It’s not an act of God. It’s a natural disaster that we know how to mitigate: in a rich country with good building codes few die. But this is a rich world, so why are there poor countries where tens or hundreds of thousands die?

Our hearts go out to our brothers and sisters in Haiti. But how much will we be family again once the crisis is off our front pages?

Once again we fortunate citizens of rich countries write checks to disaster agencies. Once again the people who go from our country to the disaster do all they can in the moment, and we thank them for doing it. Then they, more than the rest of us who find other matters occupying our minds, are faced with the question of what kind of aid helps most in the long term.

“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, give him a fishing rod and he and his family eat forever” goes the saying (and it works even better, all the reports show, if the “he” is a “she”). But in fact the local bully boy takes away her rod, or – mafia-like – makes her pay protection money to keep it, or in capitalist style makes her rent it back, and meanwhile the fish have all been taken by the big boys, whatever their designation: criminal, capitalist, or politician. So the aid agency professionals come to see that only systemic political solutions work in the long run, and they frequently become socialists or some other brand of visionary. But to espouse socialism and get into conflict with the local and global (often US-based) criminal capitalist powers ruins their agencies’ chances of raising large sums during disasters, because the large American public has not faced the same questions about long term solutions and have not been there watching when the donated fishing rods were taken away, and so have not cared enough to agonize about the solutions. So most of the aid workers back off their radicalism, because their salaries and chance to return to help the poor depend on fundraising from the widest-possible public during disasters. They settle for what can realistically be done, and often good things can be done, and often not. The world development profession includes many decent people, but like President Obama, they are hampered by the lack of radical energy in the great American, European and Japanese publics.

So after we write our checks to our preferred agencies, let’s this time put more energy into long term solutions. Tikkun has for the last few years promoted the idea of a US foreign policy based on generosity not domination, symbolized by the idea of a Global Marshall Plan to end world poverty. You may prefer another route. But the idea is to think big, really big. Thinking small is attractive, more personal and manageable. But we can’t afford to only think small, because too many rebuilt villages and businesses have been devastated by the big boys’ trade policies that deny poor farmers’ a fair price for their produce, and by all the many predatory practices of the international money and power system. Port-au-Prince was not unbuilt in a day.


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