How my Friend Used his Stimulus Check is an Inspiration

My good friend and one-time roomie at William & Mary has a great job at Amazon. He’s highly intelligent and tells it like it is. There are two other reasons I really love this guy:

First reason: if you can refute his argument, he rethinks the facts and concedes. What I just wrote ain't easy. Research shows when most of us are given facts that dispute our beliefs, we’ll incredibly fight harder to support our mistaken belief.

Anyway, to my second reason: the guy has a heart of gold, and I hope when and if that stimulus check arrives, you’ll consider something along the lines of what he did, If you can afford to. By the way, he adopted his first name from his high school Spanish class, so we call him “Paco.”

When the IRS deposited $2509.20 in his checking account, Paco found someone who was matching people's donations to good causes and donated the check to bail and legal aid. “…because, at the time, protestors were being arrested and cash bail is disproportionately used against people of color,” he tells me.

It looks like another round of stimulus is coming soon. If he gets another check, he plans to donate it to a restaurant workers support org, like Restaurant Workers Community Foundation, because of how hard that group of workers has been hit. He worked in restaurants as a kid, and he writes, “I know a little about how bad it is.”

Maybe we too, can do without that check, find someone to match it for a worthy cause, or even commit it to buying dinners from local restaurants that are hurting. The menu of opportunity is large. You decide!