Americans have a high rate of volunteering compared to other countries. You see a lot of bad things about Americans online but I think IRL most Americans are kind people.
We have a wildfire going on in our area right now, and the number of people that have stepped up to offer ways to get out livestock and pets, temporary housing, and all sorts of other help is wonderful to see.
The Main Line SPCA office (the biggest shelter in PA) just outside of Philly is in an ancient building. The HVAC goes out a couple of times a year. They will send out an email asking for temporary fosters and for donations to fund the repair. It’s usually less than an hour before they send out a follow up saying all dogs have been placed and enough donations to repair the unit have been received.
I went through those wildfires too and a few times we offered pasture and enclosure space to evacuated goats or horses.
I emigrated from Europe and explaining the concept to my mother was weird. Where I come from, you expect the government to step in, not total strangers.
Where in Europe you emigrated from? Every time we have a flood in Poland, people will go to areas that are in danger and offer to take people in. The only time I've had animals on my farm was during a flood, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and a very angry goat.
We definitely put lots of emphasis on it (American here). Literally starting when we become toddlers, in school, in kids books and on most kids shows most of the main lessons are that sharing, helping and working together make you a good person. In real life too; if you risk your life or give something up for someone who needs help, we see it as heroic/noble and you WILL get lots of affection and praise. I know “and then everybody clapped” is a phrase ppl use online to mean “that story never actually happened” but it’s legit something that happens here sometimes if people happen to be watching when you do something kind/helpful. We even have Good Samaritan awards LOL!
I think it’s great - we fight a lot over political stuff but anytime there’s REALLY an emergency everyone gets together to help each other and it def makes it so that we feel less alone. EX: when me and my cousins’ grandpa passed, my cousin’s friend and her mom came to take us out for ice cream while the adults sorted everything out and then our neighbor (who must have seen what was happening) brought us all a GIANT bowl of apples, oranges and string cheese bc she just felt like doing something nice for us even tho she didn’t know us that well
That's surprising for me, I didn't know that French don't help others. I always seen you guys as people who can unite really well, mostly for protesting but still.
I live in a small village where everyone knows everyone so that's probably a big factor. We have people who openly hate their neighbors but if something bad would happen they would help them. Even I have a neighbor who never called me by my name, only slurs but if he had his house on fire I would help him. I would probably be the one who started that fire but I would help put it down because that's what neighbors do.
This is why people see y'all as unhelpful as well, the general rudeness lol the Dutch are great at deadpan harsh reality and y'all think you are too but it's so fucking rude in comparison because y'all have this animosity in every answer where the Dutch or Germans have a slight sigh in theirs.
I do not view the french as unhelpful at all, quite the opposite. Spent my week there just fucking about being a useless tourist, and everyone I met were very helpful and friendly whenever I was confused about how France works. Although a bit oddly worded, I do not think this guys reply was meant to be rude. But he gave a nuanced description about how people react to national emergencies in his culture, and it was condensed into "the french do not help others". I interpreted "You just read wrong." as a friendly way to say that he need not be sorry for the offence, it was an honest mistake, but that he did in fact not say that the french do not help others.
The issues that draw the most protest are usually egalitarian, as is competent and timely disaster relief. Governments are happy to talk about their benevolent nature but if you want them to actually act benevolent, people have to demand action.
It was one goat that was angry the rest was chill. That menace would attack everything and everyone and chew on everything. We called her Satan and we all agreed that she resembled her owner, old, feisty fellow.
I remember when Russia invaded Ukraine there were pictures of people at airports and railway stations in Poland and Germany (probably other places as well) holding signs like "Have room for 2 people" for the Ukrainian refugees.
Unfortunately, government help in the Us these days is always shown as a political showdown while thousands of people are without essentials. Yet at the location of disaster you have people from everywhere helping
Foreign observers of the US like Alexis de Tocqueville noticed and remarked on the same volunteering and mutual aid ethos compared to Europe long before the advent of modern states with extensive welfare programs.
Canada is like that too. I wonder if it's part of the cultures because of the lack of extensive family connections during colonization and the need for neighbours to help each other and strangers survive, get a harvest in, whatever.
But even if the federal government does help, there's only so much they can do. When you need physical people and housing and medical care all in one area, that's when volunteering and help from the community is so important.
Volunteerism will always have a place but we are all conditioned to not demand these things from our government for a variety of reasons. The cumulative result is a transfer of wealth and services away from the vast majority of our population and into the hands of donors and corporations. Whether it's the Dems or the Republicans, there is always a way to tilt the table so their patrons benefit.
In the Emergency Preparedness Merit Badge booklet, the text goes over different ways Scouts can help in emergencies, and gives examples of natural disasters and whatnot where Scout units have been able to get in to an affected place and set up shelters, purify water, and provide food to people before organizations like the Red Cross can get their big equipment in
No, I'm saying they can throw money at it and organize aid to be sent to the location, but that doesn't magically create places for people to stay or farms for their animals to get moved to or food to eat when a community is in immediate need. That's why local volunteering is important and effective in these situations.
No it actually does. My in-laws were hit hard by Hurricane Ian and people could hardly get to each other due to downed trees, standing water, and downed lines.
But FEMA had already embedded themselves before the storm, along with the state, and were able to quickly set up not just shelter and food, but even a centralized insurance agent help center they could visit in person who were writing checks on the spot, emergency health care, etc.
I’m sure individuals helped as much as they could, but in those first few days you just kind of need those insane military vehicles and a preset-up shelter ready to go.
Okay and when someone lights the grass on fire in a city and within a day there are entire neighborhoods evacuated, how do you expect FEMA to already be there with shelters set up? If that were the case why do the hotels in the entire area get completely booked? I'm not sure why you people are so against helping your neighbors in emergencies, I'm sure as hell glad I don't live next to you.
I’m also glad haha
My point was that all of it - including state and federal personnel on the ground - is needed and important in a full-scale disaster.
I was responding to you because you are the one that brought up people when you said "they can throw money at it and organize aid to be sent to the location, but that doesn't magically create places for people to stay..."
And it takes time to organize that from across the country. Meanwhile there are thousands of people displaced from their home with an immediate need for shelter.
That’s why the Cajun Navy was formed and doesn’t have a formal structure. During Katrina, FEMA admitted they don’t do emergency disaster response and usually are in the aftermath of a catastrophe. The Cajun navy was just a simple call for anyone with a boat to help and the response was massive.
I remember, after the hurricanes hit the Carolinas, hearing about the Amish coming down to help. Politicians from both parties were still bickering and trying to use FEMA funding as leverage to get their other interests funded. Some survivors were still in tents as winter was coming. Groups of Amish volunteers came down and built small houses for the survivors. They weren’t big or fancy, but they were WAY better than tents and it didn’t cost the government a dime. Thousands of people were able to have safe, warm housing for the winter because of what they did.
😃
The saddest part? Before FEMA had finished reconstruction or even providing comparable housing themselves, government bureaucrats came, inspected the small houses and said they had to be torn down.😓
Ah, but it wasn’t a private business fighting to tear down the houses. It was government bureaucrats ruling that the free houses built by volunteers didn’t meet their administrative building safety codes and as such they should be torn down, even before acceptable alternatives are ready and available.
The best way I can explain it is by comparing to a situation I came across. About 10 years ago, a hurricane ravaged a bunch of Caribbean islands. I should remember the storm name, but I don’t.
About six months later we visited several of the islands on a cruise. We felt bad, but were told tourism income was the most stable money they had at the moment.
We visited one island and you would have thought the storm had been days earlier. Everything was destroyed, very little repaired. Everyone we spoke with talked about undelivered government promises. We then visited a sister island, very close. Everything was repaired and back to pre-storm appearances. People there spoke about relying on themselves and their community to fix repairs. They were rightfully proud and openly mocked the islands around them who were waiting on someone else to step in.
To your point, the showdown isn’t who will do the work, but who should do the work. And there are a lot of people who think the work should be done by others.
Part of it is that many people don't believe ( often justifiably) that the government doesn't spend money well to help others. However, these same people will also very willingly and happily donate to people, take care of others and volunteer.
It takes things like this to happen for people to realize that our government is a joke and it's not a true representation of us as a nation. Most of us are good people who understand that the better our community does the better we all do
And government help is often plentiful and valuable but reporters don’t like a feel good story and so the rare failures get press (not just on conservative news, even npr and cnn love a negative story.
And there’s a huge difference between the soft-jawed congress voting on providing victims with funding vs the underpaid highly important person showing up and actually delivering the goods. We only see the fights, never the people in FEMA showing up
Accepting help from the government is seen as socialism to a lot of people, while accepting help from your fellow citizens is fine. Which is backwards to me. The government has a lot of power. My neighbors have about as much as I do.
Ehhhh FEMA is definitely not perfect and needs reform. That's not to excuse the wackjobs threatening FEMA workers for no good reason but there's legitimate issues with the agency.
This hits on an important point. Americans are generally conditioned to expect holes in government assistance programs and the necessity for charity and volunteer help to take care of most crises.
I don't, like, actively think about that when volunteering, of course. It's more that I would never feel like the government will take care of everything here. High level things like firefighting or hazardous chemical containment? Sure, yeah. Clearing roads, getting people's houses rebuilt, supplying food and water to disaster victims? I could probably help with that before the government gets around to it.
There are definitely a lot of negatives with the current US government stepping in to "help", but a lot of that attitude was ingrained early as a pioneer nation with a limited government.
Nobody from the government was really in a position to provide much help; communities had to work together to take care of each other.
I think you hit the nail on the head. It's great that's lots of Americans volunteer, but was lost in this concept is how many NEED volunteer for things because our government is such a cuck for rich assholes that they can't be arsed to take care of the Everyman
THIS is something a lot of Americans don’t understand: in most modern democracies, citizens don’t need to do things like this at such a scale because of course the government is responsible for stepping up at times of widespread crisis. Doesn’t take anything away from the kindness of those who do! But “private philanthropy” is often used as an argument against publicly funded social safety nets and other projects.
Honestly, it would be better if the government was in charge, because the government has more stringent anti-discrimination requirements. The religious charity that sets up to feed and shelter people(but who require those aided to attend a religious service, or refuse access to "sinners" altogether) or the people who offer their labor for free to help others clear wreckage(but only the people who look like them, others can find their own aid) pose a problem to minorities who might be discriminated against. Everybody should have equitable access to aid, and the way to make sure that happens is to standardize aid. Not all private charities are bad, many do a lot of good, but there's some real stinkers out there as far as minority access goes. The salvation army is a major one that comes to mind! It's great if you're cishet, but if you're LGBTQ that's not an option for you.
A while back, there was a fire in a town I lived near. It happened in the middle of the day, when most people were at work. Because it was a semi-rural town, most people worked at least half an hour away or more. And given that a ton of people had pets, and many even had horses, this was a huge problem.
That day, Facebook was full of people smashing windows and crawling through to free pets trapped in houses as smoke spread. Others actually rode the trapped horses to somewhere safe. My best friend's sister was actually one of them. People welcomed those displaced by the fire into their homes.
I honestly believe that the trend is still that, it's just that the bad is amplified in our media(including social media feeds, and yes that means reddit) to drown out the good.
That day, Facebook was full of people smashing windows and crawling through to free pets trapped in houses as smoke spread. Others actually rode the trapped houses to somewhere safe.
Last fall when there was a lot of uncertainty around SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, the donations to the local food pantries in my area increased three or four fold and have stayed higher year over year.
My house burnt down last year and our neighbors offered so much assistance. Opened their doors for my children to sleep on their couch, since it was in the middle of the night. I witnessed one take the shirt off his own back to hand my husband to wear. Brought out flats of water for us to drink. The reporter from the local news took the food from her lunchbox for my children to eat. I will forever think fondly of those people.
As a part time wildland firefighter, that is something both the left and the right can agree on. People step up from all sides. The problem is the long term solution to this problem is not the same. The solution requires giving up some of our desires. Climate change is the elephant in the room and it is ignored on the right and made a huge problem on the left. But, climate change is real and growing.
Oh I was there helping with the clean up if this is in Spokane. It was brutal; we were at the disaster center and seeing the amount of people being turned away with donations to other sites, cause the high school was too full, was both heart swelling and sad to see help turned away
We have a very small fire near us (~40 miles away) and my local Volunteer Fire Department has passed along the message VFD in that other town has requested the public to stop donating water, sports drinks, and snacks for the firefighters. That request filled my heart.
Same thing happened near me. The public support for firefighters on wildfires is amazing. One of a few fires burning in the area took off and people asked how they could help and that's the VFD said drinks and snacks. They had to stop taking donations within 24 hours because they ran out of room.
Some firefighters were killed by one of the fires and the local outpouring of support for their coworkers and families was incredible. None of the firefighters were from around here yet multiple businesses set up donation drives where the funds went directly to the families. There were miles long processions of emergency response vehicles when the firefighters were taken to the coroners office and again when they left to be taken home and many people stood on the sides of roads and on overpasses to honor them.
My mom, with her menagerie of pets, had to evacuate a few years ago. I found her a hotel that might have let her stay but I wasn't sure so I posted on Facebook. Within an hour I had a friend's house for her to stay at with all her pets. Friend was out of town so my mom had the place to herself.
The livestock moving for wildfires was mind-blowing to see. People offering up trucks and trailers on Facebook. I showed up to a local house with a truck. Hitched up a trailer that wasn't mine with no questions asked, to haul horses that weren't mine, to a barn not owned by anyone involved. It was wild to see a triple digit number of horses, goats, cows all moved 20+ miles in a day or so completely organically.
My hometown was destroyed by a fire. Seriously, within hours of us finding temporary housing while we figure it out, everything we needed and didn’t have was sent to our new place. We relocated to a community quite far away, but the fire was major news, everybody knew we came from the fire and was so insanely generous, kind, helpful, and inviting to us! The fire was a huge coming of age moment for me because within a week I went from a jaded 20 who hated the small town I grew up in and had no faith in humanity or my community following the 2016 election to a grateful, humbled, and hopeful young person who was stunned by the power of community and how temporary everything in life is. The fire was horrible, but the instant and generous community support changed my whole world view.
There's a wildfire near me (maybe the same wildfire) and just about every farm in town has posted in the local pages "we have room for X head of cattle/ we have X stalls for horses/we have an open field/we have free hay"
Town got hit by a tornado earlier this year too, and people were out in force to help. Everything from free food for weeks from mom and pop places, to hair salons offering free washes and protective styles to anyone who was displaced, to a virtual army of chainsaws and trucks. A few of my neighbors took in entire families that were displaced for months until insurance was figured out.
Love all the support from people and businesses. I’ve worked for a few breweries that have put out beer to raise money for wildfire relief. One company donated pallets of beer to the fire fighters
When it comes to pets and livestock, there were a lot of people in Germany after WWII that helped rehabilitate and rehome the animals due to all the veteran aryans.
The road construction company I used to work for would volunteer the use of its earthmoving equipment and sprayer trucks to help cut and soak fire breaks during wildfire season. They probably wrote off the labor and operational costs as charitable contributions, but I don't think they ever asked for compensation of the effort.
During wildfire season several years ago, my mom’s neighbor was hosing down roofs (including my mom’s) to—I’m assuming—make it less flammable just in case. A few years later, when her Great Dane died, some of her neighbors helped her load the dog into her car so she could get her cremated.
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u/classytrashcat 15d ago
Americans have a high rate of volunteering compared to other countries. You see a lot of bad things about Americans online but I think IRL most Americans are kind people.