#i gonna donate to some palestine stuff. and then i will spend the rest of my bday money on pdude plush

[object-yaoi]

i have a debit card now.... grins evily

[kedreeva]

You're sort of one of the kindest people i know on tumblr, so. um. i had a question.

how do i deal with it all?

right of the bat i will tell you i am a minor and my parents are zionists, so i have no income of my own or anything i could donate. everytime i post a single fundraiser that reaches my inbox and is vetted, i get 4-5 new fundraising asks for palestine.

most of them are unvetted, but i keep thinking that if i can't donate i should at least have faith in people and reblog the fundraisers even if they're unvetted, possibly that they're actually new and need as much help we can give, however, there's a possibility they are scams, and i don't want to draw away the attention vetted fundraisers might get.

how do you decide where to help out and how to live with your decision?

I have a policy that when it comes to asks (or messages) that solicit money or other actions (like boosting posts) I don't respond to or even publish asks that come from anyone that has never spoken to me before that moment, and that's a policy that has been in place for many years now, and is unlikely to change largely because the majority of asks/messages that are requesting money or to visit a blog post/their blog/their website are scams (or more often several years ago, led to virus infections on your computer!). My blog is, as it has stated at the top for over ten years now, a personal blog, not a fundraising/signal boosting/vetting blog for spreading donations- there ARE blogs like that, and people can choose to interact with those blogs or not, but my blog isn't the place for it and that's a hard boundary I enforce for my own well being. Tumblr is my place to rest and recover, however I see fit to do that.

A random ask to my inbox asking for money, regardless of what it is for, is (in my view) equivalent to a cold call from a stranger soliciting money. It's not about faith in people, it's not about right or wrong, it's not about can or can't. This is my home, and I don't answer the phone to unknown numbers. I will help friends/family/people I know personally (or parasocially, if I like them or recognize them), obviously, but that's a bit of a different horse.

As for how I decide where to help out, if I have the ability (funds, spoons, time etc), I will seek out information on the best place to donate that can do the most with the money to help the person/people/cause that I want to help. It's the Food Pantry Equation: I could spend $5 on groceries at retail price to donate, and maybe get enough for 1 meal for 1 person (though in this fuckoff capitalist hellscape, I'm not sure $5 would even buy a whole meal), or I could give $5 directly to a Food Pantry organization, who buys in bulk and knows where to get stuff cheap, so that my $5 can help five people or ten people or whatever. I also do my best to participate in fandom events that raise money for good causes; stuff like the fanworks charity auction I helped run to donate to a wolf sanctuary, or stuff like Fandom Trumps Hate (another charity fanworks auction event). Those kind of events are generally open about where the donations go to, and have done research into organizations to ensure the gathered money goes to good charities.

Like with the above, however, it's different if I know the person. If my neighbor comes and asks for a cup of sugar or my friend needs help moving or whatever, I'm gonna give them what they need without the middleman because we have that relationship already established. Donating $5 to a food pantry would probably help more people by numbers, but helping my neighbors and friends and family etc builds community in a way giving $5 to a random stranger on the phone soliciting money cannot, and even in a way donating $5 (or $5 worth of food) to a Food Pantry cannot. It's also usually a matter of one and done, as well as semi-transactional the way any relationship is a give and take; I can give my neighbor some sugar, and down the road they can return the favor the next time I'm in need of help. I help my friends move and I know whether or not I ever move, myself, that they would do the same for me if they're able. You can't say this about a random ask on the Internet and you likely won't ever be able to say it for most charities unless you somehow end up in their exact area of expertise. So it's different.

I feel like you should also learn about Tim Wong, the guy who basically single-handedly repopulated the Pipevine Swallowtail butterfly out in California. The lesson his story can and should teach is that... sometimes it can do more good for the world to care Very Much about one specific thing, and put your heart and soul into it, than it does to spread a little bit of care over a lot of things.

So, I guess what I mean to say here is... don't feel guilty about what you cannot do. There's no guilt in that. When you are ready and able to help, you can always go and look for a good way to do so (and what you end up helping may not always be the thing you think it will be), but you don't need to feel pressured by telemarketers or charity donation calls from strangers while you're trying to eat dinner. Especially if they don't even know who you are, either.

[an-aura-about-you]

I Was a Queer Salvation Army Bell Ringer

Part 5: The Ethical Toll

Content Warning: This one touches on morality, Christianity, briefly but not graphically on Palestine, and transphobia. Also it's another super long one.

So this is gonna be the last part of this series, and that was how it was planned from the beginning. In this segment, I'm going to briefly touch on the moral problems that came up during my time working as a bell ringer.

Right off the bat, I thought this wouldn't bother me so much. Yes, the Salvation Army isn't a good organization, but bad money spends just as well as good money. From the outset, I would make jokes about being an evil backstabbing minion, how I was going to work a shift at the evil job.

(Which, if we really stop and think about my morality, all jobs are evil, but that's a whole big discussion that really merits a post separate from this one.)

But all it took was one shift for me to start seeing some conflicts with my own morality.

First there's touching on some stuff that I brought up about my boss. Going into a show that had an entry fee without paying using the name of the Salvation Army was indeed her idea, but I still did it. This isn't the first time I've done something like this, but the last time I did I was employed directly by the show. Specifically, I was part of the staff catering the show, so I already had access to the show that way. The best argument I can provide on the other side is that establishments that have Salvation Army bell ringers in front of them are ones that choose to partner with the Salvation Army. Also I want to clarify that this is not a performance show but an expo where merchants have set up to sell, and I got in without paying the $5 entry fee. But when I say that, is this just me rationalizing the bad thing I did? No matter what, I did what I did, and I can't take it back now.

After that, my boss brought me back to the office and gave me a bag of plums and apples. I already felt a little guilty taking food from her, though this also got into a weird spot because it sounded very much like no one else wanted to take them. The fact that they were Red Delicious apples made it easy to see why, but I had already accepted it before I realized I wasn't going to eat those apples, either. I did eat one of the plums and gave the rest of the plums to my sibling, but the apples got cut and dried for potpourri. Apples that theoretically could have gone to someone hungry. But they didn't because, based on the limited context I was given, the hungry also didn't want the apples. If you've followed me for any significant amount of time, you know I love food and feel very strongly about food. I think that people should not only have food to not be hungry, they should have food that tastes good to them. I did try to eat one of the Red Delicious apples, and it was one of the worst food experiences I've had recently. Like I can think of a number of things that would be actively dangerous for me to eat that are more appealing than another bite of one of those Red Delicious apples. And while I know they could stave off hunger, for fuck's sake I would rather buy a hungry person a bag of Granny Smith apples just so they don't have to suffer the Red Delicious apples. (Now's a great time to remind you it's never a bad idea to make a cash donation to your local food bank.)

One moment that nearly broke me was a young person putting a couple of coins into the kettle only for the person with them, presumably a guardian, telling me their ward is on SSI and learning how to give. I'm surprised I didn't quit then and there. I wanted to take the person by their shoulders and tell them, "Don't! Don't give me your money! It's not worth your limited income to give it to the Salvation Army! It's early enough in the day that it won't even go to them but it'll go to me! I do not want your money!" And this is either more rationalization or a worthwhile talking point, I'm not sure, but there is still the matter of choice and the dignity of choice. If this person genuinely wants to put their money in the Salvation Army kettle, then it doesn't particularly matter where the money comes from or how much of a percent of their income it is. Because the people who want to give will give whether I'm standing there or not, which I've seen on my breaks as the kettle is attached to the stand by padlock and stays out there even if I walk away from it. Still, it felt very much like the Biblical story of the Widow's Mite. And I guess this means I'm gonna segue into that for a bit.

The Widow's Mite is a story in the Gospels of the Christian Bible. The Gospels recount the life and teachings of the Christ. Since I was raised Catholic, it's a story I'm very familiar with, but I didn't have any particular recollection of anyone giving me the full context of the story until recently. It wasn't until a youtuber I enjoy, Laura Crone, talked about her own faith and this story in particular. (Relevant timestamp link to the video where this happens here. Hope you're ready for a ride because this happens in the middle of a Swan Princess movie marathon.) Rather than provide the part of the Bible that is considered the story of the Widow's Mite, I am going to give you that and the story right before it so it is in its proper context. Also, Laura goes through the whole story in her video and it's well worth a watch, particularly if you are like me and left Christianity out of an initial realization that you no longer believe what they teach that has evolved into disgust at what the Church does in the name of what is supposed to be holy. But for completeness, here it is:

Then, within the hearing of all the people, [Jesus] said to [his] disciples, "Be on guard against the scribes, who like to go around in long robes and love greetings in marketplaces, seats of honor in synagogues, and places of honor at banquets. They devour the houses of widows and, as a pretext, recite lengthy prayers. They will receive a very severe condemnation." When he looked up he saw some wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins. He said, "I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood." -Luke Chapter 20, verses 45-47 and Chapter 21, verses 1-4

Now. There's more context, of course there is, a lot of it historical with a lot of baggage to unpack. But right now, I am looking as simply as I can at the narrative that Christianity presents to me. And even without the same background, hopefully this is enough for someone reading this to understand why in that moment I felt like a devourer of widows' houses.

And the wild thing about this is people thanked me to my face about it, many if not all of them thinking I was a volunteer. I brought up to a coworker at my regular job that I got this job as a bell ringer and I had done it before as a paid position, and they were surprised by this and felt it was inherently dishonest. And looking back, yeah, it kinda is in a lying by omission sort of way. I didn't correct people who made the assumption I was volunteering nor did I tell them the way to differentiate a volunteer from a paid employee. (Which isn't all that meaningful anyway. The difference is volunteers get cheap plastic aprons and paid employees get cloth ones, but if there aren't enough cloth aprons to go around a paid employee might wear a plastic apron.) I even said, "Thank you for your service," to a firefighter and without missing a beat he said, "Thank you for yours." It is easily the most I've ever been regularly thanked while on the job. More than in 10 years of food service, 2 years in child care, and 2 years of customer service. It felt very weird because the Salvation Army hiring bell ringers is no secret to anyone who was looking for a seasonal job at the time. It wasn't hidden away but an easy to find result on my job finding app.

The same day I received the donation from the person on SSI, a young child also gave me a Starbucks giftcard on behalf of their family. It's clear what this is saying: thank you for what you're doing. I told the child that I didn't think I could accept this, and that's probably true regardless of whether I was a volunteer or a paid employee. The child just insisted that his family had tons of them. So there I was conveniently handed a multilayered ethics problem, and I basically chose the wrong choice on each step. First I pocketed the card because the rules I was given didn't actually specify anything about giftcards. I didn't want to get into that with the driver checking my kettle and didn't even know if the Salvation Army accepted giftcards from businesses like that. But then came the matter of what to do with it. Since I've worked in giftcards before, I knew this is what's called a closed giftcard, meaning it could only be spent at Starbucks. The reason why this is is because Starbucks already has the money, in this case $5. They would have that money whether I used the card or not, and in fact would profit from me not using the card since it means there's no loss of product. By this point, I had heard of their reaction to their employees standing up for Palestine, though the version I heard was less charitable than that. In any case, I certainly didn't agree with the official stance Starbucks had then or has now. But dammit, they already had the $5. I decided to get a hot chocolate from there that very night and rid myself of the card, telling myself it would be the last time I ever go to Starbucks. And so far that's been the case. (Now's a great time to give to a charity helping the Palestinian people. I like Doctors Without Borders myself and have given to them in the past.)

All in all, I'm not happy with myself and things I allowed myself to do while working for the Salvation Army. I'm not particularly worried about admitting what I did because $10.50 of questionable moral acts is ultimately a drop in the bucket, one I can outweigh monetarily by giving to the places I suggested above and vow not to repeat in the future. And I think the best place to start is not working for the Salvation Army anymore.

There are two more interactions I want to share, one that was rather uncomfortable and one that was the best interaction I had in this entire experience. I'll do them in that order so I can end this on a happier note.

First, while I didn't officially encounter any transphobia on the job, I did encounter some from a coworker I spoke with off the clock. I had offered to give her and her daughter a ride home after our shift, because I had nothing better to do and the means to help, so why not? As we made our way there, I made polite conversation with them both, and that spurred my coworker to talk about "boys using the girls' bathrooms," and her apparent conviction that schools here were teaching these things as being all right to the kids. Which, this is Arkansas. Not to dox myself, but it doesn't take very much to find a person here who says queer people deserve to die. 90% of the voting population voted for Trump in the last presidential election. I highly fucking doubt that the schools here are teaching this as any official curriculum. So I thought fuck it, I'm technically the person in power here and outed myself as nonbinary. This ultimately did little, but I will say at least she didn't spew any vitriol about me specifically to my face. And I engaged with my own thoughts as calmly as one can, in particular the helpful idea my dad has about the whole bathroom matter. (There really should just be two bathrooms regardless of gender: one that is all stalls for people who need the stall and one that is all urinals for people who can use the urinals. It's one of the best things Dad's said about all this.) This did seem to help the matter, especially when I expressed my own thought that I don't care about anyone's genitals in the bathroom because I'm just there to pee. Nothing was resolved, but I knew nothing would be, and my coworker even agreed with the thought that a stalls-only bathroom would not be a bad idea. In spite of this, when the two found they were locked out of their home, I offered to stay in case they needed any further assistance. They told me no, and my coworker even gave me a hug. Overall, it was very confusing.

It was sometime after that interaction that I decided the physical toll and moral dilemmas simply weren't worth what money I would make from doing that anymore, so I texted my boss to tell her I would not be available for the last two days I would have been scheduled. And that was it.

Now for the best interaction I ever had on the job, short and sweet and regretful in that I couldn't express my true thoughts. While doing my usual greetings and well-wishes to passersby, a gentleman stopped in front of my kettle. He didn't give anything but instead said, "Hail Satan!" stuck out his tongue, and threw up the horns. Thank goodness I was wearing a facemask otherwise he would have seen my huge smile. I was so tempted to do the same in return and held back by some miracle of professional decorum. But if that gent is reading this now, know that you said that to a pantheist witch who was absolutely gleeful about it.