PETA offers to help Detroit residents... with a catch.

[Neil Peart]

So 17,000 residents in Detroit have had their water turned off because of delinquent bills, and another 280,000-ish are facing the same fate.

From https://www.inquisitr.com/1376916/peta-detroit-water/

In struggling Detroit, where the financially strapped city — which filed for bankruptcy a year ago — has cut off water to thousands of residents who owe unpaid bills, PETA now says it will pay off the water debts for 10 of the approximately 17,000 Detroit families who have seen their water shut off.
On one condition.
Those families must agree to eat only a vegan diet for 30 days. PETA even offers to help the process by giving each family, in addition to cash for water bills, "a basket of healthy vegan foods and recipes."
"The last thing that people who are struggling need is increased health-care costs," PETA's Michelle Kretzer said in a blog post Friday. "By accepting our offer to go vegan, not only will families be getting an immediate financial boost and helping animals, if they stick with it, they'll also lower their risk of obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes and strokes."

As a resident of Michigan - hell, as a HUMAN BEING - I'm appalled by this. This is another example of the pretentious a-holes at PETA exploiting human suffering for their own personal gain. PETA's always been right on par with Westboro with how much they depend on people's hatred to thrive and nothing else.

Shameless plug for my video about this, for those of you enjoy seeing people rant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWcIIe9klWs

 

[Oryx]

Yes, a basket of vegan food will surely feed a family for a month. And then when they run out of those foods, they can just hop on down to Whole Foods to get their vegan meals, right? They can pay for it with all the money they clearly have - you can tell they're rich by the fact that they can't afford to pay their water bill.

It's like PeTA wants to intentionally make people hate it. If they said "we'll pay some water bills and you should consider going vegan because of it", everyone would herald them as kind-hearted and charitable. But they chose to go the route that would make everyone actively despise them. I have no idea why.

 

[Neil Peart]

If they said "we'll pay some water bills and you should consider going vegan because of it", everyone would herald them as kind-hearted and charitable. But they chose to go the route that would make everyone actively despise them. I have no idea why.

I would be less pissed off if they took that approach, but I would still knock their wangs in the dirt. You can't be a philanthropic organization and expect something in return.

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

How do they expect people in Detroit, who often live in homes that are worth less than 10,000$ because they are so impoverished, to be able to afford a vegan diet?

IF THEY CAN'T AFFORD THEIR OWN WATER THEY CAN'T AFFORD TO GO ON A VEGAN DIET YOU NUMB♥♥♥♥S

I live on my own and I don't make a lot of money right now. It's much cheaper to buy your starches as rice and buy proteins as chicken because I can buy pretty much 10 filling meals for like $10. Most people cannot afford to get the nutrition from very complicated vegan diets that they need.

On the water crisis thing - I think this is a serious problem with Detroit's management. I live in Oakland county, about 40-50 miles from Detroit, and Detroit is horribly mismanaged. They could probably reduce a lot of costs by reducing the size of the city, splitting it into multiple cities, and building better infrastructure. However, this is Detroit, which is notorious for basically having every other major politician be completely screwed in the joints with corruption, so I don't think that's going to happen.

It's a very very touchy subject here, there's a lot of people saying that they deserve their water to be shut down because they can't afford the bill, but at the same time, everyone knows you need water in order to survive. Detroit is literally situated on a large river between two lakes, I know it's possible to make water more affordable to the city, but the city mismanages so many things that it is an unfortunate, but not surprising, occurrence, that such a thing happened.

 

[Shiny Bunnelby]

Hey, an organization that is against making your pets perform tricks for treats is making people perform tricks for water.

♥♥♥♥ those guys!

 

[Oryx]

I would be less pissed off if they took that approach, but I would still knock their wangs in the dirt. You can't be a philanthropic organization and expect something in return.

I mean, that's pretty common in religious philanthropic organizations. They give you food but the catch is they talk to you about God while you sit and eat it. No one forces you to convert but it's not like you can make the person go away while you sit there and eat.

 

[eeveeandmew]

Last I heard, government was forcing detroit to turn back on the water, paid or not. There is a small group of people thinking that they are doing it to stop PETA. Just thought i'd put it out there.

 

[Alice]

I suppose some help is better than no help, but it's still frustrating to see things done this way. It does nothing but hurt their own cause.

Keep in mind that PETA is basically the Westboro Baptist Church of Vegetarians though. They don't represent most of us... and most vegetarians I know hate them.

 

[Professor_Jared]

......*facepalm* You know normally people with common sense and decency would put the needs of others above themselves, but nope PETA has shown us that they're only doing this for themselves and only for themselves, and not for the common good of you know people who are actually suffering due to a horrible shortage.

And I normally don't say this but I feel like PETA really deserves it, especially considering the BS they just pulled with this situation: Go die in a fire PETA.

 

[£]

oh peta.

Can I lie to them and just take their food and money? I'd try doing that, and I wouldn't feel too morally torn up about it since they're not exactly being saints here.

I wonder, if they put all the money and effort into making a chain of restaurants that serve vegan only food... would they have more success in terms of making people eat vegan food than they would by basically blackmailing people into committing to a vegan diet?

It'd be interesting to know how many people actually took their offer.

 

[Magic Christmas Lights]

I sometimes think PETA is just trolling us all. How they continue to exist as an organization (like, are people actually donating money to them?) baffles me.

 

[Aeroblast]

Every time I see a news about PETA crop up I feel bad for the actual (I mean, those that are not part of PETA) vegans and animal rights advocates for having to be associated with such a depraved organization.

 

[for him.]

Well... PETA kills animals, so I don't really like them as an organization. Gong vegan, especially when you are young, is actually hazardous to ones health. That's kind of all I have to say about that.

 

[OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire]

That's kicking the dog on part of PETA... also if they feel they need to get something in return for the money they should've picked something easier for the residents to do, such as walk the dog, anything that doesn't involve buying food that is probably too expansive for the family to afford (or who lack the space, time, and materials to grow Vegan food for year around).

 

[twocows]

This doesn't really bother me. It's a publicity stunt, but it's not one that I find particularly offensive, and I say this as probably the most anti-PETA person that I know. They're probably doing it for ethical reasons (reasons I think are absurd), but if they did it right, they'd be doing good by people (purely on accident, I'm sure; PETA doesn't care about people). A properly balanced vegan diet would almost certainly be healthier and probably cheaper than the kind of stuff the average person eats.

I can think of a few problems, though. First, PETA would need to educate these people on how to get the other nutrition they'd be missing out on from cutting out major parts of their diet. You can't just start eating nothing but vegetables and bread, you'd be missing out on some major stuff that you need to survive. They'd need to provide education or they'd just be hurting people. Second, they'd need to educate people on where to look for these kinds of things. You can get most of the stuff you'd need for such a diet at Walmart or pretty much any grocery store that has produce, you just need to know where to look. Finally, there's the time issue; some of these people probably work two jobs and don't have enough time to prepare fancy stuff. Their educational material would need to keep this in mind.

I try to be careful about what things I complain about even regarding organizations I largely disagree with. I really don't like PETA and don't like what they do or what they're about or the ideas they promote, but on this particular case, I'm not really bothered, since people can just choose not to take them up on their offer if they really don't want to.

 

[Neil Peart]

They're probably doing it for ethical reasons (reasons I think are absurd), but if they did it right, they'd be doing good by people (purely on accident, I'm sure; PETA doesn't care about people).

The word "ethical" can't be used anywhere in regards to this story.

 

[Corvus of the Black Night]

The word "ethical" can't be used anywhere in regards to this story.

Twocows has a point though, it's a publicity stunt, and even though they're preying on a pretty controversial topic, it is just that - a publicity stunt. The main issue I have with it is that it feels like a taunt, because frankly, if they cannot afford water then they definitely cannot afford a vegan diet. It's definitely more ethical than MANY of the things that PETA does, such as putting down perfectly fine dogs for no real reason.

 

[Oryx]

This doesn't really bother me. It's a publicity stunt, but it's not one that I find particularly offensive, and I say this as probably the most anti-PETA person that I know. They're probably doing it for ethical reasons (reasons I think are absurd), but if they did it right, they'd be doing good by people (purely on accident, I'm sure; PETA doesn't care about people). A properly balanced vegan diet would almost certainly be healthier and probably cheaper than the kind of stuff the average person eats.

I can think of a few problems, though. First, PETA would need to educate these people on how to get the other nutrition they'd be missing out on from cutting out major parts of their diet. You can't just start eating nothing but vegetables and bread, you'd be missing out on some major stuff that you need to survive. They'd need to provide education or they'd just be hurting people. Second, they'd need to educate people on where to look for these kinds of things. You can get most of the stuff you'd need for such a diet at Walmart or pretty much any grocery store that has produce, you just need to know where to look. Finally, there's the time issue; some of these people probably work two jobs and don't have enough time to prepare fancy stuff. Their educational material would need to keep this in mind.

I try to be careful about what things I complain about even regarding organizations I largely disagree with. I really don't like PETA and don't like what they do or what they're about or the ideas they promote, but on this particular case, I'm not really bothered, since people can just choose not to take them up on their offer if they really don't want to.

I personally find it unethical to "offer" water to a family, something necessary for life, and then add the caveat that you have to do something incredibly difficult if not impossible to get that water. I would find it just as unethical if someone said "I'll pay for your water, but only if you can jump these hurdles at the speed of a high school track star!" It's not like it's the Olympics, and the person can eventually train to do that - but I would find it abhorrent to make a game out of someone's basic needs like that, you know?

For the record, last year a radio station (I know I know, bad source but not like this a difficult controlled study) went to 240 grocery stores in 6 neighborhoods in Detroit, where 30% of children in the city live. In 75% of them, you couldn't buy apples. My local Walmart has potatoes and onions in big bags and that's all it has for produce. It's not so easy in some places to go vegan.

 

[PokemonLeagueChamp]

So, PETA's trying to use the situation in Detroit as a marketing scheme for their own chosen ideology/lifestyle. Aside from people who are so passive they wouldn't injure or kill an animal that's actively trying to kill them, I don't see how anyone can realistically claim that PETA does anything useful, unless we count making people hate PETA as useful.

Anyone who [ab]uses someone's lack of basic life-sustaining necessities as an opportunity to push ideology is someone I consider to be the scum of the earth.

 

[Neil Peart]

For the record, last year a radio station (I know I know, bad source but not like this a difficult controlled study) went to 240 grocery stores in 6 neighborhoods in Detroit, where 30% of children in the city live. In 75% of them, you couldn't buy apples. My local Walmart has potatoes and onions in big bags and that's all it has for produce. It's not so easy in some places to go vegan.

I wouldn't call that a bad source, because it's true - these people hardly have grocery stores in their neighborhoods, much less grocery stores that sell fresh produce at reasonable prices.