I was thinking this morning of when I first became class conscious.

For several weeks I volunteered to serve meals to people experiencing homelessness. Afterwards, I volunteered at a charity dinner soliciting donations from wealthy patrons where the level of opulence and disconnect was staggering to me.

The dinner was hosted at a private estate where they owned more than a dozen cars and 5 houses for a family of 7. This was fewer than 5 miles outside of a city with overflowing shelters and people freezing to death. Here was all the wealth needed to provide homes to every person presently surviving in a shelter, and it was squandered in the hands of people entirely detached and unaware of the scope of the problem. In their minds, through petty charity they could live with a clean conscious believing they’d done their part.

The egregiousness of the disparity, the obliviousness of our guests, and their astonishing reluctance to donate left me furious for days. My own hypocrisy left me feeling crushed and crumpled inside for much longer.

  • jucheguevara
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 years ago

    I realized that my involvement in the tech sector would help to automate jobs and thus worsen the living standards of the precariat under the irrational system of private ownership of the means of production