| Re: Calgary Downtown Association "Your Generosity is Killing Me" ad campaign
It seems like Susan Brandt and a lot of others are very upset about the ads the Calgary Downtown Association has been running in Fast Forward and other papers, and quite frankly, I don't understand why.
While it's true that not all homeless people are drug addicts and alcoholics, the fact of the matter is that many are – if a man asks me for spare change in the street, am I supposed to stop and ask him if he's a junkie first?
These ads are not telling anyone to ignore the homeless and poor and keep all of your money for yourself, they're simply suggesting that if you are going to give some money to help someone out, give it to a charity, an organization where you know your cash will be used to help someone less fortunate.
As for St. Francis of Assisi, he did not "beg to live all his life." He was born into a very wealthy merchant family and led a very abundant, some say spoiled, life up until his 20s. He did poorly in school and never finished his education, and he didn't really have to. After a run-in with a leper, which included a hug at the end, he found himself sympathizing with the poor and started begging – not as an action to abolish poverty, but rather to make it "holy."
I could even go as far as to claim that he was abusing the system, just like some still are today, taking money away from the people who truly need and deserve all the help they can get, such as the so-called "working poor" – people you don't see because you're being chased down the street by a mouthwash-drinking man who is screaming at you, calling you a "whore" for not wanting to give him money (a fair representation of my walk home from work Tuesday afternoon), or people who are being misrepresented by kids who, when offered paid work instead of spare change, tell the prospective employer to "f*** off" (17th Avenue S.W. a couple of weeks ago).
I have no problem helping someone who doesn't have all the things I have, but I also work hard for what I have, and if I'm giving some of it away, I'm going to make sure it goes to the right cause.
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