Pitfalls of volunteerism without activism

[RoyalAfrikanPrince]

" "OK. If you're so into 'helping the world', and all that garbage, why don't you just go out to a soup kitchen and do some good ol' volunteering. Why do you have to disrupt things?"
I've heard that before, and I have a perfectly good reason why not - it doesn't do anything in the long term. Now, don't get me wrong, I think volunteering is very important. However, I think that volunteering in the absence of activism can be very dangerous.
Give someone a fish, and they'll eat for a day. Teach someone to fish, and they'll eat for a lifetime. Volunteering is giving someone a fish, sometimes quite literally. This is an important band-aid. Teaching someone to fish takes time, and we must do something in between, to improve the situation in the short term. We must get people to a point where they are more able to demand their rights, and volunteering can do this.
However, a band-aid is just that, a band-aid. It is not a cure. The band-aid protects the wound so that it can be healed. Activism does the healing. You can give out food every day, but until you force the system to change so that these people do not need your help, you will need to give out food every day. We must demand that our society, our government, change, so that everyone has the the rights they deserve. A homeless person is homeless because of some root cause, for example, discriminatory hiring practices. You can help the homeless person daily, or you can change the world so that you don't have to, and so that others will not be hurt as this person was.
Volunteering and activism are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often work best when used together. Help the individual in the short term, so that they can help you in the long term. This is what the Civil Rights movement in the 60s did, and this is what we should do today.
Use volunteering as a band-aid, but work to change the system at the same time. The short-term is important, but it is the long-term which creates true change. "

FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.