She deserves an answer, and here it
is.
Dear C.G.,
Non-profit
fundsuckers like the one you ran into give all
non-profits a bad name. We track their doings and expose
them out loud in our magazines, Ragged Edge and
Mouth.
They're
not us. We are not the standard "organization." Freedom
Clearinghouse is four people at three kitchen tables. One
table is here in Topeka, Kansas, where Lucy Gwin (that's
me, writing your reply) and Cal Grandy do the work of
enlisting and equipping advocates for this battle. Both
of us have disability labels. Mine was applied by a drunk
driver. Cal's was applied by shrinks. Both of us live on
SSDI and an on-again off-again stipend (if you could call
it that) from Mouth magazine which we also publish.
At
another kitchen table in Louisville, Kentucky, Mary
Johnson and her cats do the majority of the Clearinghouse
website work. Mary also edits Ragged Edge, the original
disability rights magazine. At the third kitchen table in
Brooklyn, New York, Deb Fedor answers emails from
advocates, keeps them encouraged and in touch, and
troubleshoots when they run into roadblocks. Nobody's
getting rich off this thing, or even making a living off
it. That's the truth. We are doing this because it must
be done if our people are to live in freedom.
Second,
about paying to be an advocate. We list people as
advocates when they sign up. That's when we ship them a
Jumpstart Kit. I don't know about secret weapons, but
this is a ring binder chock full of how-tos and info.
(Most of what we have to offer is and will be online,
ever expanding. All of that is free.) What comes in the
Kit that's not online and won't ever be is camera-ready
artwork you can take to the printer or photocopier to
make Freedom Clearinghouse letterhead, envelopes,
business cards, flyers, ads, stickers. Plus there's
camera-ready art for that license to change the system.
You can issue your own! Those goodies make you an
official advocate when you write to state officials and
when you go into some godforsaken disability prison to
find people who want to be free.
Yes,
Freedom Clearinghouse advocates will actually go into
those places and meet with the people imprisoned there.
This is the real thing happening here.
PLEASE NOTE!
We don't want advocates
who are advocates in name only. Freedom
Clearinghouse is here to change the
system that imprisons people for the crime of
having a disability. Each of us is going to have to get
out from behind our computers and into the real world
once in a while to get that accomplished.
The
kits cost us about $21 each to produce, $3 to mail. (The
first advocate who got one said we ought to be nominated
for the Nobel Prize for it. That's an exaggeration, but
we did put a lot of work into it.) The "profit" of $21,
added to donations from the good people listed on our
site as "Friends of Liberty," help us meet our expenses.
Let me list a few of those.
We
mail letters to every disability list we can find to
recruit more advocates to get people free. That's
expensive -- moreso since people with disabilities are
mostly dirt poor. Like you, they can't afford much. We've
had to upgrade our computer equipment and software (no
laptops! no frills!) to operate the website. Just like
regular offices, kitchen table offices need pens and
paper and copier toner too. Not to mention phone lines
which mean phone bills. Et-damn-cetera!
Right
now we're swamped with bills coming in from this effort.
Daily we struggle to keep liberty under construction.
Like you, I want to live in a world where everything is
free. So far, I don't.
We
had to beg and borrow money to get the first mailing out
and the first binders made. If we don't get that money
back, we can't make more, can't do more. Liberty's
construction will shut down.
Hope
that answers your questions. If it doesn't, read
the letter we mailed to a whole lot of people last
November. It explains more.
