I was going to blog short today, but I'm so disillusioned with everything and I need to explode.
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I can't believe people.
We take too much for granted. Tonight, some 14-year-old girl with bleach blonde hair and a jonas brothers t-shirt will alternate between her english homework and facebook and her phone, her only light being the gentle comforting glow of her computer, with a bottled water on her desk, twee pop blaring. she hasn't talked to her parents all day. she's not even aware of the thousands upon thousands of Haitians who are sleeping near the crumbled remains of their houses. The thousands upon thousands who sleep tonight in a mass grave next to people they never know, and never will know. While I watch the constant coverage on ABC. well all i see when I see ABC is an alive, American human body who is there, RIGHT in the center of the disaster, idling and talking about how horrible it is instead of helping people. what the viewers won't see is the reporter going home after he's finished reporting, going home to the 14-year-old with the bleach blonde hair and the jonas brothers t-shirt.
i see people on facebook, joining groups that swear that 'for every person that joins, we'll donate a quarter to haiti!1' and '$1 TO HAITI FOR EVERYONE WHO JOINZ'. these groups are all lies, hoaxes to create gigantic facebook groups. to boost their egos and take advantage of this horrible, horrible situation. and people think that they're helping. they've helped, and they don't need to do anymore because they're sure that they have a quarter going to Haiti. I'm sure we're losing tens of thousands of dollars of aid through this.
it hit me when i was eating dinner. I had finished my rice and my roast chicken, and all I had left was my salad. It hit me. And I ran downstairs. My mom asked what was wrong, and I told her that I couldn't eat salad while millions of people were without water or food. it hit me. that it was haiti, but not just haiti. i did a project on world hunger for health class, and i know that at least 1.02 billion are hungry right at this very moment. that was just a statistic until now. now i can't eat or drink or go to the bathroom without feeling guilty.
so after it hit me, i went downstairs and i just played piano. i envisioned the moments directly after the earthquake. the silence, the suffocation under the bricks. the song on the piano started off real quiet, it came out of nowhere, complete improvisation. i imagined myself crawling out from the rubble to the chaos above. it got a little louder, but it was still quiet. disbelief. and then the realization comes, the music gets louder. and then the aftershock hits, and the song hits its climax. and then near silence again. this isn't a dramatization, this is what i saw as i played the same theme on the piano louder and louder and louder. it's going to haunt me tonight, and tomorrow, and for a long time.
ignorance is bliss is bullshit. some things we NEED to know, and what we need to know is that we need to help. Not just Haiti, but Africa, India, the thirdworld. I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday, and he told me that if every person who earned over $120,000 gave 10% of their earnings to charity, and something like $80,000-$100,000 gave something like 5%, and everyone else gave like 2%, poverty would be eliminated. i'm not entirely sure if those figures are correct, but it was something close to this that he told me. the people making $120,000 would still have $108,000, the people making $80,000 would still have $76,000. they'd still live comfortably enough. but we can not give. there's something intrinsic about human nature that prevents us from giving more than pennies to people who need it. and i feel sick.
there's an advertisement with someone screaming "THAT'S A LOW PRICE." on my TV right now. it's for staples. and the Haitian people pray quietly for help. 'Mon Dieu, Mon Dieu, aidez-nous. je vous en prie."
donate.
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