hard to watch kids go without. (The older brother was such a sweetheart with his little sister the whole while.)
I just want to add that I don't post these things to receive praise.
It's really uncomfortable, making such posts, because of the praise they yield.
It's just that we don't *really* talk much about poverty, & we don't have many ways to normalize discussing #MutualAid without citing our own need, or how we met someone else's.
So I do hope that this & similar posts are taken in the light intended.
The *hurt* of so much need is what I'm sharing.
I know you do what you can where you can too. 💙
Yes we need a more nuanced reaction to poverty and harm. The language of transaction is doing too much work here. You need > I help > You feel some relief > I receive praise. Is far to prevalent. And the language we use, we embody.
Love, care, and mutual aid, are all never transactional.
Interdependence, refutes transactualism.
@corlin You've hit the nail squarely on the head, Corlin. Thank you. Trying to envision value outside capitalism from within it is folly. I don't even attempt it outside of CoSo anymore.
The last time I tried to mention elsewhere that it's a privilege to be able to do creative labour in our deeply hurting world, I was ACTUALLY-d by someone who gets defensive about their view of creative labour as activism.
It... can be.
But it's an activism only available to a few of us, & that matters a lot.