We Shouldn’t Need GoFundMe to Respond to Catastrophes. We Need a Strong Welfare State.
A telltale sign of a broken society is when medical workers are forced to beg for supplies on GoFundMe and parents have to write compelling stories to convince random people to pay for their kid’s cancer treatment. Instead of crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe, we need a generous welfare state that ensures everyone’s basic needs are met.
Artist Luba Drozd makes protective shields for health workers in her apartment on her 3D printers on March 27, 2020 in Brooklyn, New York. Together with friends, she started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to buy more supplies and printers. Misha Friedman / Getty
Last Friday, GoFundMe sent out a mass email from Arnold Schwarzenegger announcing the creation of the Frontline Responders Fund. Schwarzenegger, whose estimated net worth is $400 million, promised to donate $1 million. He urged everyone reading to “chip in anything you can” so the fund would reach its goal of $10 million by midnight.
As governor of California, Schwarzenegger frequently proposed and signed off on cuts to the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, and in particular to California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal. He spent a lot of time battling the California Nurses Association, the SEIU, and other unions representing health workers. Even so, he concluded his email on Friday by saying that while he may have played “the part of the action hero in the movies . . . doctors, nurses and hospital staff” are the “real action heroes.”
A couple days earlier, GoFundMe — or rather, “PANDEMIC RELIEF via GoFundMe” — emailed about another midnight deadline. This one was for America’s Food Fund, which “feed[s] our neighbors during this unimaginable crisis.” Schwarzenegger’s email about the Frontline Responders Fund talked about “rush[ing] life-saving supplies to our medical heroes.”
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