As someone who's done a lot of volunteering at soup kitchens and such as well as things like public policy research, my take is exactly opposite.
Typical soup kitchen volunteering is pretty low impact. It's the first thing a lot of people think about when it comes to volunteering, and people like that they get to interact with the less fortunate. So they show up with their church group a few times, ladle some soup and that's about it. Running a soup kitchen is different and higher impact.
The things the UN is doing matter to millions of people. If you work with the UN food program, you're dealing with food by the truck load instead of by the spoonful.
Completely agree. The important corollary to that is that policy, in many cases, matters a lot more than boots on the ground (obviously good policy and manpower together are usually required).
I've volunteered with a prominent animal rescue charity for over 2 decades. While the work does require a lot of people, after you do it long enough you quickly realize bad policy is a giant contributor. For example, Texas is the only state in the US where it's illegal for shelter vets to do care on animals unless the animal is fully surrendered: https://www.humananimalsupportservices.org/blog/why-cant-vet... . So there are a lot of poor people who can't afford vet care, and then their only option is to surrender the animal at a shelter, where in many cases the animal may be euthanized. If your goal is to reduce the unnecessary killing of pets in shelters, fixing this policy is worth like thousands of volunteers.
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Texas is ran by property owners.
> And if there is one cornerstone of modern Republican politics, it is: the suffering is the point
This sort of deliberate mischaracterisation has no value in discussion. Republicans have definitely ridden high on stopping the suffering - perceived or otherwise - caused by objective, Democrat-led encouraging of illegal immigration across the southern border of the US. And even they wouldn't be as bad faith as you and claim that Democrats wanted that suffering.
The top deportations per year is Obama [1].
The idea that Democrats want a freely open southern border is just as false as Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility.
[1]: https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical-persp...
They changed. Most "Trump is a Nazi" policies are 2008 Obama policies, but that's indicative of how far to the left the Democrats have shot in the last 10 years. That's why people voted for Trump even though they didn't like him. He was still the lesser of two crazies.
It's not a mischaractisation just a plainly self evident reading of fact and reality and the current situation. Just cause you don't like it doesnt make it untrue.
I don't see how it's a mischaracterization. Everything I read about the party points in the same direction.
> And even they wouldn't be as bad faith as you and claim that Democrats wanted that suffering.
Tell me as what else than deliberate want for suffering I should perceive the actions of ICE? There are rules and processes to deport people that are deliberately being broken by masked thugs not identifying themselves.
A discussion about enforcement of rules or even if these rules make sense (with the conclusion, say, of handing everyone who has legally worked and stayed out of trouble for anything but traffic tickets and smoking pot a permanent residence) might be had, I don't deny that. But the way the current administration runs rampant? That doesn't answer any of the multitude of questions, it just makes life hell for everyone affected - children that are US citizens who come home only to find out their parents got snatched by an ICE raid on their workplace, people who get deported to CECOT or other hellholes with no due process at all on sometimes not even evidence but outright fabrications, employers who have half their work force either snatched up and deported over night or the work force just vanishing because they are afraid of ICE even though they have legal status...
Oh and even before that, 'member Covid? People trying to apply for unemployment benefits who got stuck in bureaucracy?
With the current Republicans I am far beyond giving them the usual excuse of "don't assume malice when stupidity is sufficient".
I recently had an experience at a soup kitchen. It was my first time in an entirely new group and new place. Naturally I found that everybody only interacted with each other - the volunteers, not the people lining up for food. I realised it was more like a social gathering but there was a clear divide between the volunteers and the people getting the end product. In that sense I'm not really sure that soup kitchens do much besides allow a surplus time of the more fortunate to gather socially together for a pro-social benefit (hard to see if it's actually pro-social for those consuming the food).
> I'm not really sure that soup kitchens do much besides allow a surplus time of the more fortunate to gather socially together for a pro-social benefit
You say this like it is a bad thing, which confuses me
They’re arguing along the lines of “it’s not the /better/ thing I envisioned”, rather than a “this is good” baseline.