Humanity---Is it obsolete?

I’m a news junkie. I admit it. I’m sure it’s a result of writing and broadcasting thousands of newscasts in an earlier life. I listen to local and network newscasts and I still read hard-copy newspapers. Now that I’m in the humanity business in my final career, related topics in the news catch my attention. And that was the case over the weekend. 

Thomas Banchoff declared, in a Washington Post column: Mercy is painfully scarce in our politics today. He gave specific examples out of Washington DC---eliminating life-giving aid programs abroad and threatening to withhold food assistance for more than 40 million Americans. In addition, he contended that the administration’s mass deportation program “has been particularly merciless, criminalizing those who once entered the country illegally but have long been law-abiding and productive members of our communities.” 

In another powerful column, this one in the Lost Angeles Times, Noubar Afeyan, coined a new but appropriate word: inhumanitarianism! His column was focused on Sudan’s year-long civil war. He was critical of the fact that we hear very little about a campaign of horrors, including executing civilians, killing hospital patients, raping women and girls, and shooting those who try to flee over the city wall.

The larger point of these two columns is that inhumanity is all around us. Granted, this is nothing new. Back in the 1700s Scottish poet Robert Burns lamented: 

Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn! 

These examples of “scarce mercy” and “inhumanitarianism” are not found only in world and national news. 

My job is working with prisoners right here in the State of Michigan, and the organization that I founded and represent is called HUMANITY FOR PRISONERS. We find examples just as horrifying in our state prisons: a life-saving CPAP machine taken away from a sleep apnea patient; pain-control prescriptions withheld from a person recovering from surgery; failure to adequately protect a prisoner who was beaten, slashed and poisoned for testifying on behalf of the state; and a refusal to allow parents to say goodbye to their dying son while chained to a prison bed. You get the idea. 

My hero, Pope Francis wrote, in 2016: “We are called to promote a culture of mercy based on the rediscovery of encounter with others…a culture in which no one looks at another with indifference or turns away from the suffering of our brothers and sisters.” 

While little guys like you and me may feel helpless, columnist Afeyan ends his piece with one solution: “If inhumanitarianism is to be defeated…it will start from the bottom up, with me, you, and thousands of grassroots humanitarians around the world declaring our care for our fellow humans through our actions.” 

On Giving Tuesday you can demonstrate your compassion and express your feelings by supporting those organizations that assure needy human beings that “they matter.” 

All financial gifts to HFP will be matched!