Reach out and put the touch on someone

Page 18

The Urbane Indian

For the last month or so I have been harassed by a constant series of telemarketers. It's reached the point where I'm afraid to answer my phone. I'm not talking about the innocuous calls from Bell, or some newspaper asking if I want to order the Sunday edition free of charge for three months-how could I possibly exist without it? I can handle those. I'm talking about the charities.

I have been getting an average of three to four calls a week from telemarketers giving me a 30-second run down on how their particular cause is so tragic and how it needs my humble contribution to survive. First of all, I realize such criticism may be viewed as politically incorrect.

How could one possibly criticize any organization dedicated to doing good? Therefore, I would like to state on the record that I am definitely not anti-charity. I fully admit that on principle and in practice, I support these organizations. I give and I give frequently because I am grateful or ashamed to be healthy. But in the last two months I've supported organizations like War Amps, Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research, the Organ Donation & Transplant Association of Canada and the Shrine Circus, just to name a few.

And I'm sure, like good gossip in the high school bathroom, when somebody makes a donation word gets around quick. Pretty soon everybody has been told that so-and-so is a soft touch. Then it becomes open season.

During May I easily donated several hundred dollars to at least four charities. But the calls kept coming and coming. And it got to the point where I had run out of beer bottles to cash in and blood to sell. Good will and reality are uncomfortable companions.

It all stopped for me when I got a call from the Shrine Circus. I had happily made a donation to them a couple weeks before. Evidently that was not enough. They phoned once again, supposedly to thank me for my support. Then they told me that, unfortunately, they hadn't reached their anticipated level of donations. They had fallen short. And they asked me if I could find it with in my heart to donate once more-for those poor kids. That's when I started feeling uncomfortable.

Nobody wants to say no to poor, sick kids. I had visions of a group of Shriners chasing me down the street in those little cars of theirs. But I had already given one donation, and I thought it was in bad taste to call back again.

Not long after I got a call from another charity investigating the possibility of a second donation too... in a little over a month. Then came a call from somebody representing Pediatric AIDS. I had already given to one AIDS organization, but evidently that didn't count. These were sick kids this time, not adults. They deserved their own separate support. That's when, for me, it officially turned from telemarketing to teleguilting. It became charity abuse.

When I visited India last year, I was warned by some local people to beware of giving out money to the unfortunately numerous street urchins that populate the cities. Almost instantaneously, I was told, word would somehow manage to get out that there was a North American giving out money on the street and there was a serious danger that I would be swarmed.

I guess telemarketing is the 21st century version. Instead I was urged to donate to legitimate charitable organizations that work with street youth.

I wanted to tell these anonymous phone people that I'm just a Native playwright/journalist for goodness sakes. My financial resources are like this: take the number of Native plays you've seen in the last year, times it by the number of Native books you've purchased in that same time period, and divide by the number of registered charities listed. The telemarketers probably make more money than I do. My mother thinks my career choice is the biggest tragedy in the last half century. So where's my charity?

And as I write this, on my desk there's an official tax receipt from the anadian Liver Foundation. Attached to it is a letter from the Volunteer Chairman stating "We have achieved so much, thanks to you, but there is still so much to learn about liver disease and the affects it can have on your overall health. That is why I am asking you to consider making an additional gift today..." Right beside it is a donation pledge from the Allergy Asthma Information Association waiting to be filled out. Part of me wants to, but another part of me is screaming out "enough already." It's been said that charity begins at home... this month I think it's moved.

It may be time for a new charity. One specifically set up to deal with the unique needs of those abused by charities. We could sure use one.