For some reason I thought I would no longer need these evasive maneuvers once I left the politically charged halls of academia. I was wrong. When I worked in the West Village there would often be a couple volunteers from an LGBT group on Sixth Avenue. “Do you have a minute for gay rights?” Well, yes I do, but I’ve already given money and signed whatever petition that is you’re holding.But Midtown is simply crawling with these people. You can’t go a block during lunch without being assaulted by chipper college kids on summer break with bright-colored T-shirts for, I don’t know, wind power, Obama ’08, save Darfur, free Willy, what have you. I’m not saying these aren’t worthy causes. And I have actually worked as a clipboard person myself so I know how hard and demoralizing it is. (I collected signatures in the rain in Boston to defeat a ban on gay marriage.) But that doesn’t mean I don’t resent getting stopped in my tracks every three minutes by someone who makes me feel like a bad person for having somewhere to get to. Some guy today was so relentless I almost smacked him with the back of my too-busy-to-sign-your-petition hand.
Do-gooders are cheek by jowl in Midtown with skinny young women whose job it is to hand out menus for delis and dudes trying to get you to take their rap demo CDs. Can’t a person just take a stroll to H&M during lunch without being hassled? I suppose not.
(Incidentally, this very issue prompted my friend Andy to design a fantastic wearable response.)
4 comments:
That's like the guy who found us in line for The Dark Knight, after we had already paid for our tickets, and started yelling at everyone to "GET OFF YOUR ASSES" and "DO SOMETHING INTERACTIVE FOR ONCE" by accepting his free coupons for Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, down the street...
As if his belittling us would make everyone realize we should bail on the enormous line, throw away our movie tickets, and our spend time with "interactive" wax figures instead of the summer's biggest and best movie.
"interactive" wax figures
hilarious
If only I had the option of strolling to H&M during lunch, I, too, could be stylish while being hassled.
You shouldn't feel like a bad person until after you learn about the organization. With Masspirg, anyway, it's hard to fell like a bad person, though I feel a bit bad for the impressionable and idealistic young workers they've brainwashed into working less than minimum wage for them. Masspirg is the most evil "non-profit" (which is a BS term, anyway, because all it really means is that if they have money left over, they give all the bosses raises) I have ever had the pleasure of researching. Did you know:
Students at UMass have an automatically appended "student fee" in their tuition bill which is really a donation to MassPirg. You are automatically signed up and you have to opt out! That's crazy, right? You think: that can't possibly be leagl! And it wasn't! Until 1995 (or thereabouts), at which point MassPIRG lobbied to put a voter referendum seeking approval to do this, and they were able to narrowly pass this measure because they worded the referendum as a double-negative, so it was something like:
"Should a non-profit like Masspirg not be allowed to automatically charge students in their tuition fee to get donations?" And yes meant no and no meant yes, and it confused everyone and passed.
So yes, those Masspirg people are evil. As opposed to the LaRouche people, who are just crazy.
Thanks for the free advertisement!
UCSB also had a lock-in fee for CalPIRG. I thought it was BS. If you paid enough attention to the student elections (like if you were a nerdy newspaper editor like me) you realized your fees included all kinds of outrageous lock-in fees from various organizations. Sneaky bastards.
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