Home-Free Living

Greedpeace approaches

I was approached on the streets of downtown Palo Alto yesterday by a young man from Greenpeace. He was about my age, a bit more masculine-looking, with cactus-like stubble on his face, a squarish, move-star jaw and penetrating green eyes. Given his styled short hair and J.Crew style, I mistook him at first for a yuppie-in-training (which he could have been). Still, he was quite passionate about the cause that he was promoting.

He caught me as I was parking my bike at the corner outside the Peet’s Coffee. After I’d locked up–he waited for me, graciously–he started talking to me about Greenpeace and their initiatives. Of particular concern were whales. In fact, I believe this was the primary cause at the moment for the organization.

Interestingly, his pitch was an attempt to hook me to donate to Greenpeace. When he had finished his spiel and handed me a clipboard, I looked at it and said, “well, I can’t really donate right now because I’m not doing too well financially.”

He was not nonplussed. “It would be pretty messed up if we didn’t let people become members for financial reasons,” he said. I would agree. “So, we let you donate as little as 15 dollars a month.”

This seemed to contradict what he had just said. Fifteen dollars is a tremendous sum–about 1.2% of my monthly salary or two hours of work. After rent and transit (about 70% of my income) I have had weeks where I finished with as little $28 in my bank account, and I really didn’t need another $15 docked. I told the man my little parable about having $28 at the end of last month.

“That means you can still donate $15 and have money left over!” he said.

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The point I’d hoped to get across to this brainwashed fool was that money shouldn’t really be necessary to support a social cause. Words, actions and volunteer time are, in a true social revolution, more important than money.

When all our causes become so singularly money-focused, they devolve, in a sense, into being inherently classist. Furthermore, they become stuck on the same greedy modes of thinking that we associate with capitalists. A rich man can donate a thousand times what I can without batting an eye–thus, he is the more ideal target for the money-focused organization.

This skews heavily the target demographic for any fundraising nonprofit. Furthermore, this makes the nature of cause-building undemocratic. It places an organization like Greenpeace or PETA in the same capitalistic confines that a public company like Google is in.

What do I mean by that? Google would probably like to adhere to its company motto, “Don’t Be Evil,” but that isn’t really its focus. Its focus is to make money, like every corporation, like Blackwater and Coca Cola and Goldman Sachs; there is no functional difference. Make money. Make more money this quarter than last. That’s it. And if doing non-evil is included in the process, it’s just an added benefit for Google.

In the same sense, Greenpeace has devolved into a pseudo-corporation, a metaphysical money-eating monster with a tiny mouth and unending appetite (to borrow Derrick Jensen’s physical allegory for corporations being the manifestation of “hungry ghosts”). Despite any morals that Greenpeace may purportedly have, it follows nearly the same cyclical model as a corporation–money must flow in. Always more. The only difference is that what flows out is marginally less awful.

I intend to tell the next canvasser who approaches me for donations my feelings about classism and fundraising. I don’t believe in the tyranny of money as a model and I don’t think it is necessary, as I’ve made abundantly clear in previous posts.

The next revolution will be built with hands, not dollars.