Holiday Giving

Mark Zuckerberg’s recent $500 million donation in Facebook stocks to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation created a stir in the world of philanthropy. The Facebook co-founder was following up on his pledge to donate half his wealth to charity as part of the “Giving Pledge” campaign inspired and promoted by billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

Reading about mega-donations by billionaires can cause the average American to suffer from some kind of an inferiority complex. After all, in these difficult times, many Americans will be hard-pressed to come up with a $500-dollar donation to worthy causes.

A perspective comes from Ted Turner. Fifteen years ago, in September of 1997, the billionaire Cable News Network founder made a “spur of the moment” gift of $1 billion to the United Nations for programs to help refugees and children, clear land mines and fight disease. It was the gift that launched not a thousand gifts but several high-profile multi-million and billion-dollar gifts from entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and now, Mark Zuckerberg.

Talking recently to the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Turner said that people should not be overwhelmed or intimidated by the dollar amount donated by the rich. “You don’t have to have any money to make a difference; you can pick up trash walking down the street, and I do that all the time,” he said. “You can volunteer your time. You can be a big brother or a big sister.”

This is a deeply moving and practical dvice. The key words are “making a difference.” After all, anytime we donate even a dollar, we fervently hope that it will have the maximum impact for good in the recipient. The most common mistake we make is to think that unless our charity is a hefty amount quantifiable in dollars or pounds or euros, it will not make a difference, even though, intellectually at least, we know better. This is the unfortunate byproduct of minds brought up in a capitalistic environment. But hearing a capitalist like Ted Turner extolling charitable acts rather than dollars offers a much-needed reminder. Notice also the example Turner gives about doing something while walking down the street. Most often we think that removing thorns (or nails or sharp objects) from the path of pedestrians is the only worthwhile act of charity we can do. Not so. Pick up any trash. Sweep or gather fallen leaves in bags. Clear a neighbor’s driveway of snow. Smile at strangers. There are hundreds of acts of charity you and I can do simply by walking a few blocks in our neighborhoods. By being alert and observing what others are doing can also open up creative ideas for charity.

A few months ago, while stopping by to pick up some toiletries from my local pharmacy, located in a mini shopping center packed with restaurants, a bank, a fitness center, a dentist’s office and the quintessential Starbucks, I noticed an old man poking into the various garbage bins with a stick. As I watched, I realized he was looking for recyclable cans and bottles. Every time he located one, his face broke into a triumphant smile. His bag was about half-full with the collection.

When I came home, I collected all the bottles and cans I was going to dump in the neighborhood recycle center. Like everyone else, I have been doing this for years but I had no way of knowing where all these “capitalistic wastes” were going and exactly how they were being recycled. But now I had found a greater purpose for them.

Two nights later, around 8 PM, I waited for the old man at the same spot. I had almost given up when, about 45 minutes later, I saw him begin his round at the dumpster behind the bank. He walked slowly and patiently. I had time to read the sign nailed into the outer wall of the pharmacy: “No skateboarding. No Trespassing. Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

When he came around, I offered him my collection. He seemed stunned for a moment and then thanked me profusely. “Not at all,” was all I could mumble as I quickly left. I was already feeling guilty in thinking that I was engaging in an act of charity.

I now see the old man once a week. We don’t talk much although I want to tell him the privilege is entirely mine when he looks me in the eye and says simply, “thank you.”

I am sure you have all seen someone at a gas station or a shopping center intent on making something out of the bottles and cans we carelessly toss away. We are talking at most a few dollars here but just the act of gathering your recyclable stuff and handing them over to a particular person isn’t something that can be quantified. Thank God for that. Do it and see how it transforms you and spills over into other areas of charitable and holiday giving.

A Marine's Take on Gun Control

In the aftermath of the horrific shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the issue of gun control has enraged, and engaged, Americans from all walks of life. Emotions are running high. It is clear that America’s gun culture has to change, and change soon, for the killings to stop.

As a former active duty Marine (and Marine for life), David Mauk, 23, has seen both sides of the issue. He was deployed in Afghanistan from late 2010 to early 2011. By maintaining a high moral ground, he and his unit were able to earn the trust of the local Afghans. “We did it by removing the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from the path of villagers, even though we risked our lives to do it.”

David had witnessed an Afghan child who had struck an IED that shattered his legs. He had seen firsthand the work of cruel men and knew that, whatever the politics and issues, his job was to try to make the village safe for the teeming children. He and his unit did it with honor, integrity and respect for the local culture and customs.

The experience in Afghanistan taught him that saving the lives of children was among the noblest of callings. That’s why he was so traumatized by the killing of twenty children in Newtown. At the same time, “guns are an important part of my life and culture. They have many good uses, such as hunting, as in my home state of Missouri. Hunting keeps the deer population from overbreeding and destroying valuable farmland.”

Unfortunately, not everyone has the character, training, and responsibility to use a gun in its proper context. David has seen far too many instances where criminals and mentally-disturbed individuals use them for evil purposes.

His proposal to fix the violent gun culture in America consists of the following:

-          Completely ban military style or rapid fire weapons and magazines. No one outside law enforcement or military needs such power. Assault weapons are NOT effective hunting weapons. They are meant only to kill people. We don't need them.

-          Require stricter screening before allowing the purchase of firearms.

-          Require regular training and evaluation administered by qualified law enforcement personnel.

-          Require a more accurate system of licensing gun ownership, much the same way that a concealed carry license works.

-          Require ammunition to be regulated at least as closely as, say, alcohol. Ammunition is the real key. Different types of ammunition and quantities of it would indicate what it would be used for.

-          Finally, require gun owners affiliate with the militia, as the Second amendment intended, and then rein in the militias to fulfill the intended purpose of arming and educating citizens for the good of society. As it stands now, militias are breeding grounds for conspiracy theorists, anti-government extremists, and other threats to the free and secure society we seek to create in America.

David has just begun his college career. He is a student at San Jose City College. In his first semester, he is taking courses in English, Chemistry and Math. He wants to be a park ranger for the U.S. Forest Service or the National Parks Service because “I love the outdoors and want to educate people about the world they live in. People invested their time in me to develop a love for the outdoors. I want to pass it on.”

David never went hunting in Missouri because he couldn’t afford all the equipment. He did, however, work with a conservation department at an animal rehabilitation center, where he learned that much of a conservationist’s job was to keep the animal population in check. “It is a fact of nature that animals hunt and kill each other. Sadly, because we hunted the predators to near extinction, the job now falls upon us. I have never been comfortable with this cruel fact, but at least I understand it. What I cannot accept is how easily high-powered guns can be bought in America. In particular, close-range assault rifles - preferred by criminals and mentally-ill people because they are so obscenely easy to use - are meant only to kill people. Why we allow people to buy them is beyond me.”

“I fought for this country so that we could have peace and freedom, not so I could come home to see people killing each other. In Afghanistan, my mission was to protect the civilians and neutralize violent radicals so that the Afghans might have a safe place to bring up their children. My mission is turned into a mockery when I come home to find disturbed individuals murdering children with military weapons.”

 

Rage, Sorrow and Gun Control

“A Robin Redbreast in a Cage/Puts all Heaven in a Rage,” wrote William Blake. But there is something even more heinous that can put heaven, and all of us, in a greater rage.

It is the murder of children.

A gunman shot 26 people to death in an elementary school in rural Connecticut this morning. Twenty of them were children between the ages of 5 and 10. As gruesome details emerge, we ask: Where and how can we vent our rage against this unimaginable atrocity? What did these twenty children do to deserve this? One more week of school and, like millions of other schoolchildren, they would have been off for the holidays.

Instead, for these families, and for us, the coming holidays have been touched by evil. The little ones have left a vacuum that nothing on this earth is large enough to fill. At least that’s how it appears at this traumatic moment.

America has always been a gun society and is becoming more so every passing year. The tragic thing is that gun sales spike after the kind of violence that occurred this morning in Connecticut. Stores can barely meet demand for lethal firearms. Since government is not doing anything about gun control, many Americans feel that they are on their own against the psychopaths. A besieged mentality feeds on itself and gun sales rise exponentially.

It is impossible to detect human time bombs. Only two days ago, Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, armed with a stolen AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, went on a rampage in a shopping mall in Oregon that left two people dead. "Jake was never the violent type," Roberts' ex-girlfriend, told the media. "His main goal was to make you laugh, smile, make you feel comfortable.” "Of everyone in my entire life, if I could put them on a list of how crazy they are, how likely they are to snap, I'd put him at the very bottom," said Jaime Eheler, 26, the gunman's close friend and roommate. "He'd be the very last person." Eheler added that her friend had a "weird look on his face" when he left their house.

But what alarm can a mere “weird look” set off?  After all, it is common for “unexpected” killers to mask their murderous rage with preternatural calm. Trying to stop human time bombs before they explode is, therefore, not a practical option.

But there is something we can and must do as a nation: Enforce gun control, damn the Second Amendment distortionists. This fruitless debate about rights has run its pathetic course. The government has got to step in and set things right, and make it difficult for anyone to purchase firearms. The NRA needs to be given the boot and right now, there is enough consensus in the country to make it happen. “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics,” said President Obama after the shooting. “Meaningful action?” What does this mean? This type of euphemism will not wash any longer. The time for “meaningful action” is long past. What is needed is drastic action to put the leash on NRA and the gun lobby and ban firearms.

It is tempting to conclude that our schools, colleges and malls have turned into killing fields. They have not, but neither are they remotely as safe as we have the right to expect and demand. Without drastic gun control, they will attain that fatal distinction sooner than we may think. Can we afford that as a nation?