I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
Does "GoFundMe" really work? Does it provide a good way to "take action" and help others?
The November 2019 issue of The Atlantic arrived in my
business mailbox, and for me the most telling article(as to personal values)
was on p. 84, by Rachel Monroe, “GoFundMe Nation” , or “When GoFundMe Gets Ugly”.The tagline is “The largest crowdfunding site
in the world puts up a mirror to who we are and what matters most for us. The
reflection isn’t always pretty.”
Yet the concept has sometimes come across as a moral
justification for social media.It gives
you a way to “take action” to help specific other people rather than just talk
and become known.
I personally rarely contribute to them (I do contribute
to kickstarter film fundraisers).I’m
also reminded of Facebook’s practice of putting an “add a donate button” in
your stream (even actual business page) when you make a political post.That’s part of a modern theory (“Madison’s
music”) that free speech is supposed to be paired with a willingness to take
action for others when appropriate.
She gives an opening take of how a well-off Memphis
businessman found “God” after an incident and took up a project of raising
money for an impoverished black teen.The tale seems to bridge the communication gap we have with people other,
less fortunate, stations of life.
But, Rachel argues, this kind of faith seems like the exception
and seems naïve.Most GoFundMe’s fail,
apparently.
Then, there are those which may be inappropriate (for
abortions).
I’ve noticed the use of them (or of crowdsourcing) for
organ transplantation needs.This was an
idea that would have been unthinkable when I was growing up because medicine was
not advanced enough to provide them.In earlier
times, it was more about “taking care of your own”, a Trumpian value. Update: Oct 13. Page 58 of Time Magazine's Oct 21 issue "America's Forever War" has a story by W.J. Hennigan and North Ogden on help for families who lose parents in war, and this story relates a GoFundMe that worked well. See the next post Sunday on this problem.
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