The thanks you get

A concerned reader alerted me over the weekend to a puzzling Twitter (X) tweet that appears to be a statement from the Oregon Food Bank on Thanksgiving Day.

I was unpleasantly surprised to read it. For years, I always thought of the Oregon Food Bank as a politics-free charity that you could give to without hearing a bunch of ideological noise. It's hard to argue with a desire to eradicate hunger.

But now I guess the Food Bank wants an argument. It seems to be getting sucked into the strident rhetoric of the arrogant Oregon nonprofit industrial complex, and feeling free to start dishing out lectures on colonialism to people who just want to help the poor put food on the table. No matter how you feel about our nation's dark past, this kind of preaching doesn't sound like a good fundraising strategy.

You have to wonder whether the organization's board of directors knows what is going on with the Twitter account, and whether they approve of it. Some of them are corporate and business people who should know better. 

It reminds me a little of what's happened to Sisters of the Road, the Old Town soup kitchen that used to come across as a selfless service organization but is now throwing hard-left slogans around on social media and even promoting fringe candidates for public office. If I ever thought of throwing them a few bucks, those days are over.

Maybe these organizations don't need private donations any more, After all, their unholy allies in the local government are bathing them in billions of tax dollars taken from working people, so that the executive directors' mortgages get paid on time every month, just like the City Hall bureaucrats'. Maybe there's enough gravy in the public trough that generous "folx" in the middle and on the right can take their annual donation check and shove it.

One wealthy friend of mine has stopped giving to social service nonprofits altogether. He takes that money and uses it to give gigantic tips to restaurant servers, Uber drivers, and delivery people. "At least they're out there trying to make a living for themselves and their families," he says. He's starting to sound about right to me.