Sending my respect to Sean Penn. No, really! Yes I am serious!

[redrumloa]

For the last decade plus I have really disliked Sean Penn for his outspoken fringe left politics. The worst probably being his possibly traitorous visit and photo-op with Saddam Hussein. Sean politics blow and I was really questioning him as a human being.

Fast forward to post-earthquake Haiti. Sean has fairly quietly taken a leadership roll in relief efforts. This is not your typical drive-by celebrity charity photo-op where they fly in, snap a few photos and fly out within minutes.
Sean Penn At Cannes: Haiti Was Abandoned By 'Whole F--king World'

"It's not only celebrities who went for a day," Penn said at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday when asked about the lack of support for the Haitian relief effort. "It's the whole f--king world. It's all of you."

Following the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in January of 2010, Penn headed to the country and helped set up J/P Haitian Relief Organization, an aid group that rebuilt homes, schools and hospitals. For his efforts, Penn was awarded with the 2012 Peace Summit Award by the Nobel Peace Prize laureates, and also became an ambassador-at-large for the country.

"He was not a drive-by celebrity," former President Bill Clinton said recently. "He went into those camps and he was actually solving their water problems, solving their sanitation problems."

Echoed Maryse Kedar, the president of an education foundation who has worked with Penn, "I can tell you that Sean surprised a lot of people here. Haiti became his second home."

Indeed, Sean lives sometimes months at a time in a tent acting as an unofficial mayor of a tent city, walking around with a gun in his pocket for protection. He's put his personal political beliefs aside to work with various political factions. He's not a fan of the UN (one point I agree), yet worked out an 8.75M grant from the UN for relief aid.

Dig deep and you'll see he is making a real change in a country that could be said "god forgot about". These people have suffered under generations of corruption and international indifference that probably (at least originally) has/had roots in racism. If you are looking for a charity to support, you probably can't do much better than J/P HRO. Kudos to Sean Penn.