THE CORNER STORE 360

a piece i wrote for haiti

For only 10 cents a day you can help a child survive, or rather you can help sustain the illusion that a dime can silence the cries of a country. Caught in a bind of misery, a ball of confusion where many are forced to dine off of water and dirt. Can money heal the hurt? Can charitable funds reimburse kids with guns who have everything to die for but nothing to live. Nothing to give but statistics on lists of places where you might see flies on kids faces. Where you might just die if you hear the stories of babies being thrown away, or orphans being forced to stay outside of missionaries because there is no space for him to lay. Can you even pray? Or does capitalism not allow that provision? Perhaps Haiti remains imprisoned until we ourselves make a revision.

Seeing that 10 cents a day doesn’t make a difference, we need to make ourselves different and no longer be distant. We need to take a stand against indifference, to stop seeing Haiti as a part of the third world, and as a part of our world. Our people, our equals, our problems, our tragedy. Then maybe we can gradually work towards change. But not monetary change, it’s bigger than that. It’s bigger than infomercials, it’s bigger than 1-800 numbers, it’s bigger than Feed The Children. It’s about taking on the facts, and not lapsing into the traps of apathy. Break the bubble, shatter the mold, acknowledge the catastrophe, and do something. We owe it to ourselves. Operators are standing by…