I know it’s predictable, but I love how willing people are to help an individual overcome obstacles:
After the Detroit Free Press published Robertson’s story, thousands responded on Facebook, asking how they could help. Evan Leedy, a student at Detroit’s Wayne State University, decided to set up a GoFundMe account to raise money for Robertson to buy a car.
Leedy told The Huffington Post in a phone call Monday he was inspired by Humans of New York photographer Brandon Stanton, who raised more than $1 million to send schoolkids from a crime-stricken neighborhood in Brooklyn on a trip to Harvard.
Initially, Leedy said, he didn’t even think anyone would donate. So he set the goal at a modest $5,000. In just one day, however, donations soared to nearly $50,000.
“This is obviously more than just a car now,” he told HuffPost. “It can turn into something way bigger than that. Maybe he could use this money to move out and move somewhere else … We’ve had a Chevy dealership as well as Honda corporate . Both want to donate a car to him. So he can use this money for whatever else he needs.”
This guy looks pretty healthy.
He’s been walking for years.
He seems to enjoy it.
So why are we screwing with him?
Let the guy alone.
But that’s our problem here in the good old USA, we always want to change the way people are living their lives. Whether here at home or way across the ocean in a distant land.
As long as people aren’t doing obvious harm to themselves or to those around them (subjective norm) why can’t we just leave them be?
Maybe they think that the way we’re living our lives is totally fucked up? Maybe they believe that we should change?
The real problem is that he’s still not making a living wage after working at this place for more than 20 years.
That’s two issues.
We both agree that everybody should be making a living wage. That’s one issue.
The other is why this guy has been working at this place for 20 years if he’s not making a living wage?
Another issue is that we as a society are willing to aid single poor people, if their story somehow clicks with us. But we’re not willing to, oh, make sure all workers get a decent living wage, thus the Republican governor of OK just signing a bill to make it illegal for individual local and/or county governments pass their own minimum wage laws.
It’s to protect the workers, ya know. And the consumers, somehow.
We do not know how to communicate to the body politic how to help people economically. Richard Wolff says it’s because, among other things, econ departments have been captured by corporate money and nothing is taught, fully, whichh does not go along with what Corporatists want legislated or understood.
We need serious help. And real education. With governors like the Repub crop which dances to the Koch Bros.’ tunes, we will have most of great public univerisites ruined.