Kitchener grocer is a man of true generosity

Individual acts of kindness may not change the world, but they sure as hell brighten it up. On Monday, Kim Radersma, who only recently moved to Kitchener, witnessed one such act while waiting at the checkout line of the Central Fresh Market. There was a bit of a commotion and she and her young son saw a man — thin, in his 30s or 40s in tattered clothes — “obviously distraught.”

He had just been caught shoplifting. They couldn’t hear clearly but it sounded like he was saying, “But I’m hungry. But I’m hungry.”

“He wasn’t trying to defend himself. A man in a suit was talking to him saying, ‘It’s OK. We will feed you, we’ll feed you. We will get you food.’

“He was very compassionate in interrogating him.”

As they watched, the man in the suit pulled out broccoli, tomatoes, a pepper, onions from the man’s bag.

Radersma didn’t know what happened next because they checked out and had to exit the store. But after they had unloaded their groceries and were putting the cart away, they saw the man emerging with a full bag of groceries. That’s when they saw another customer quietly put a 20 in the man’s hand.

By this time Radersma was near the man. “And he was sobbing. He was quietly sobbing. It was so touching, the way he was touched by people’s compassion.

“I had tears in my eyes,” Radersma said.

The man in the suit was store owner Mike Williamson. “It was really nothing,” he said.

“We had a person that was intending to shoplift. He was very desperate. He was just starving. He kept saying ‘This COVID thing. This COVID thing. I’m hungry. I have to eat.’

“I said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re going to take care of you.’ ”

Williamson said he got him a sandwich, soft drinks and “some sweet goods” to get him by for the night until he got to a shelter. This happens often, he said. A lot of stores have lifted in-store security to reduce staff due to COVID concerns.

“Some people steal out of greed and it’s not necessary for them. But there’s people that steal because they’re hungry — I mean, if we were in that same position we might do the same thing.”

“I’m telling you honestly, it’s not a big deal,” said Williamson, who did not want to share a photo of himself.

I’ll take this quiet act of generosity that someone just happened to witness and just happened to share any day over the well-publicized millions pledged by the Richie Riches of the world to fund COVID-19 relief.

This, even though neither act addresses the structural inequities and societal fault lines that are being blasted open during the pandemic.

This, even though the dollar-to-dollar impact of billionaire donations is higher.

Billionaire philanthropy is not just an oversized act of generosity, or individual altruism taken to the nth degree.

I wouldn’t even classify billionaire donations as generosity; they are a flex. Generosity is giving without expecting, wanting or taking anything in return.

Is it generosity when rich men (yes, billionaires are still mostly men) get credit for donating millions but in fact only donate half of the advertised amount because they get the other half back, tax-free?

Is it generosity when rescuing billionaires turn governments into puppets beholden to their largesse? When the act of donating underlines and exacerbates power imbalances in society, or turns corporate power into political power?

Is it generosity when donations impart a halo around the giver’s head, an invaluable return on investment, even when their promises are no good? Exactly a year ago, French billionaires were falling over themselves to donate to rebuilding the Notre Dame after the cathedral’s rooftop was devastated by a fire, pledging almost $1 billion. Months later, church officials said they hadn’t seen a cent of it.

Is it generosity when billionaires who get rich off nickel-and-diming their rank and file staff then get evangelical with some of their ill-gotten gains? As former American president Theodore Roosevelt said in 1909, “Of course no amount of charities in spending such fortunes can compensate in any way for the misconduct in acquiring them.”

He was referring to the proposal of a Rockefeller Foundation. He might as well be referring to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who donated $100 million to Feeding America for the COVID-19 response fund even while cracking down on staff organizing against unsafe working conditions in Amazon warehouses.

No, we don’t need that sort of generosity at all.

We’d rather have health units and other public agencies that are well funded and accountable from the get-go. Agencies that are beholden to the public good rather than the benevolence of donors.

Increasing taxes on the wealthiest would take away the munificence of the false gods, deprive them of fawning obsequiousness and scratch back some of the vulgarity of their “giving.”

Random kindness as in the Kitchener incident — now those are acts of compassion that speak to the better impulse in humans, a desire to help, to ease another’s suffering.

Williamson wasn’t seeking credit, nor will he get much. Unfortunately, we have learned to measure — and treasure — goodness in dollars.