Can only charitable acts help the injustice system?
Good service can come in multiple ways for the people who were affected by the horrible injustice system, from doing charitable acts for them to advocating for social change. But some are better than others. I used to say that short-term charitable work was the best solution because it was able to make an immediate impact. After volunteering in the community, I realized that charitable acts do work, but we need to add more to it, like advocating for social change by reforming existing laws or eliminating them altogether is the best solution. Because it not only addresses the immediate needs but also targets the root causes.
The issue of mass incarceration has been going on for many years and can be dated back to the 1870s when laws were first introduced to oppress specific races. Many laws have been introduced to try to arrest specific races to try to suppress the people’s voices. In the 1870s, an anti-opium law was introduced to target Chinese people, and then about four decades later, the anti-cannabis laws targeted Mexican Americans and migrants. They didn’t stop there; during the Nixon presidency, he enacted a policy that was called the “War on Drugs.” It was a policy to target black people and “hippies.” The VERA article has a quote said by the Nixon campaign to showcase what the law really meant. It said, “By getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings”. The implementation of these laws skyrocketed the incarceration rate by being able to suppress a certain race and putting them in jail for a long time. This shows that this issue has been around for a while and still holds some power today, but we should also look at the consequences of this problem.
The effect of these laws has damaged these communities greatly by suspending or taking away basic help and creating a stigma around them. The consequences of these incarcerations often lead to these individuals getting stripped of their rights and being treated as second-class citizens. In the VERA it talks about what people lose when they have a criminal record. It says, “People with low incomes are denied food stamps and public assistance for past drug convictions … suspend driver’s licenses for drug offenses totally unrelated to driving; and numerous other policies deny child custody, voting rights, employment, loans, and financial aid to people with criminal records.”. The effects presented usually attach a stigma around these incarcerated people, which impedes their way of joining back society. These communities face a lot of stigma and racially motivated incarcerations, but we can do charitable acts to help to a certain extent.
Charitable acts play a big role in helping out people who are/were incarcerated. Working with Francisco Homes has made me realize doing charitable acts can have a change. It’s able to change the stigma behind incarcerated people and create a better environment. The article Busted Halo talks about how charity acts can push people that were forward and “can be personally transformative, and that is one of the greatest blessings.” Doing little acts such as visiting someone to become a pen pal or doing what I do at the Francisco Homes, which has a little writing workshop to go out and do little activities. Charitable acts have their pros and cons, such as it can be a quick and really helpful way to help the issue, but it doesn’t fully try to get to the root of the problem, so that’s why we should advocate for social change too.
Although charitable acts can help in the short run, the best solution is to also advocate for social change at the same time because it focuses on the root of the problem. The reason why we should advocate for social change is because it is able to reach the root of the problem and try to eliminate these laws that were set to racially suppress one group. In the Brookings article, it talks about the importance of social change and how it can be done. It says, “To begin transforming prisons to help prisons and people change, a new funding opportunity for state departments of correction is needed.” this shows that we need to advocate for acts that target the root cause of these problems and not just only be doing charitable acts. A lot of people agree that we should focus on advocating social change but don’t know how. I’ll give you some examples of how you can do that.
There are many ways for you to advocate for social change or do things that can help reach the root of the problem. Participating in community discussions can help bring to light the issues of these laws that encourage racially based incarceration. Another thing you could do is engage with your local or national representatives through town hall meetings and other forums that can show the urgency for change to those in positions of legislative power. Additionally, being more involved with projects can help inmates have more rights and create a better living situation for them overall. These efforts can help pave the way to transforming how we see incarcerated people and giving them a better opportunity in life.
When trying to help incarcerated people or ex, you’re able to help in multiple ways, from doing charitable acts like writing workshops to advocating for social change, such as engaging in your local town hall meeting and addressing these racist laws. But what we should really do is both if we want to make a change due to charitable acts giving us a good starting ground, then finishing it off with projects and always reforming to get to the root of these systematically racist laws that encourage mass incarcerations.
