Charity

I’ve donated some of my art to a fundraiser to benefit various charities supporting Ukrainians. I’m inviting you to participate. If my art doesn’t speak to you – I get it, it’s a very particular style – then I hope you’ll consider bidding on other works representing diverse media from oil to watercolor to mixed media in numerous styles depicting varied topics. Sunflowers are popular, but there is lots of other content to choose from. Don’t think of this as frivolously (is there such a thing?;-) buying art, think of it as making a donation while getting a piece of art in return.

The auction is hosted by the great art site Daily Paintworks. They are letting artists list their pieces for free and are not taking any commissions. Once you pay for your piece, the artist donates to the charity they designated and ships you your piece. (I will send proof of donation to Médecins Sans Frontières.)

Ukrainians need our help, both those still in Ukraine as well as the millions of refugees (over 3.5 million in less than a month!) who’ve left everything behind. There are countless ways to lend support and if this approach doesn’t inspire you, I hope you are helping in other ways. For those living in Europe, chances are refugees are already in your town. You can donate housing, food, furniture, kitchen appliances, your time, money, the list is endless. Those of you elsewhere can probably help best through donations. Whatever it is, please do assist and encourage others to do the same. Thank you.

Note that when I post this on CT, the second set of images will only have 17 hours left of the auction so by the time you read this, they may be gone. (I’m thrilled to see that they’ve all been bid on already so I won’t be relisting them.) There is lots of other art to choose from so please check out all the work. Or if you are an artist yourself, consider donating your own art.

I recall that a few years ago, when Israel bombed the Gaza strip in the middle of the (Northern Hemisphere-) Summer, I felt angry and powerless. People, locked up in what was essentially an open air prison, had nowhere to escape or hide. The war in Syria similarly has led to horrible suffering. There have been many other wars or armed conflicts, but most of them hardly receive sustained reporting. And now there is the Russian war in Ukraine.

I am sure many of you ask, in such circumstances: “What we can do?” And I’ve heard some say “There is nothing we can do”. But that is not true. I’ve come up with the following answer to that question for myself, and am interested in learning how you answer that question for yourself. [note: trolls don’t even need to try; in case of doubt, I’ll delete]. [click to continue…]

Happy Hari Raya Haji/Eid al-Adha to all our Muslim readers! I live very near a huge mosque, and all the parking in the opposite lot is taken up, and all the street signs are full of locked bicycles, and the sidewalk is bordered with scores of scooters and motorcycles, and you can hear the call to prayer for a change. Normally Singapore more or less mutes it in the name of religious harmony–that is to say they forbid loudspeakers so the muezzin is singing alone, and so desperately quiet over the traffic noise and the inevitable jackhammering going on in Singapore at all times. The Indian ceremonies in which someone is blowing on a conch is frankly louder, and don’t get me started on drumming in Chinese temples or lion dances at CNY. I feel as if the men with the white caps that indicate they have been on the hajj have a little swagger today. Today on my hike I noticed the other men have generally worn embroidered and beaded black caps to keep up appearances. For those of you who don’t know, the feast celebrates both the ending of the hajj and the willingness of the prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ismail. Ibrahim and Ismail are said to have made the Kaaba later at the source of the miraculous spring which appeared when the earth was struck by the angel Jibra’il (or alternately much earlier where Hagar collapsed in prayer after wandering, in the hopes of saving her child from death from lack of water). It’s called the Zamzam Well, which is literally the coolest name ever. The day includes the sacrifice of a big valuable animal which is divided for a ritual feast, in commemoration of the ram substituted for Ismail. Lots of the many Singaporean Muslims with family in Malaysia travel there for the feast, where the cows or sheep or goats are more easily available (though of course they are shipped into mosques here.) People raise funds for charity also. Anyway, happy day!

Like others, I’m mystified by the “ice bucket challenge” in which, as I understand it, people agree to have a bucket of ice water dumped over their heads, rather than giving money to charity. This is reminiscent of the famous Piranha Brothers’ “Other Operation”, in which they threatened not to beat their victims up if they did not pay them the so-called “protection money”.

Still, it seems as if there is some interest in variants on the standard fundraising challenge in which you pay money to charity to encourage friends, bloggers, C-list celebrities to do difficult, painful or humiliating things. It’s struck me that my upcoming participation in the Sunshine Coast 70.3 Triathlon provides a nice twist on the ice bucket challenge.
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ASAP – Academics Stand Against Poverty – is an organization devoted to “promoting collaboration amongst poverty-focused academics, by helping them reach out to broader audiences on issues of poverty, and by helping them turn their expertise into impact through specific intervention projects.” It’s only a couple of years old, although its origins are a few years older. The Board of Directors, chaired by Thomas Pogge, includes professors and graduate students, and their Advisory Board includes philosophers, economists, political scientists, and others from around the world.

They have a number of on-going projects that are worth looking at, but they are just launching a new one concerning an issue that I, for one, don’t know much about – illicit financial flows. They estimate that some $1 trillion per year is transferred out of developing countries through corruption, smuggling, money laundering, and corporate tax evasion, and this directly hampers efforts at development and poverty relief. More information about this estimate and this issue is available at Global Financial Integrity. This focus on the relationship between global institutional structures and poverty is, of course, one of Pogge’s main areas of research and advocacy, as is the emphasis on issues that can create an overlapping consensus of different perspectives.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals are a set of 8 priorities set to expire in 2015. ASAP is pushing to have illicit financial flows become an important piece of the next set of priorities. So they are looking to raise $15,000 to produce a policy paper articulating politically feasible goals concerning these illicit financial flows and to promote their inclusion in the UN’s next development framework. Take a look.

From Curtis White’s article on philanthropy in the current issue of Jacobin:

bq. In the United States, everyone may enjoy freedom of speech so long as it doesn’t matter. For those who would like what they say to matter, freedom of speech is very expensive.

It goes on:

bq. It is for this reason that organizations with a strong sense of public mission but not much money are dependent on the “blonde child of capitalism,” private philanthropy. This dependence is true for both conservative and progressive causes, but there is an important difference in the philanthropic culture that they appeal to. The conservative foundations happily fund “big picture” work. … On the other hand, progressive foundations may understand that the organizations they fund have visions, but it’s not the vision that they will give money to. … If there is need for a vision, the foundation itself will provide this. Unfortunately, according to one source, the foundation’s vision too often amounts to this: “If we had enough money, and access to enough markets, and enough technological expertise, we could solve all the problems.”

Have I mentioned recently how happily superannuated “Jacobin magazine”:http://jacobinmag.com/ makes me feel? You should all be subscribing.

I almost hesitate to make this recommendation, as my taste has cloven to the mainest of main streams since I became an army wife. A recent intervention has more or less cured me of a short but embarrassing episode of James Blunt fandom. I did, however, spend the whole of Christmas in two comfortable but flattering Boden dresses which I suspect are just a bit smart for the many coffee mornings I now attend. (I was shocked to discover I’m the only one who bakes for them. Everyone else brings biscuits from upper echelon supermarkets.)

‘Wherever You Are’, the lovely song sung by the Military Wives Choir led by Gareth Malone, is at least worth a hunt through Youtube, along with footage of how it came about. The song’s release follows a TV series about choirmaster Gareth Malone turning a group of women into a proper choir while their military husbands were away in Afghanistan. The women’s letters to their husbands were gleaned for touching – though admittedly a bit saccharine – lyrics to a song written for them. Eventually the men came home, and the choir sang beautifully in the Royal Albert Hall on Remembrance Sunday. There were many tears along the way, not least those of viewers. The song was number 1 in the UK at Christmas and has now been released in the US. The proceeds are going to charities that support ex-service men and women. It is certainly worth a listen and even ordering from Amazon US (whenever they get around to re-stocking it).

The real reason I hesitate just a little bit in recommending this sweet song is a niggling worry about sentiment. We all live in a post-Diana world where the stiff upper lip has given way to increasingly orchestrated and maudlin displays of public emotion. A leader who can’t emote, especially on television, is no good. As soldiers don’t have a choice about which wars they fight, it’s a good thing that citizens of democracies don’t, as a rule, pillory service men and women. But I can’t help thinking all these TV programmes about soldiers and their feelings, army wives singing and crying, and kindly townspeople meeting hearses; they give the rest of us a deliciously tender moment to feel in sympathy, rather than think hard about the reality of an all-volunteer force fighting largely wars of choice. [click to continue…]

A couple of requests for CT readers

1. I’m running a half-marathon in Philadelphia at the weekend and raising money for an East Africa Famine appeal in Australia. The Australian government will match donations dollar for dollar, and you may also be able to claim a tax deduction, so this is a real bargain. You can sponsor me here – I’m currently a dollar short of halfway to my target of $5000
2. I’m writing a piece about social democratic responses to what Colin Crouch has called the “strange non-death of neoliberalism“, and I’m looking for books that focus on restoring more equality in market incomes, for example by rebuilding unions or constraining the financial sector, as opposed to redistribution through the tax/welfare system. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

* I’ll ask nicely, but I refuse to bl*g

I’m eagerly awaiting Rob Reich‘s forthcoming book about the political implications of relying on private charity as a means of achieving public goals. In the meantime, this report by the “Center for Public Integrity”:http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/10/17/7118/charities-supporting-att-s-buyout-t-mobile-have-financial-incentive on AT&T’s campaign to build support for a merger with T-Mobile is very much worth reading.

bq. At first sight, it’s hard to understand why the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter and clinic in Louisiana, would lobby the Federal Communications Commission. … “People often call on God to help the outcasts and downtrodden that walk among us,” Martin wrote to the FCC. “Sometimes, however, it is our responsibility to take matters into our own hands. Please support this merger.” Not included in Martin’s letter to the FCC was the fact that his organization had received a $50,000 donation from AT&T just five months earlier. Indeed the Shreveport-Bossier Mission is one of at least two-dozen charities that were recipients of AT&T’s largesse and have written in support of the T-Mobile buyout … The marriage of AT&T’s lobbying and charitable efforts is reflected in the company’s organization. James Cicconi , AT&T’s chief lobbyist and a senior executive vice president of the company, is also chairman of the company’s charitable arm: the AT&T Foundation. … Many of the charities, including the Shreveport-Bossier Mission, say that while they take AT&T’s money, it in no way affected their decision to lobby the FCC. “Their money that they gave was in no way connected with what we did,” said Martin, in a phone interview. “We endorsed the merger because we think it’s a good thing for rural people.”

Yep. It’s all for the benefit of the rural people. I imagine that AT&T money supports a number of good causes. Shelters for homeless people are good things to have. Even so, I don’t think that AT&T should be able to take any tax deductions for donations which on the very kindest interpretation seems to shade into their for-profit activities.

Watching a TV report on the Merapi volcano eruption, I was struck by a feeling of deja vu. Warned that the volcano was likely to erupt, Indonesian authorities have organised the evacuation of over 200 000 people into temporary shelters – the report I saw showed people at a large football stadium, well cared for but crowded and anxious to go home. I couldn’t find that report, but here’s another on volunteer teachers helping to keep kids entertained. Indonesia is a poor country that has had more than its share of disaster (natural and otherwise), and there have been plenty of problems, but overall this was an impressive effort.

For those who would like to help, here’s the Indonesian Red Cross site.

Windsor and Maidenhead Council (UK) “is planning a reward scheme”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/31/council-plans-big-society-reward (supermarket tokens and the like) for volunteers to help implement David Cameron’s “Big Society”:

bq. it is likely residents would get a loyalty card similar to those available in shops. Points would be added by organisers when cardholders had completed good works such as litter-picking or holding tea parties for isolated pensioners. The council says the idea is based on “nudge theory” – the thought that people don’t automatically do the right thing but will respond if the best option is highlighted. Points would be awarded according to the value given to each activity. Users could then trade in their points for vouchers giving discounts on the internet or high street.

Maybe the Council should have read more widely, since according to another body of literature (Bruno Frey, “Sam Bowles”:http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/320/5883/1605 ), they risk sending out a signal that only a mug performs good works for no reward. An interesting natural experiment, to be sure, but not one that I’d wish on the residents of Windsor and Maidenhead.

“Chris Blattman”:http://chrisblattman.com/2010/01/14/whats-even-better-than-giving-money-to-haiti/ passes on a suggestion (for American readers).

Giving money to Haiti doesn’t seem like enough? Katmanda have another suggestion: grant Haitians Temporary Protected Status.

TPS is a form of temporary humanitarian immigration relief given to nationals of countries that have suffered severe disasters, natural or man-made. (For example, El Salvador got TPS was after the country was hit by a terrible earthquake in 2001, Honduras after Hurricane Mitch in 1999, and Burundi, Liberia, Sudan, and Somalia were designated because of ongoing armed conflicts.)

Once a country has been given TPS, its nationals who are in the United States can apply for work authorization (a very useful thing to have if, say, one needs to send money home to family members in need of medical care or a house that has not been reduced to rubble), can’t be deported or put into immigration detention (also quite handy if you’re trying to work and send money home), and can apply for travel authorization, which allows them to visit their home country and return to the US, even if they wouldn’t otherwise have a visa that would allow them back into the country (incredibly important if you have loved ones who have been badly hurt and need to visit them, or if you need to go home to attend funerals).

To support TPS, contact the White House “here”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact. You’ll need to select “I have a policy comment”, and “Immigration” from the drop-down menu.

My friend Josh Glenn, and his collaborator Rob Walker, have been running an interesting project: Significant Objects. I’ll quote from the project info page:

THE IDEA

A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? Via eBay! [click to continue…]