[Discussion] Co-operation

How ideologically pure must a person or group be before you can work with them? How should we (if we indeed should) get over our differences to work together toward shared goals?

Let's talk about all the people and groups we can't work with.

An example:

Today is National Doughnut Day in the US. The day was first rolled out as a Salvation Army fundraiser day to support victims of the Great Depression.

The Salvation Army gets flak from progressives for their practice and statements regarding the QUILTBAG community. (Extensive reporting on that story here – please read if you're going to talk about the Salvos in particular.) Groups and individuals from the left and the right refuse to endorse or work alongside Salvation Army folks due to objections to the SA's practices and beliefs.

The SA has also gotten a lot of heat from conservative Christians for not being conservative enough in their theology or practice.

The Salvation Army isn't an outlier in facing rejection from multiple sides for being impure in thought or deed. I worry that we, as a multinational culture, might be getting really bad about working with people we don't agree with, even towards ends that we do agree with. Or at least, I worry that I personally and groups I work with are getting bad at it.

What are good ways to work together toward a shared goal, even if the motives aren't shared?
Is this the problem that I think it is?

What are good ways to work together toward a shared goal, even if the motives aren't shared?
Is this the problem that I think it is?

The problem right now is it is hard to work with some groups when their view on HUMAN RIGHTS are REALLY different then our own.

Interesting conversation WS. To me, I think the important part is how much a group is setting its own standards vs forcing them on others, and whether the good they do outweiwghs the bad.

My personal example is that my Catholic Church has been working with a local mosque on charity outreach. There's a lot I think is rather restrictive in the Islamic religion (starting with no beer and bacon), but everyone I've met seem happy with those rules. Unlike my experiences in the Middle East, nobody is forcing American Muslims to live a certain way. It's very different if Sharia law was being enforced, and I'd have a much harder time working with say a Wahhabi sect even if we were raising money for orphans and puppies.

Another example from the left that I've been seeing is the students of Evergreen college are calling for a professor to be fired because he didn't participate in the day of absence/presence where all white faculty and staff were asked to stay home for a day. The professor is strongly anti racist but because he taught a class that day he's been labeled a white supremacist and even bodily threatened. This imho is perfect being enemy of the good.
http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/20...

If the KKK approached you with a sincere idea to set up a soup kitchen for indigent White folks, but not minorities, would you turn them away? Where on that spectrum are people who want to "do good works" but also explicitly exclude some categories of people? Did Jesus turn away lepers because they were the lowest of the low, feared and loathed and even regarded as cursed?

If the SA still has a policy of requiring people to renounce their sexuality before serving them food or otherwise helping them, is that any different from racism?

Robear wrote:

If the KKK approached you with a sincere idea to set up a soup kitchen for indigent White folks, but not minorities, would you turn them away? Where on that spectrum are people who want to "do good works" but also explicitly exclude some categories of people? Did Jesus turn away lepers because they were the lowest of the low, feared and loathed and even regarded as cursed?

If the SA still has a policy of requiring people to renounce their sexuality before serving them food or otherwise helping them, is that any different from racism?

I don't believe the SA has that policy, but I think your questions are at least establishing the far end of a range, and in that way useful. Because there is also some area on the near side of that range where some person or group is merely unpleasant on a personal or aesthetic level (maybe you don't like the scent of their preferred soap?) but otherwise doing work you agree with.

The problem is that differences that might seem superficial are often easily extrapolated to larger meanings. For an example I don't agree with: differences in religious worship instrumentation (e.g., pipe organs vs. electric guitars) are often called out as stemming from or potentially encouraging heresy. A harder example that's more compelling to me: a charity that uses terminology that I believe demeans a disempowered group.

As a minor tangent(?): How much might this conversation look like the "Is it OK to enjoy problematic art"?

To get to the heart of the original question: How (and implicitly, when) should we get over our differences to work together toward shared goals?

Using your example above:

A harder example that's more compelling to me: a charity that uses terminology that I believe demeans a disempowered group.

There are two factors I think come into play. Respect and Severity of the Problem.

Respect
Is the charity using demeaning terminology because they are ignorant of modern standards? I'd probably tolerate that to work toward the greater good hoping to educate along the way. Is the demeaning terminology an indication of deep seated judgmental values that are core to the beliefs involved? I'm unlikely to see any common ground with a charity that refuses to recognize the most basic human dignity of the people they serve. "Separate but equal" charities is not a better solution, but at least the people involved have a choice other than debasing or denying themselves to seek help.

Severity of the Problem
If there is unique access to help people that is available to an organization I'm opposed to and the problem is life threatening, I'd put aside my problems to help while trying to build inroads to avoid them in the future. As a weird hypothetical: Say that during the HIV outbreak Austin, Indiana a very strict evangelical church has the infrastructure in place and trust of the town to test people and distribute medication but they require vows of chastity and heteronormativity or something. I'd probably pocket quite a few reservations about working with them in order to save at least a few dozen lives. I'd fully respect the decision of anyone who wouldn't use that help under those conditions but if it were the only way my help could reach the people who need it, I'd consider it.

This page indicates that they serve LGBT folks without issue. If that's the case, then that would remove an ethical hurdle.

Robear wrote:

This page indicates that they serve LGBT folks without issue. If that's the case, then that would remove an ethical hurdle.

It would if it reflected the reality of what's happening in SA-run shelters. Which, based on the reporting I've been reading, it most definitely isn't.

Sticking a page on a website is easy. Changing the long-held behavior of a sprawling organization, not so much.

For the record, I get that. I'm trying to at least present the different claims. My experiences lead me to consider them exceedingly old-fashioned on social issues, so I'm dubious of their claims. I suspect the person who made the statement got lucky with a local group that has progressive ideas.

Robear wrote:

For the record, I get that. I'm trying to at least present the different claims. My experiences lead me to consider them exceedingly old-fashioned on social issues, so I'm dubious of their claims. I suspect the person who made the statement got lucky with a local group that has progressive ideas.

The SA has also, from the top, been making a very strong turn toward better inclusivity, as I think comes across in the Advocate story I linked in the OP. I certainly have no claim to universal knowledge of what every branch practices, and I definitely acknowledge the harms that they have inflicted in the past.

It's an example that seems apt, since they get excluded from both sides. I don't really have any involvement with them, myself. It's a large and well known example, but it's not a rare situation. On top of the market/competition for charity donations that focuses on overhead costs, there's also what feels like a demand for moral perfection from charities. I think that worries me.

I generally resonate with Jolly Bill's weighing of harm and benefits. Part of me is leery of being a bad ally or supporting a group that's not moving strongly enough to get better, and yet I'm also worried that the most good in some area isn't being done because of moral imperfections in those organizations best poised to help.

If there WERE a local SA group that implicitly denies access to minorities, then we would not have a shared goal. My goal would be to provide soup to everyone. Theirs is to provide it only to their approved list. So there's no conflict there, and we would simply not work together because we're not doing the same thing.

Good words, Wordsmythe. My only quibble is that I see charities being held to the standards they propose for their clients. So an evangelical organization can reasonably be expected to behave as exemplary Christians, not just people handing out soup. When there is a problem with their behavior, it's likely that people will view them as falling farther than others whose business is not to tell people how to live. It's like when your neighbor cheats on his wife, you think "Okay, maybe they'll get divorced, or maybe they will handle it, I wonder what happened?" But when your *pastor* cheats on his wife, you're more likely to think "Wow, he must be a really terrible person, to tell people how to behave and then violate that himself". Religious charities claim a higher standard for themselves just by the nature of the teachings they offer.

But then again, there are a *lot* of fake or inefficient charities out there. It's a common money-making scam. So people are leery for that reason too.