In Tampa, Food Not Bombs was arrested for not getting a permit for "having an event on public land". http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article1253... even though they've been feeding the homeless there for 10 years. The real cause for the crackdown appears to be when there's some event going on in the city, like football championships, where visibility on the city's homeless problem could be problematic for politicians.
I'm saddened that he felt compelled to resign. The Gospel advocates poverty, whether you take that in the literal sense or whether you take it to mean humility, I imagine the stark divide visible in SV would probably be pretty hard to understand.
they tend to get de-funded, weeded out (and sometimes worse, though i hear such methods as permanent exile, public stockades, stoning and crucifixion are not allowed in Palo Alto at this time.)
If you live near any urban area in the Bible Belt, it is more common than you think. Granted, if you're in a small town or rural area, you're absolutely right.
Pastors deal with so much frustration every day. Working with people in any job is messy and can be very draining. In the context of a church, working with people is significantly messier and more draining.
Pastors burn out all the time. But it is still sad to see.
If you attend a church or know a pastor, just know that they are probably dealing with a lot of stuff you don't know about.
Apparently the pastor has had difficulty growing his congregation. I wonder how many people there are in Palo Alto who partake in charitable activities but not when they're affiliated with organized religion.
He may have been a bit profane, but he's not wrong. Rich and upper-middle class liberals, particularly in places like the Bay area, need to take a serious look inward.
I personally give the respect to people to refer them as they would like to be identified. If a Muslim jihadi says he is a jihadi, I respect his self identification and call him that. Similarly, I respect these people's self identification as liberal or progressive.
> Claiming someone's actions don't line up with their words is not a no-true-Scotsman scenario.
No, but claiming someone isn't truly in a category to defend the category from the hypocrisy of the individual is, because it ignores the possibility that the category lends itself to hypocrisy.
That fallacy does not apply. I can claim to be an alien from Saturn. People can, and should, disagree.
Besides, powerful and wealthy people have often claimed to be "on the side of the poor and helpless", to "protect" their subjects and so on throughout history.
This applied to: emperors, kings, aristocrats & knights, shogun & samurai, military leaders... hence the hypocrisy that the pastor is pointing out.
Raising the No True Scotsman fallacy here provides an "out" for anyone accused of hypocrisy. It "proves too much" if you will.
To make no issue of someone calling themselves "progressive" while not supporting the policies considered "progressive" is perfectly possible, but it basically shifts the conversation away from the topics at hand and pushes them one level of abstraction into the slippery nature of the way we use language.
There is a substantive disagreement that could be addressed head on: What does the person calling themselves "progressive" believe that title mean? And why do they believe that the title applies to themselves?
> I personally give the respect to people to refer them as they would like to be identified
Huh? Why?
Seriously, I don't understand that kind of thinking. I don't think individuals necessarily deserve that kind of power others. Sometimes we should adjust to save other peoples feelings. But having that as the default seems crazy. What if they are full of shit? Or misuse that power? Or I simply disagree with them.. shouldn't I have the right to disagree with their self identification?
These labels are all fuzzy, so self identification is the only reliable way of applying labels in any sense. For example, if the Chinese communist party says they are communist, why would you want to argue with them?
> so self identification is the only reliable way of applying labels in any sense
No, it's not. Self-identification is one of many ways of operationalizing a categorization, and it's useful for some purposes but not others. You can also operationalize by sets of concrete policies, which is useful for different purposes. And there are other options.
The relevant basis of categorization depends on the purpose of categorization.
The old 2x2 model of Left vs. Right and Authoritarian vs. Libertarian doesn't really work on a "longitudinal" basis. Community has been redefined in a few ways, and we're more bipolar -- Liberal Libertarianism for "us", the full authoritarian treatment for "them".
Is it so strange? The progressive value system very much says that social services should be provided by the state and paid for by taxes. It's not hard to see how this leads to the conclusion that if they're paying taxes then their work on this planet is done. In fact, several progressives including Bernie Sanders have actively campaigned against private charities.
> In fact, several progressives including Bernie Sanders have actively campaigned against private charities.
It's very common for progressives and leftists to be skeptical of tax-subsidies for private charities viewing them as mechanism for redirecting resources from public priorities to the private priorities of wealthy donors.
It's less common to see them actually campaign against private charity as such, and I suspect any claim of the latter is based on the former.
It's gross that the American professional class posture for status by one-upping each-other with views on social issues too radical for a 20th-century bomb-throwing anarchist, while simultaneously acting as middle-class to upper-class conservatives on every issue where they can have a material impact.
I'm waiting for the day you literally see city government in Palo Alto or Berkeley obscuring a homeless camp from view with a rainbow banner or a Hate Has No Home Here sign.
(The lovely thing about "hate has no home here" is that neither does anyone else.)
They are actually liberal, they are not progressive or leftist. People get confused because conservatives have spent a long time equating those, and they are sometimes allies against conservatism.
People should just move out of the area and find a better for themselves. Whining has never solved anything for anyone, and, when successful, end up in "socialist" revolutions that turn the country into a shithole. (Venezuelan here, and I don't like Trump, by the way)
Large SV companies have nowadays become cash-making media machines of a gargantuan scale, acquiring that cash from all over the world for a service of questionable value, and investing it back in a relatively small area while providing only a few tens of thousands of jobs there. This distribution of capital creates a huge imbalance, no matter how "liberal" the stakeholders are.
My sense from reading was that he was upset by what he perceived to be hypocrisy on the part of the wealthy. In that they talked the talk about charity and making the world better, but their actions spoke differently. So liberal words, liberal values being expressed, but pure greed when it mattered.
If they really cared for the poor, they would diversify their investments both geographically and across many sectors of the real economy in order to restructure it for better efficiency.
What they do instead is that they boost their PR image and invest it in the "next big thing" like driverless cars, augmented reality, etc., and these endeavours often fail in a few years time, effectively wasting the capital and disproportionally enriching the selected few.
good quote. the "it's hard for a rich man to enter heaven" sentiment rewritten in modern language.
i don't have access to their balance sheets and P&L statements, but nowadays i assume most of our well-respected thought-leaders, entertainers, politicians and other public figures are fundamentally fakes and frauds, continually perfecting their SJW cover stories.
and i think they do it as much to fool themselves as to fool the rest of us.
I commute between New York and the Bay Area, and am consistently struck by how plutocratic of a city San Francisco has become. Most social functions are held in private venues and heavily segregated by race and class. Leaving a charity event, a millionaire will casually step over a homeless person en route to their apartment. They will talk about poverty in Africa and then vote in NIMBYist politicians. A total gutting of humanity, and I’m saying this as a New Yorker.
It's a dangerous trend that people with money less and less interact with people with less money. Private schools, super expensive neighborhoods, super expensive gyms, bars and restaurants. These people have the power to influence political decisions but they have no idea how most people live.
> This is why YIMBY movements will continue to fall flat on their face
They fall flat on their face because those who are best placed to counter-act the Bay Area's NIMBYism find it fashionable to market their political laziness as cynicism.
You have articulated brilliantly something which as a Brazilian disturbs me to no end. I despair seeing cities change their structure to accommodate the desire for segregation.
Speaking of Brazil reminds me of a documentary about Ayrton Senna I watched years ago. He flew his beautiful helicopter to his beautiful skyscraper in Sao Paolo, then to his beautiful beach house and then taking out his beautiful boat. All that with dirty, poor kids and the slums in Sao Paolo in the background. It was a really jarring experience.
I couldn't agree with you more. I moved to the Bay Area a few years ago from Vancouver which certainly has its share of extremely wealthy residents and expensive housing problems. I was blown away by the level of social inequality in SF exactly as you describe. In Vancouver, you at least see the rich people partying near you. Perhaps at the next restaurant over on the beach which is much nicer than the one you're at, but the rich don't segregate themselves from the population at large in the same way.
"I couldn't agree with you more. I moved to the Bay Area a few years ago from Vancouver which certainly has its share of extremely wealthy residents and expensive housing problems. I was blown away by the level of social inequality in SF exactly as you describe. In Vancouver, you at least see the rich people partying near you. Perhaps at the next restaurant over on the beach which is much nicer than the one you're at, but the rich don't segregate themselves from the population at large in the same way."
I think there is an additional, confounding element in the transient nature of the population in San Francisco.
Many, many people (rich, successful, young, etc.) are just here for a few years and have no intention of making long term investments in the community or becoming true stakeholders (by, for instance, raising their family here).
This makes it difficult to engage in any way, much less in messy, difficult social problems that are somewhat unique to San Francisco.
>Many, many people (rich, successful, young, etc.) are just here for a few years and have no intention of making long term investments in the community or becoming true stakeholders (by, for instance, raising their family here).
And many of the long-term residents like it that way.
> the transient nature of the population in San Francisco
If transience is defined as the fraction of the population who moved in or out in 2015, San Francisco is a relatively non-transient city [1]. The five most transient cities in America by this metric are Provo, Ann Arbor, Gainesville, Boulder and Tempe. Transience does not appear, at first glance, to positively correlate with inequality.
Provo (BYU), Anne Arbor (University of Michigan), Gainesville (University of Florida), Boulder (University of Colorado), and Tempe (Arizona State University) are each homes to mega-college campuses and student populations. Whole 'nother story.
People who pay attention have always known this about high society liberals. They will latch onto populist movements to help raise their image with the public and bask in the prestige that comes with it, but behind the scenes they are not progressive at all. For many, being wealthy is not enough, for they must also be admired by the general public, and you don’t get there by supporting unpopular views.
It’s pathetic really. Always say what you mean and mean what you say. It’s better to have a strong connection to a small niche of people, than a shallow connection to the general public.
"...It’s better to have a strong connection to a small niche of people, than a shallow connection to the general public...."
Strong connections to a small group of people is exactly what the article is getting at. It's a members only wealth club effectively, much like what you find in New England. (If I'm being honest, it's EXACTLY like what we've had in New England since our inception.)
At any rate, these people already have extremely strong connections to their small group. What we're trying to do is get them to have some, at lest shallow, connections to the rest of us.
> So liberal words, liberal values being expressed, but pure greed when it mattered.
But liberalism (both in the modern American sense, and in the classical sense of which both modern American liberalism and mainstream modern American conservatism are subsets) is a system which overtly valorizes greed and the pursuit of personal gain in a facially neutral common market-based environment as both a deontological good and a practical engine of social progress. (Modern American liberalism differs in its expression of this from the modern conservative expression of classical liberalism in favoring modest and limited active correction of the impact of past deviations from the ideal of facial neutrality as a matter of Justice and restoration of the ideal neutral condition whereas the conservative expression of classical liberalism favors studious current facial neutrality.)
Good for him. Thankfully I'll be living in placid Seattle where the kind liberals are, surrounded by beautiful nature and a society grounded in a cannabis induced peace.
Has anyone else read "The Golden Age" by John C. Wright?
I'm really fascinated by the idea of the College of Hortation.
I think Wright actually sees it as sinister, but I thought it was a good idea.
Rough idea:
Make all laws extremely libertarian, and then have a voluntary group people join that does things liberals say they want (free healthcare with progressive membership dues, etc.)
Except in his book, if you weren't a member, no one would do business with you - because it was against the terms of membership, and almost everyone was a member. So then those people who rejected society could, but they couldn't trade with almost anyone.
Most of the "liberal" folks today are really old-style chamber of commerce republicans with a different flavor of conformity. More accepting of old social taboos, and we've replace suits with khaki.
Religion is defined in the popular consciousness as regressive right-wing fire and brimstone types, with a helping of swarmy prosperity ministry. The success of the political parties of polarizing folks on wedge issues like abortion is incredible and dangerous. The catholic church I grew up in, for all its faults, was basically the backbone of the social services sector in my region. Now many of the holy-roller types are so aggressive about pro-life activity they are supporting GOP candidates. That's leading to more political rally nonsense, less service like food pantries, helping the aging & sick, etc.
>Gregory Stevens has a public Twitter account. I thought some of his troubling recent tweets should come to the attention of Palo Alto city leaders and the residents of Palo Alto. []
>Should this type of person and the organization he represents oversee a Palo Alto Community Center?
Haha, wow. Can you get more stereotypical Silicon Valley than running to the nearest authority figure because you don't like someone's opinions and choice of (not even that) strong language?
"Jesus was a homeless Jew who said it was harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle"
Ok, I agree, but that seem to be unusual take for American nominations. At least my impression was that they did not tend to preach help to poor, rather the opposite.
Did I had wrong impression or is this take really the minority one?
Assuming you mean religious denominations. If so, then yeah you have the wrong impression. Churches tend to be extremely involved in helping the poor. They're regularly involved in clothing drives, food banks, christmas gift drives, feeding the homeless, etc.
You might be conflating it with American politicians who wear religion on their sleeve. Religious Americans make up a huge and disproportionate chunk of voters. This includes the traditional religious conservatives as well as a diverse group of WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) types, but also black and Hispanic voters who are also largely religious. This is the reason for absurd pandering like Hillary Clinton stating that her favorite book was the bible.
Religion, in theory, is a great thing since it encourages people to follow an [ideally] positive value system and gives people a way to meet and organize things. In practice the value systems are often pretty screwy, and the whole divine imperative turns plenty of people into self righteous assholes. In many ways modern notions of social justice are turning into a new religion and suffering the exact same problems. This is why we can't have anything nice!
Less about how someone spends their money and more about their ideals. These people are fake and only value wealth. Their values are weak and mold to where the money is. The same people would be racists or bigots a 100-150+ years ago because they would be wealthier with those values. It's socially damaging to be those things today and actually impedes wealth so of course they believe they are "socially liberal".
Including blue collar workers in their community or network of friends does not grow their wealth. They provide no benefit to these people's social worth in their eyes so they are exiled from the community.
The entire Christianity and Catholic church has been the biggest examples of bigotry, racial, hatred and unimaginable violence. A Pastor should not engage in this type of virtue signalling.
When you create wealth you are already helping poor people and blue collar workers. Who do you think mows Mark Zuck's lawn ?
"The entire Christianity and Catholic church has been the biggest examples of bigotry, racial, hatred and unimaginable violence."
True but why? Most of this was rooted in power and wealth. The Catholic Church is one of the most wealthy empires ever to have existed. Why do you think they became bigots, and racially radicalized? They wanted power, exclusiveness, and wealth. Legitimizing servitude and slavery through religion made them incredibly powerful.
"A Pastor should not engage in this type of virtue signalling.""
Like everything else religion is evolving, this Church is LGBT friendly. As someone who has a gay family member who attends an LGBT church these things do exist.
"When you create wealth you are already helping poor people and blue collar workers. Who do you think mows Mark Zuck's lawn ?"
That's fine, as long as you pay them enough to live near where they work in a house that isn't a shanty or ghetto. We don't need modern age indentured servants in the United States.
I'm assuming you identify with the Republican party? My only interest is if you identified as being "Liberal" because you definitely aren't.
My wife and I moved out of PA / Menlo partly because of this. Shallow people, spoiled children and the rude entitled behavior of almost everyone.
Each year at my kids school they had a gift tree with cards with things the kids on the other side of the 101 (East PA) wanted. 99% of it was shoes. They just wanted a shoes. Every year we would take a few cards and wait for others to do the same. Every year at the end there where still cards on the tree and my wife and I would take every last one. How f'ing hard is it for someone to do this? Why the hell would there be anything left?!? I never understood that until I realized it would take time out of their schedule to have to do this. Sure people gave money, but god forbid they had to do any work.
A lot of commenters are saying that Pastor Stevens is right, and that more should be done. I encourage all people to volunteer and to try to make our world a better place, not just through donations, but through labor as well. The joys and rewards of volunteering and helping others are innumerable and ever growing; even The Economist of all magazines thinks so too [https://www.economist.com/node/8023307]. If you see that your world is not what you want it to be, please consider volunteering. Here are some organizations I have worked with and can vouch for:
This hypocritical behavior goes all the way to the top. AL Gore, for example, routinely flies on a private jet to various functions throughout the world. Compare this to Mahatma Gandhi who was barefoot and not in the Rolls Royce.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadIs that true?
Its been enforced haphazardly in Atlanta over the last couple of years.
In Tampa, Food Not Bombs was arrested for not getting a permit for "having an event on public land". http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article1253... even though they've been feeding the homeless there for 10 years. The real cause for the crackdown appears to be when there's some event going on in the city, like football championships, where visibility on the city's homeless problem could be problematic for politicians.
In Orlando, Food Not Bombs also gets arrested for feeding the homeless. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/crime/os-homeless-feedin...
It was illegal in Fort Lauderdale, until the police arrested a 90 year old man for feeding the homeless. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/0... It's probably still illegal, though.
Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
It's a rare thing for Jesus to make a pronouncement like that in the text. Which leads me to believe it's an important part of his teaching.
Also, out of curiosity, what translation is that?
First returned Google result in Firefox private mode[1] indicates this wording is specific to the King James Version (KJV).
[1] http://biblehub.com/kjv/matthew/19-23.htm
Keep fighting the good fight Gregory, this evil atheist is on your side :-)
Reminds me of "liberal" SF/Bay Area. Everyone talks the talk, but no one walks the walk. It's quite sad really.
Pastors burn out all the time. But it is still sad to see.
If you attend a church or know a pastor, just know that they are probably dealing with a lot of stuff you don't know about.
I personally give the respect to people to refer them as they would like to be identified. If a Muslim jihadi says he is a jihadi, I respect his self identification and call him that. Similarly, I respect these people's self identification as liberal or progressive.
I think he's simply alleging that their revealed preferences do not line up with their stated preferences.
[Delete rest of comment, not relevant]
No, but claiming someone isn't truly in a category to defend the category from the hypocrisy of the individual is, because it ignores the possibility that the category lends itself to hypocrisy.
Besides, powerful and wealthy people have often claimed to be "on the side of the poor and helpless", to "protect" their subjects and so on throughout history.
This applied to: emperors, kings, aristocrats & knights, shogun & samurai, military leaders... hence the hypocrisy that the pastor is pointing out.
To make no issue of someone calling themselves "progressive" while not supporting the policies considered "progressive" is perfectly possible, but it basically shifts the conversation away from the topics at hand and pushes them one level of abstraction into the slippery nature of the way we use language.
There is a substantive disagreement that could be addressed head on: What does the person calling themselves "progressive" believe that title mean? And why do they believe that the title applies to themselves?
Huh? Why?
Seriously, I don't understand that kind of thinking. I don't think individuals necessarily deserve that kind of power others. Sometimes we should adjust to save other peoples feelings. But having that as the default seems crazy. What if they are full of shit? Or misuse that power? Or I simply disagree with them.. shouldn't I have the right to disagree with their self identification?
True
> so self identification is the only reliable way of applying labels in any sense
No, it's not. Self-identification is one of many ways of operationalizing a categorization, and it's useful for some purposes but not others. You can also operationalize by sets of concrete policies, which is useful for different purposes. And there are other options.
The relevant basis of categorization depends on the purpose of categorization.
The old 2x2 model of Left vs. Right and Authoritarian vs. Libertarian doesn't really work on a "longitudinal" basis. Community has been redefined in a few ways, and we're more bipolar -- Liberal Libertarianism for "us", the full authoritarian treatment for "them".
It's very common for progressives and leftists to be skeptical of tax-subsidies for private charities viewing them as mechanism for redirecting resources from public priorities to the private priorities of wealthy donors.
It's less common to see them actually campaign against private charity as such, and I suspect any claim of the latter is based on the former.
I'm waiting for the day you literally see city government in Palo Alto or Berkeley obscuring a homeless camp from view with a rainbow banner or a Hate Has No Home Here sign.
(The lovely thing about "hate has no home here" is that neither does anyone else.)
What they do instead is that they boost their PR image and invest it in the "next big thing" like driverless cars, augmented reality, etc., and these endeavours often fail in a few years time, effectively wasting the capital and disproportionally enriching the selected few.
i don't have access to their balance sheets and P&L statements, but nowadays i assume most of our well-respected thought-leaders, entertainers, politicians and other public figures are fundamentally fakes and frauds, continually perfecting their SJW cover stories.
and i think they do it as much to fool themselves as to fool the rest of us.
They fall flat on their face because those who are best placed to counter-act the Bay Area's NIMBYism find it fashionable to market their political laziness as cynicism.
I think there is an additional, confounding element in the transient nature of the population in San Francisco.
Many, many people (rich, successful, young, etc.) are just here for a few years and have no intention of making long term investments in the community or becoming true stakeholders (by, for instance, raising their family here).
This makes it difficult to engage in any way, much less in messy, difficult social problems that are somewhat unique to San Francisco.
And many of the long-term residents like it that way.
If transience is defined as the fraction of the population who moved in or out in 2015, San Francisco is a relatively non-transient city [1]. The five most transient cities in America by this metric are Provo, Ann Arbor, Gainesville, Boulder and Tempe. Transience does not appear, at first glance, to positively correlate with inequality.
[1] https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-most-transient-cities-in...
That's not to say that other countries aren't following in the same direction - for more classist segregation and isolation.
It’s pathetic really. Always say what you mean and mean what you say. It’s better to have a strong connection to a small niche of people, than a shallow connection to the general public.
That's a radical notion for almost everyone, not just the rich! Surprisingly difficult in practice too.
Strong connections to a small group of people is exactly what the article is getting at. It's a members only wealth club effectively, much like what you find in New England. (If I'm being honest, it's EXACTLY like what we've had in New England since our inception.)
At any rate, these people already have extremely strong connections to their small group. What we're trying to do is get them to have some, at lest shallow, connections to the rest of us.
But liberalism (both in the modern American sense, and in the classical sense of which both modern American liberalism and mainstream modern American conservatism are subsets) is a system which overtly valorizes greed and the pursuit of personal gain in a facially neutral common market-based environment as both a deontological good and a practical engine of social progress. (Modern American liberalism differs in its expression of this from the modern conservative expression of classical liberalism in favoring modest and limited active correction of the impact of past deviations from the ideal of facial neutrality as a matter of Justice and restoration of the ideal neutral condition whereas the conservative expression of classical liberalism favors studious current facial neutrality.)
I'm really fascinated by the idea of the College of Hortation.
I think Wright actually sees it as sinister, but I thought it was a good idea.
Rough idea:
Make all laws extremely libertarian, and then have a voluntary group people join that does things liberals say they want (free healthcare with progressive membership dues, etc.)
Except in his book, if you weren't a member, no one would do business with you - because it was against the terms of membership, and almost everyone was a member. So then those people who rejected society could, but they couldn't trade with almost anyone.
Most of the "liberal" folks today are really old-style chamber of commerce republicans with a different flavor of conformity. More accepting of old social taboos, and we've replace suits with khaki.
Religion is defined in the popular consciousness as regressive right-wing fire and brimstone types, with a helping of swarmy prosperity ministry. The success of the political parties of polarizing folks on wedge issues like abortion is incredible and dangerous. The catholic church I grew up in, for all its faults, was basically the backbone of the social services sector in my region. Now many of the holy-roller types are so aggressive about pro-life activity they are supporting GOP candidates. That's leading to more political rally nonsense, less service like food pantries, helping the aging & sick, etc.
The posts in question
>Should this type of person and the organization he represents oversee a Palo Alto Community Center?
Haha, wow. Can you get more stereotypical Silicon Valley than running to the nearest authority figure because you don't like someone's opinions and choice of (not even that) strong language?
Ok, I agree, but that seem to be unusual take for American nominations. At least my impression was that they did not tend to preach help to poor, rather the opposite.
Did I had wrong impression or is this take really the minority one?
You might be conflating it with American politicians who wear religion on their sleeve. Religious Americans make up a huge and disproportionate chunk of voters. This includes the traditional religious conservatives as well as a diverse group of WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) types, but also black and Hispanic voters who are also largely religious. This is the reason for absurd pandering like Hillary Clinton stating that her favorite book was the bible.
Religion, in theory, is a great thing since it encourages people to follow an [ideally] positive value system and gives people a way to meet and organize things. In practice the value systems are often pretty screwy, and the whole divine imperative turns plenty of people into self righteous assholes. In many ways modern notions of social justice are turning into a new religion and suffering the exact same problems. This is why we can't have anything nice!
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/11/28/are-...
That result is both unsurprising and meaningless.
Including blue collar workers in their community or network of friends does not grow their wealth. They provide no benefit to these people's social worth in their eyes so they are exiled from the community.
When you create wealth you are already helping poor people and blue collar workers. Who do you think mows Mark Zuck's lawn ?
True but why? Most of this was rooted in power and wealth. The Catholic Church is one of the most wealthy empires ever to have existed. Why do you think they became bigots, and racially radicalized? They wanted power, exclusiveness, and wealth. Legitimizing servitude and slavery through religion made them incredibly powerful.
"A Pastor should not engage in this type of virtue signalling.""
Like everything else religion is evolving, this Church is LGBT friendly. As someone who has a gay family member who attends an LGBT church these things do exist.
"When you create wealth you are already helping poor people and blue collar workers. Who do you think mows Mark Zuck's lawn ?"
That's fine, as long as you pay them enough to live near where they work in a house that isn't a shanty or ghetto. We don't need modern age indentured servants in the United States.
I'm assuming you identify with the Republican party? My only interest is if you identified as being "Liberal" because you definitely aren't.
Each year at my kids school they had a gift tree with cards with things the kids on the other side of the 101 (East PA) wanted. 99% of it was shoes. They just wanted a shoes. Every year we would take a few cards and wait for others to do the same. Every year at the end there where still cards on the tree and my wife and I would take every last one. How f'ing hard is it for someone to do this? Why the hell would there be anything left?!? I never understood that until I realized it would take time out of their schedule to have to do this. Sure people gave money, but god forbid they had to do any work.
http://www.bacbsa.org/contact/48588
https://www.bgcp.org/
If you know of other organizations in need of volunteers, please reply for others to see too.