Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/10/bay-area-organization-offers-f.html
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Take my money. 
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OMG…I could see myself trying to get this started where I live (far, far away from Berkeley).
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cough and then the birthday party ends, and the kid goes…home…to the car/tarp down the street. Thanks, birthday charity!
I’m sure they mean well, yeah? but still…wtf.
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I’m lucky to have the means, so I gave. And gave a bit of a shout out to BB for bringing it to our attention.
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They do more than just “mean” well. They DO well given the kind of organization they are and the resources they have to give.
A local children’s museum does not have the ability to end homelessness for families of young children. They do have the ability to give those children a day of happiness they wouldn’t have otherwise, and I think a “good for them” is a more appropriate response than a “wtf.”
ETA: Also when we talk about “homeless children” in the SF Bay area we’re mostly talking about kids in homeless shelters, not kids sleeping on the street. I think both groups deserve whatever small joys society can provide them.
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How about vaccinations instead, like for typhoid and all those other diseases that kill the homeless in big cities? How about real food, instead of dental caries inducing garbage, because how often do you think those kids get to see a dentist?
Damn you and your “it helps a little”, and everyone else who applauds the soup kitchen, who drops change in the bowl and soup cans in the bin but never helps.
To be clear: you’re damning a local children’s museum for not providing all these services??
What did YOU do to help those children today? And why do you have so much hostility towards people who offer homeless children some measure of joy, comfort and normalcy that goes beyond mere survival?
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It’s a museum. They lack the expertise to safely deliver those services.
If you’d prefer to donate and/or volunteer at a medical charity, or devote your time to the M4A campaign, go ahead.
But as to the purpose of a birthday party for these kids…
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Or as an episode of Star Trek: Voyager once succinctly put it: ”Survival is insufficient.”
Homeless children need food and shelter and medicine and clothing, but they ALSO need fun and socialization and educational enrichment and all the other things that make up a life worth living.
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Heroic efforts require heroic resources. Giving homeless people homes (i.e. the only measure necessary and sufficient to end homelessness) is not just a function of funds, but it’s also an intensely political process requiring you to go toe-to-toe with NIMBY trash and the goliath real estate industry. It’s a mission. Meanwhile, all I have is pocket change. I don’t have access to typhoid vaccine or vast swaths of real estate (or small swaths of real estate).
If the argument is that resources would be better expended towards giving the homeless homes, that argument has intrinsic merit, but I would counter that ending all measures to alleviate the suffering of the homeless in the meantime is effectively to kill the patient on the path to a cure.
Or perhaps the argument is that small acts of charity which only temporarily alleviate the effects of homelessness effectively make homelessness possible. That what is required is Dickensian misery to “heighten the contradictions” to drive society to action, then that’s inherently an accelerationist argument. That inevitably becomes a question of how many of other people’s bodies and psyches are you entitled to destroy by withholding charity in the name of progress? I’m not saying that’s the argument you’re making, but I think your displeasure is somewhat inchoate and it’s hard to decode.
Finally there’s the anti-strategic, or revolutionary argument. That what is needed is for people to actually come to the conscious realization of the manner in which society is inherently broken and immoral and to organize by class and forcibly put an end to it. Once you have a plan and a strategy and a manner by which the upheaval doesn’t look worse than the status quo (hint: this is just accelerationism with flags and songs) maybe people will join your struggle.
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It is better to curse the darkness than to light a single candle.
No, hang on…
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Looking at the site I did not see the party info, but I would like to say that kids who are in kindergarten or older are more in need of parties than children that are too young to understand what a birthday party is.
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