Help for Haiti: BOTH AUTHENTIC CHARITY AND JUSTICE

<some reflections from Adrienne>

Last week at our CLC meeting, my group discussed the materials from Session 21 in the new manual.   I thought that Jack Milan had captured very well the need for both charity and justice, and how I feel we are called to respond to Haiti and all the poor and suffering. 

"De-humanization is experienced in daily living.  When we intervene in the concrete de-humanized life situations of others, we are performing acts of charity.  ...

Charitable acts affirm the worth of persons who live within structures which convince them otherwise.  Our charity is authentic and humanizing when it enhances the self-esteem and independence of those who are the beneficiaries.  Our charity is a sham when it reinforces powerlessness and degradation because it is paternalistic, dominating or self-serving. ...

Justice and authentic charity, then, have important similarities - the liberation of people from de-humanized and de-humanizing circumstances.  Only the means of achieving the goal is different. Charity requires that we respond to concrete persons in concrete situations with concrete caring.  Justice requires that we change those societal "rules of the game" that make so much of our charity necessary.  Mahatma Gandhi, the great apostle of non-violent social change taught that both charity and action for justice are necessary.  The Christian and CLC believe the same." 

Jack Milan, CLC Leaders Manual

I have a friend who has little patience for acts of charity - her passion is social justice.  She feels Haiti's pain - and as a mother and grandmother she asks " would I accept my children and grandchildren being treated this way'.  She sees our lifestyle and our governments' choices as being responsible for contributing to the terrible condition that Haiti is now in.  I agree with her.  I think she is right. 

But does recognizing the atrocity of Haiti's history and their current situation lessen their need for help now?   How can we not respond to the Haitian people who have been so severly dehumanized not only by the earthquake, but by all foreign involvement in their 200 year history as an "independent" nation.  Do we have any choice but to move forward the best we can as Gandhi suggests ... with "both charity and action"? 

Thoughts/comments?