To be clear, what happened in Haiti was and continues to be a tragedy. Many are doing good work to aid Haiti, some with their pocket books (see GW’s Swipe for Haiti) and some through other means (see Anderson Cooper being badass).
And then others are sending what appears to be an oversized “Get Well Soon” card. For real.
On G Street between 21 and 22 today you could find a jar of markers and a large, “GW Hands 4 Haiti” emblazoned paper banner with dozens and dozens of signatures and small notes written on it. GW Hands 4 Haiti, by the way, appears to be the brand for GW to slap on Haiti relief efforts, though it seems it may be connected to the GW Caribbean Student Association as well.
There’s something terribly tragic/sad/funny/cruel about the notion of some of the most privileged college students in the world sending an over-sized get well soon card to people (or maybe the entire nation somehow?) whose country was literally just shaken to the ground.
I’m going to refrain from commenting on exactly what I think about some of the messages that were left on this banner. Please feel free to tell me what you think in the comments.
Update: The GW Hatchet posted this video about a candle light vigil that includes some more information about the banner. Check it out:
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They mean well, so I wouldn’t call it cruel, but this is really more about making the students feel better rather than the Haitians.
At least they’re not collecting and sending stuff they’d never be able to sell at a yard sale.
While I realize many of these students are on financial aid and feel they have no money to give, probably, I would say in the option of shelling out $5 or doing nothing, doing nothing is preferable to this expression of White Guilt. This is the equivalent of trying to help put out a fire with a syringe. Thoughts and prayers? Those are nice, but not exactly what the people of this shattered (economically, emotionally, physically) nation need. Even the money needed to create these posters, buy the markers for this useless piece of trash could buy water tablets to make water drinkable or be given to an organization like Doctors Without Borders (MSF), who is doing incredible work to help these people get the care they need. Congratulations, people, your keen talent for making people feel useful and thoughtful when they have done nothing at all has been fine-tuned.
(Note: I am not saying these people who write on this have not donated money, but this gesture is completely superfluous. Get well soon. Our thoughts are with you. Ummm, thanks?)
As someone who was at Virginia Tech during the shootings, those cards were some of the most touching things we received following the tragedy. The magnitude of the seemingly insignificant gestures let you know you were in the thoughts and prayers of so many. The only thing more touching in the wake of the tragedy was the sense of community we all had with one another. No amount of money or assistance can create that.
So take the two seconds to send your donation via text, but think about what it really represents and how it will actually be used. You can’t. That anonymity might absolve you and allow you to selfless, but both the texts and messages serve the composer as well as Haiti. It just took a little more time and thought to write that signature than send a text.
By the time you have finished digesting my response, you will have already begun feel better about how you helped and be on the road to forgetting about the woes of Haiti altogether. Your equally terrible/tragic/sad/funny/cruel post was moving.
As a response to the VA Tech student, I would say there is a significant difference between a literally shattered country and students in mourning. The students as a community/whole after the VA Tech shooting didn’t need aid, didn’t need drinkable water, and weren’t living in crumbled buildings and devastating poverty that existed before the earthquake and was only exacerbated by it. The thoughts and prayers the students needed during this time is different than what the Haitians need now. They need physical supplies. With these things they know the world is thinking of them. The power of your thoughts and prayers can come silently – these people, who barely speak English to even READ that the world is thinking of them, will probably not appreciate these words the way that VA Tech students needed them in their time of horrific terror. THAT’S my point.
I agree the needs of Haitians are inherently different in their time of need. I had hoped my message abrasive enough to actually evoke thought. I failed.
I thought it went without saying that cards came from all over the world. The ones that I was unable to read were as moving as those that I could. Silence is deafening, nothingness overwhelming. The logic of what inspires and moves people is not always tangible, and certainly not tactile. I can not tell you what those messages said, merely what they meant. The point I tried to relate was the human nature of tragedy. I am not sure how to succinctly argue how equally important it is. All I can say is that we have funded and provided for their immediate physical needs. More money and more provisions, are only going to go so far. We have tried to fix the worlds woes with money before. Being able to move on and survive, takes more than bread and water.
At the heart of what I was trying to say, was that donating money, cloths, and provisions required less thought and effort than a card. The act inherently just as selfish.
I have never meet a truly selfless person, and I am often sadden when I meet people that rank their acts of selflessness. Its ironic to think that those that do not care, at least about how you helped, are the most selfless.
Was the post really about how they helped? Or merely an attempt to feel like you have helped enough?
I always feel that imagined comparisons fail, but if my country had just been shaken to the ground, I’d be immediately concerned about the money that could be spent on aid and relief instead being routed to markers and poster board. I’d let emergency medical personnel handle the wishing me well.
This card isn’t a bad idea, I guess. It’s definitely not cruel; that suggests an intention to be so. It’s just untimely. Who is going to read this card right now? Who has time for that? Haiti first has to get the airport fully functional so that supplies can get in and out. I’m sure people are glad to know they are not forgotten and/or ignored but that awareness can be expressed in better ways.
Brad, well said. It is but 9 days since the earthquake occurred in the single poorest country in the entire Western Hemisphere. The destruction is unimaginable. These people don’t have food, clean water, medical supplies, and emergency tent hospitals are performing multiple amputations every single day on children who had wounds and gangrene set in. They BARELY have the ability to bring in these resources so desperately needed and the people are scared for their lives. I’m not sure anyone actually thinks that donating money via text message is selfless in its entirety; but the appropriateness and helpfulness of this card is certainly in question. Saying “good luck!” to these people who have watched hundreds of thousands of their countrymen die and who have lived for years in dire poverty would probably not even care about the level of selflessness of these supplies and results of the text message donations. They care that people care enough to do so, whether selfless or not.
So, with the idea of selflessness put aside, we must now try to realize that on level of effectiveness, appropriateness, and general help, this card ranks with “doing nothing.” As Brad said, there are more appropriate and effective ways to make the point of this tragedy known. Whether it’s selfless or not, the text message donations literally brought MILLIONS of dollars into organizations who can help.
Let the thoughts and well wishes come once the initial healing has occurred, which, at this stage in the game, comes in the form of money, which can be converted into medical supplies, etc. from the organizations themselves. This card may be appropriate later, but not when they are still pulling live bodies out of the rubble.
The post and comments have chastised and belittled the card as meaningless and shortsighted. They ignore and down play the possibility that the people that wrote the card also did something else. They dramatize the effectiveness of their own donations while failing to see their own shortcomings.
The questionable amount of value the card holds and the imaginative comparison are real. The comparison directly relates the value that I and others received from cards like that. The situation may be different and tragedy far greater, but the value is still real. Using Cast Away as a reference seems cliche, but I am afraid a more obscure reference would be lost. Tom Hank’s character survived because of a volleyball. The human element he personified in a ball is what allowed him to make it off that island. Even its highly romanticized form, I hope you can see the value of the human element. We can have all the pieces, but if we can not keep it together it is meaningless. I agree with you though, a fair number of people that signed that card will have begun to feel better about themselves by the time the ink drys. Haiti has already begun to sift to the back of their mind.
The amount of money raised was more than just millions, its currently in the hundreds of millions. It is an enormous sum. The Red Cross has raised over 100 million dollars itself. I am not trying to down play its importance. I am just trying to inform you that the money you donated yesterday, today, or tomorrow has no more effect on the current situation in Haiti than that card. There is not enough infrastructure to support the amount of aid the world is sending. The effort is already funded for the next couple of months.
You said it yourself: “They care that people care enough to do so, whether selfless or not.”
They aren’t actually going to send that off to Haiti, are they? While I cannot speak to how this card would be perceived by a person in Haiti right now, I can say that the giant, tacky “GW Hands 4 Haiti” written front center on the ‘card’ makes me remember what the success of GW is built on: a false positive image through superficial facades. It’s an over-priced, sad excuse for a school. One student’s tuition/fees/board ($200,000 over four years!) could do a hell of a lot of good in Haiti.
Here’s my thing: why aren’t we sending cards to Sierra Leone or Bangladesh? If there’s one thing that white people love, it’s helping brown people in distress.
Using the South Asian example, over 100 million people still live in destitute poverty in Bangladesh, yet we haven’t heard anything about the socioeconomic situation there since the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami.
Unfortunately, Haiti will follow the same path. Part of it is human nature, but a larger part of it is the sad state of aid and development programs in the industrialized nations.
To address the content of the post, I agree with the author that it is indeed cruel to send this banner. Give money to the Red Cross or George Clooney, or better yet, enroll in a graduate public policy program to learn how to restructure US development programs to be more equitable and country-specific (holler).
I recently started a masters program here, and I must say, from an outsider’s perspective, the smugness of the undergraduate population both amuses and disgusts me. Haitian orphans can’t eat a banner, y’all.
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