Easy Fixes Don't Fix Anything

The Cognitive Dissonance of Good Samaritan Efforts and the Rise of Slacktivism

With the turbulent political climate in which we find ourselves, it’s only natural that people are looking for small ways to be helpful in their communities. Social media is seeing an increase in the number of posts people share with ideas of how people can help the homeless and hungry, and of course we need compassionate souls now more than ever. But I’ve noticed a trend toward ideas that are “easy” and “low cost” to effect rather than those that are meaningful and truly helpful. Some of these ideas are having their second go-rounds on social media, like this one that first appeared in the early 2000s:

Here’s an easy way to help homeless people have a better place to sleep: You can make mats for the homeless using plastic bags.

To make the mats, plastic bags are cut into 4-inch strips and looped together to make plarn, or plastic yarn. The plarn is then crocheted to make the mat. It takes 700 plastic bags to make a 6-foot-tall mat with two-inch straps and carry handle.

This trend went viral and sleeping mat workshops became a common feature at libraries, community centers and churches across the US. It was cheap and provided a hands-on activity that could be shared with a group. But it provided little relief or comfort to people in need of shelter. The primary benefit, I would argue, was the assuaged guilt it provided to the people who collected the bags and wove the mats.

A few years ago in my town, a volunteer group spent $11,000 of donated money and considerable donated labor building several tent platforms for homeless families. The families were illegally camping on land they did not own, and the volunteer group built the platforms without bothering to get the permission of the landowner. The platforms were built in April and by October the families had moved on, leaving an enormous amount of garbage behind. The landowner was cited for having an open dump the following spring, and was forced to pay to have the garbage — and the platforms — removed from the property.

Just a couple of years ago, also in my town, a well-meaning group of volunteers purchased 5 gallon buckets and distributed them to local homeless individuals as a “sanitary” place to poop. Apparently no thought was given to the disposition of the bucket’s contents once it was full, and downtown businesses began to have to deal with the short-sightedness in ways that are too graphic to print here, but are probably just as vile as any your imagination can conjure.

I spent most of my adult life working to provide affordable housing in the form of home-ownership opportunities. In the late 2000s the Tiny House movement began to be tossed around as an easy fix for the complex problem, simply because it cost less money. Tiny houses had their place, but were not a panacea. In most states (including West Virginia) building and zoning codes were not permissive of tiny houses. Minimum sizes for floor space, hallways, doorways, ceiling heights, stairs and other restrictions made it impossible to build a truly tiny house legally on a permanent foundation. It is this reality that caused most tiny houses to be built on wheels instead of a foundation. Once the tiny house is built on wheels, it ceases to fall under building codes and - legally speaking - becomes a recreational vehicle. It then falls under laws and regulations that govern camping, such as how long it is permitted to be occupied on private land.

Tiny houses on wheels – when used as a mechanism for providing low-income families with shelter -- were a quick fix that provided no long term solution. When the occupants outgrew the dwelling, it they had no nest egg they could use toward more suitable housing, but found themselves owning a depreciated asset. Banks couldn’t collateralize the tiny house to provide home improvement loans when it inevitably needed repaired, and once it began to degrade it became a liability that had to be disposed of at some expense or abandoned.

These and other issues have been much on my mind in recent days as people try to come up with ways they can cope with the realities of Trump 2.0. Every day seems to bring a new challenge and people want to find a way to help or to resist. Attending a protest is certainly a proven way to make a difference, but when you go home and put away your signs and change out of your t-shirt with its pithy slogan, what happens next? For most of us, we log onto social media and commiserate with other activists until the next protest. What else can we do?

If you are still reading in hopes I have an easy answer, sorry to disappoint.

I do have a hard answer, though, and that is “more.” We can do more meaningful things, but those things come with a personal expense attached that most of us are not willing to pay. We can stop consuming goods and services that support the attack on free speech, but damn, Amazon sure is efficient and can deliver my shoes tomorrow. I wish Bezos wasn’t actively undermining democracy, but that locally-owned shop on the other side of town doesn’t have my brands. Yes, Zuckerberg is kowtowing to MAGA, but how else am I going to keep in touch with friends I’ve never met in the flesh? My aspirations are for societal change, but my actions vote for “easy” and “cheap.”

Activism is hard. And expensive. And time consuming.

So let’s do something easy, within our means. We’ll think positive thoughts and hope for the best, but we’ll settle for less than optimal results.

At least we’re not like those other people who are doing nothing, right?

Right?