Donate If You Can

Some of you may have noticed I've added a donation button on the right side of this blog. "What does this mean? Are you selling out? Are you trying to bilk innocent webgoers into paying for your debauchery?" The simple answer is 'no'. The real answer of why is a little bit more complicated.

Everyone's happy about Obama, myself included. But the real fact is that no longer how many times his campaign staff sits down with IVAW, he is not about to end the war tomorrow. IVAW still has work to do, and so do I.

I don't know if I've talked about it here before or not, but in addition to being a member of IVAW, I also head the GI Outreach Committee, which is a smaller subgroup that focuses only on reaching out to existing active duty, national guard, and reserve servicemembers. It also focuses on helping to get IVAW active duty, national guard, and reserve troops organizer training, and any help they may happen to need.

Now that the tide is beginning to turn, many people are resting on their laurels. They're slowing their donations, and waiting for Obama to fix everything. We, particularly the servicemember-organizers of Iraq Veterans Against the War, refuse to wait for anything. We are going out to help bring about the world we want to see, and bring our points of unity to a reality. There are still troops dying in Iraq. There are still veterans being inadequately taken care of at home. Something still needs to be done.

With that in mind, we are continuing forward, and have a very ambitious project taking place this winter. It will mean servicemember-organizers flying all over the country to help organize their fellow soldiers en masse. But, like many other things, it takes money. It takes money to get soldiers on planes, and with how little we're paid, that's not money we can easily afford on our own. And that's why, at long last, I'm asking those of you who can, those of you who feel that there is still work to do and you want to help accomplish it, to donate whatever you can towards this project.

If you can't donate but still want to help in some way, whether it's passing this word on to your email lists, helping to house or feed soldiers, or helping to produce items you want to go to soldiers being outreached, please feel free to email me at armysergeant@ivaw.org.

Thank you all for your time, your commitment, your support, and all that you have done for myself, other servicemember-organizers, and the movement as a whole.