Haiti, New Orleans, And The Vegan Community
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My husband, Ed Miller (aka “Plump Vegan” here at the Soapbox), posted a blog post about Haiti on another blog that I’d like to share here below.
While his post in particular might not seem relevant to a vegan website, the truth is that that vegan bake sales are taking place across the nation to earn money for Haiti. That fact is entirely relevant to Vegan Soapbox. Even more relevant is the fact that the organization Ed suggests donating to is the same one that many vegan organizations, such as Food Fight, are choosing to donate their bake sale earnings to: Partners in Health.
Without further ado, here is Ed’s post:
I grew up in New Orleans — 15 years through high school. While I was living in Las Vegas at the time it hit, Hurricane Katrina affected me very personally. Both my parents lost their homes to flooding, and my childhood home and neighborhood were, for most practical purposes, wiped off the map. It was surreal to see the havoc the storm had wreaked on my home city.
After I heard news of the earthquake in Haiti, my mind naturally started drawing parallels. I had a disturbing thought. If New Orleanians had not had forewarning of the hurricane — if it had all happened suddenly like an earthquake — the death toll in New Orleans would have been far, far greater. Both mom likely would have died, as well as hundreds of the people I knew growing up in the city.
This thought helps put the magnitude of Haiti’s disaster into context for me. And while New Orleans is a poor city by American standards, Haiti is poorer by an order of magnitude — one of the poorest places on earth.
I’m donating to Partners In Health. It is a charity recommended to me by several different people I know who are more familiar with Haiti than I am and whose opinion I trust on such matters. PIH have been working for more than 20 years in Haiti to build a relatively decentralized health care infrastructure that provides care to people regardless of financial status. They are today helping to provide emergency care to those injured in the quake.
Are you donating? Are you having a vegan bake sale? What organization are you donating to? Let us know!
Likewise, how are you “drawing parallels” between the suffering of others (be they human or animal) and the understanding you have of suffering in your own life?
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