america-wakiewakie:

Corporate “Give Back” weeks are such as facade. Exploit your communities and the planet for 51 weeks out of the year, “give back” for one, but not really because all “giving back” with these multinationals is meant only to paint a rosy picture of the “good” exploiters versus the “bad” exploiters, to create positive social capital with the intent of obfuscating destructive social and ecological footprints.

Substantively speaking, a few hundred affluent people flooding a community for a week does not constitute any sort of tangible solidarity WITH the community. More often than not it creates the work of engaging a bunch of clueless fuckwit “volunteers” who want to get out of the office for a day rather than working to dismantle oppression.

To quote Eduardo Galeano, “I don’t believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.” Corporations are never interested in learning beyond the ability to better, more efficiently exploit, while making us love them for it.

(Source: fullpraxisnow)