As the shocking images of the Haiti earthquake consumed the world; charity donations poured all over the world. I was walking down to the Union Station. A middle aged man was begging for money with a 3-4 year old girl holding his hand (15 degrees Fahrenheit weather max with the windchill as he was on a bridge). I stood where I was 50 feet away from the man for 5 minutes and watched hundreds of professional business people in suits pass by not handing out a cent. Will it take hundreds of thousands people dead in a metropolitan city in the United States before the people in this land learn to help this country’s own citizens? I do not defend begging with a kid as being an acceptable practice. But… That man was desperate to use his child (I hope she was his daughter) as a tool to beg money. He risked his kid being taken away by cops due to inhumane treatment of a child for standing there in very cold temperatures. He was not a drunk. He did not seem to be a drug addict. He was just desperate. Help Haiti… but if you can, also help your own country.
I would truly love WhiteHouse.gov to give instructions every single day about how you can help your fellow countrymen/women as much as it gives instructions about how to help Haiti just for a week or two until the headlines fade away.
My fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man – JFK, Jan 24, 1960
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