Louisiana Voice

We started October with our twice-yearly fundraiser that was originally scheduled to run for the entire month but a story I spotted online Thursday has prompted an about-face for our own fundraising efforts in favor of a far more noble cause.

There’s a 26-year-old poet in Phoenix, Arizona who has been working pretty much on his own to help house and FEED THE HOMELESS in the Phoenix area and if you have not yet but intended to make a contribution to LouisianaVoice, I humbly implore you to consider instead making a contribution to his nonprofit, AZ HUGS.

I don’t know if Austin Davis is a Democrat, a Republican or whatever, whether he’s a Christin, Jew, atheist or agnostic or even Muslim. It does not matter. What does matter is what he is doing on his own time, through his own unselfish efforts transcends anything any Bible-thumping evangelical is doing for the benefit of his fellow man.

What he is doing in humanitarian charity so far exceeds our work with this blog as to not even merit a comparison.

At a time when ICE is detaining innocent people (including many Americans citizens), shooting people and generally pulling off flawless impersonations of Nazi gestapo, Davis is quietly going about the business of assisting homeless children, families who have had a wage earner laid off from a job and single moms who have been evicted. These are Americans no different from the Okies John Steinbeck wrote about—desperate, hungry people who only want to get a job and feed their families. Others are mentally ill with nowhere to go because Republicans have cut spending for programs for them.

Sure, there are the drug addicts. That’s to be expected. But is it better to deny all so that some drug abuser does not benefit or is it better to help as many as possible innocents in the knowledge that some undeserving individual may also benefit?

Or is just better to look the other way while our political leaders continue to lavish corporate welfare in the form of generous tax breaks on the uber-rich who in turn refuse to make eye contact with the beggar on the street?

To paraphrase Joshua 24:15 (the evangelicals hate it when you throw Bible verses in their faces), “…as for me and my house…” we choose to help the less fortunate.

So, if you can find it in your heart to do so, go HERE and help this idealistic young man in his efforts to spread a little true Christian spirit where it is best applied.

Another verse: Mathhew 25:40: “…when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me.”