When my girls were little, there was a story that I read them once before throwing away. Here’s how it went: A hungry moose shows up at the kitchen window and a kid gives him a muffin. Then the moose thinks he should have some jam as well. From there, things quickly spiral out of control.
“If you give a moose a muffin,” the narrator says, “he’ll want another, and another, and another.”
This children’s book apparently hit a cultural nerve, because it quickly led to other popular volumes such as If You Give a Pig a Pancake and If You Give a Dog a Donut, all with the same message.
Which is this: If you are kind and compassionate, people will only take advantage. Soon they stop making their own damn breakfast, and you’re all covered in batter and out of your mom’s jam for your trouble.
For this special Myth-Busting issue of Real Change, I thought about some of the ideas people have about us that can be thrown out as well.
Real Change feeds at the tax-payer trough.
This story envisions us as some sort of government giveaway, fed by city grants that pay for legions of homeless people to stalk the streets as merchants of guilt.
In this myth, Real Change is a well-funded human services agency, paid to foist self-improvement upon our vendors. Because there are so many handouts to homeless people, we must be one more.
About 95 percent of our support comes through reader donations and earned income from circulation.
No and no. About 95 percent of our support comes through reader donations and earned income from circulation. In this city of notoriously thin-skinned mayors who expect loyalty in exchange for funding, this means journalistic independence and integrity.
This means that our focus is on system change.
Real Change isn’t here to “reform” anyone. We leave the victim-blaming narrative of fixing broken people to others.
Poverty is so depressing I can’t even look.
How many people pass our vendors each day, knowing that they’re homeless, and feel too numbed by fear or political despair to be part of the solution? And the antidote is so simple!
Look. You don’t need to start your own Habitat for Humanity to be part of ending homelessness. You don’t need to be the perfectly informed advocate. You just need to care.
Bridging the gulf of guilt between yourself and the person standing before you begins with looking them in the eye and saying yes.
Bridging the gulf of guilt between yourself and the person standing before you begins with looking them in the eye and saying yes.
Yes to one’s value as a person.
Yes to the idea that we are all part of the solution.
Yes to building a web of community.
Yes to stepping outside our comfort zone.
Yes to not accepting homelessness, and yes to each of us imperfectly doing our part.
That’s the opposite of depressing. That’s liberation.
This newspaper is an excuse for panhandling. ‘Here’s two bucks. Keep the paper.’
The intention is good, but the impact is not.
Not taking the paper turns an equal exchange into an act of charity.
Not taking the paper turns an equal exchange into an act of charity.
Our vendors don’t want a handout. They want you to take and read the paper. It’s an issue of pride in themselves and pride in their product.
Real Change is an activist community newspaper that wins professional awards every year for quality content. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that.
Take the paper. Please.
If you’ve already read it, give it to a friend or leave it in a waiting room. Spread the experience. That’s being part of the solution.
Consistency equals dependency.
“I used to buy Real Change, but then I saw the same guy at my store year after year. I stopped supporting because their people don’t move on.”
We have an average of about 300 active vendors each month, and over the year, we’ll see more than 700. This means that most of our vendors actually do move on. But some don’t, and that’s OK.
Many of our vendors are older, formerly homeless and pay one-third of their small fixed income to live in public or nonprofit housing. That leaves them about $6,000 a year for everything else. You try living on that in Seattle.
The majority of our vendors have disabilities that leave most paid work out of reach.
The majority of our vendors have disabilities that leave most paid work out of reach. Real Change vendors have the flexibility to cope with other pressures in their lives, the autonomy to control their own work, and the satisfaction of being part of a caring community.
If there’s one thing I consistently hear from our vendors it’s this: “The friends I make selling the paper are more important to me than the money. They’re what keep me going!”
So don’t worry about the muffins. There are enough of them for all of us.
No, a muffin won’t fix everything, and someone might ask you for another. But taking care of people beats sitting alone in your kitchen, hoarding all the jam, keeping all the muffins to yourself.
Your end-of-the-year gift of any amount during our winter fund drive helps Real Change provide opportunity and a voice to homeless and low-income people while we take action for economic and racial justice. Please give today online or mail your support to 219 First Ave. S., Ste. 220, Seattle, 98104. Happy holidays, and thanks for the muffins!
Tim Harris is the Founding Director Real Change and has been active as a poor people’s organizer for more than two decades. Prior to moving to Seattle in 1994, Harris founded street newspaper Spare Change in Boston while working as Executive Director of Boston Jobs with Peace.
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Wait, there's more. Check out the full December 27 issue.