Why I’m Donating to The Family Place
Posted in Editorials, Links, Personal Essays on October 16th, 2012by Elizabeth
Tags: Feminism • First Amendment Solutions
Note: This is modified from my post in /r/RedditBomb
I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few weeks trying to clean up Reddit, but it’s important to make an impact in real life also. When I heard about Redditors making donations to Violent Acrez to help support his disabled wife after being fired because he was outed, I was shocked, but I knew that his supporters aren’t the only people who can make a difference.
We can have a debate about doxxing and whether or not what Adrian Chen’s article was appropriate (my take = doxxing bad, Chen = not doxxing = good). We even disagree with Violent Acrez employer’s decision to fire him for his online activities, or feel conflicted about how this article has impacted Michael Brutsch’s life (I’m kind of disturbed by the amount of schadenfreude I am experiencing) without also supporting the things he said and did on Reddit. The now defunct /r/jailbait (which he created), /r/creepshots (which, as he insists, he only moderated!) and the still going /r/beatingwomen (which he also created) contribute to a culture of misogyny and violence against women.
So as a symbol of my opposition to Violent Acrez’ legacy, I’m going to make a donation to The Family Place, a women’s shelter in Dallas, Texas – and I hope you will too. If you would like, send me a tweet, email, comment or PM on Reddit and let me know how much you donated so we can keep track of our collective impact.
The Family Place is the largest family violence service provider in the Dallas area reaching out to thousands of victims of family violence each year with award-winning programs that keep women and children safe. Since 1978, our mission to end the epidemic of family violence has remained constant. We believe that intervention, emergency shelter, and crisis counseling for all victims—women, children and men—will save lives and that transitional housing and case management will transform lives for the better.
In 2011, we provided 11,826 clients with more than 187,547 service hours. When families are in our care, we work to meet all of their needs. At our Safe Campus, we feed more than 50 kids every day, providing meals and after-school snacks—that’s 18,250 after-school snacks a year! We go through more than 3,000 tubes of toothpaste and 3,600 bottles of shampoo each year.
We couldn’t meet the great need without help from the entire community. Few things have the power to change the shape of our world more than the act of giving.