Zach’s Rant

I’m sick of being aware of people wanting my awareness. That sentence doesn’t even make sense, yet it’s what is going on. For years I’ve watched legitimate non-profits, clubs, associations, demographics, and groups talk about raising awareness. Whatever happened to campaigning to people to ask them give their time, or God forbid their money?

The one event that almost gave me stroke (and still makes the left side of my body go numb when I think about it) is LIVE 8.
This is a quote directly from their website:
“On Saturday July 2 2005 concerts took place in 10 venues. 150 bands and 1250 musicians played across the globe to ask people not to give us their money, but to give us their names.”
“An estimated 3 BILLION PEOPLE watched LIVE 8 the greatest, greatest show on Earth. They came together with one message – make poverty history.”

Let’s do some math. If each musician gave $10,000 towards poverty they would have raised $12.5 million dollars. Which would be a drop in the bucket, if each person that attended the event had paid $2. They would have raised 6 BILLION DOLLARS! But instead they asked for your name and your awareness. In fact there was no place for you to even donate money while you were attending the event.

I feel like this is what the Bono would have been yelling from stage, “Philadelphia, you guys rock! But you know what doesn’t rock, Poverty. And that’s why we’re here (hold for applause). To tell those fat cats in Washington (hold for boos) that we’re sick of people being poor. And we’re not going to take it any longer. So don’t give your money, give us your name and we’ll take your name and put it into a registry that we will e-mailed to one of those FAT CATS! And they’ll hear our message!”

Soon this will be a commercial we’ll see on TV:

(Fade In) To a third world country that has piles of trash a young children rummaging through it looking for food.
Out steps a grey bearded man (that reminds you of Santa Claus) holding a child that has dilapidated LIVE AID 1985 t-shirt and he says, “This is Isabel. She has lived here her whole life. She lacks the medical attention to probably live past the age of 14. She has no shoes, no possibility of education, and she wonders where he next meal is coming from.
All she needs is 40 cents a day to live. Will you give to her?
If so then pick up your phone and call us. Tell us that you are aware of Isabel. And that you’d like to sponsor her in principle. And if you try to give us money we’ll spend it on making more commercials just like this one. So don’t even bother, you’re already aware of her and what she really needs from us is to give your good thoughts and spend that money on your Extra Tall Non-Fat, Extra Soy, Whip on Bottom, Double Decaf, Triple Foam, Carmel Americano. I thank you and Isabel does as well. (Fade Out)

PS. This whole topic leads into rants on Bono and Al Gore, but those will be for another time. But as long as you are aware of who Bono and Al Gore are, then I’ll sleep well at night.