I think it is safe to assume that Balloon Juice has adequately covered the SGK for the Cure’s epic parade of FAIL over the last week and that another post to pile on is not that necessary. Still, in light of the outrage and the desire that many have shown to fight back, I wanted to say a few words about the power of regular action–and especially the regular action of donating funds.
I work at a nonprofit. One-time donations are great and so are annual gifts, but what is really helpful are those folks who support your work with regular monthly giving. This helps your bottom line, other fundraising and your ability to plan for actions, programs and campaigns that support your mission.
Last year when the GOP took control of Congress and many State Governments, they began an organized War on Women. Planned Parenthood became the object of their fantasies and the target of their bile. It was then, that I started making a regular monthly donation to Planned Parenthood. It was not a lot–somewhere between the cost of a nice six-pack of a fine microbrew beer and a Martini–but it was a monthly donation that they could count on as they fought the wingnuts and worked to help women take charge of their health.
In the wake of the recent SGK for the Cure flap I called and doubled my gift. Now it may be that many of you have given a donation to Planned Parenthood in the last week and if you have that’s great, but I want to encourage you to consider giving them a regular monthly gift. It does not have to be a lot. Monthly giving programs start with $5 a month and go up from there. If you think you could give a monthly donation go to the Planned Parenthood web site. Click on the “Donate” link on the upper right side of the page and then select the “Monthly” tab. After that all you need to do is fill in your details and select your level of giving.
If 150,000 people gave Planned Parenthood $5 a month they would give them–every month–as much as they got–each year–from SGK for the Cure before their epic FAIL. And with that Planned Parenthood could help many, many more women take control of their health. Yes, 150,000 people is a lot of folks, but not when you look at the number of folks posting comments on Blogs, Facebook and Twitter about the latest wingnut inspired dust-up.
So, go and donate if you can. Your monthly gift of any size will give Planned Parenthood the resources they need to fight back against this latest iteration of the endless wingnut war on women.
Cheers
ps: By the way you can also make monthly gifts to President Obama, the DNC, the DCCC, the DSCC, your favorite candidate and/or nonprofit organization. This kind of sustained giving makes a real difference.
Natz from AZ
Put your money where your heart is. Going to PP tonight to set up a monthly donation. Interesting note: just found out tonight my wonderful spouse has a small amount come out of every paycheck towards PP. He can still surprise me..
Natz from AZ
Put your money where your heart is. Going to PP tonight to set up a monthly donation. Interesting note: just found out tonight my wonderful spouse has a small amount come out of every paycheck towards PP. He can still surprise me..
OzoneR
Y’all want to know why the Obama Administration is going to rescind their requirement that religious institutions have their insurance provide birth control, watch MSNBC right now.
Alison
YES THIS. I used to work in development for a nonprofit and did most of the customer service and stewardship for our lower level donors (i.e. not major donors). Those automatic monthly gifts are totally awesome, because they cut down on expenses. At least where I worked, people on what we called our sustainer program were removed from lists for other donation mailings, which meant saving money on direct mail (which is OMG SO EXPENSIVE FUCK). It meant less time processing donations, too, and helped avoid the “Oh I keep meaning to donate” trap so many of us fall into.
A lot of people would express sadness or even guilty feelings about “only” giving $5 a month, but that works out to $60 a year, and most people who only do one gift a year give less than that, $25, $45, maybe $50, because for many of us, we can’t fork out more than that in one go. So spreading it over the year is fine, even if each gift looks small.
So yes, please please, folks – consider doing this if you can!
tc
@OzoneR:
Thank Jeebus someone else is watching this. I’ve never wanted to reach through the television and punch both a pundit and host more.
OzoneR
@tc: I’m sure when Obama does give him on this, we’ll hear on MSNBC how he “sold out the base”
Liberals just can’t rally around other Liberals. This is why we can’t have nice things.
some guy
giving money to the DSCC means you are objectively supporting the Mary Landrieu’s and Ben Nelson’s of the scene. no thanks. Little Debbie’s DCCC is little better. find and support real progressives, the more the better.
Alison
@tc: Was this on Lawrence? Because Rachel tonight was making it clear how smart a rule this was and how it was stupid to worry about OH NOES TEH CATHOLIC VOTERS, since practically every woman, including Catholic women, use birth control, and women tend to turn out in greater numbers in elections than men.
OzoneR
@Alison:
Yeah, and Lawrence countered with “Only 45% of Catholics and 49% of voters support this decision”
Fucking left wing media is all over the place, but its Obama’s fault the messaging is bad.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Of course you know I’ll put in a plug to do sustained giving to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) as well. The wee little affiliate where I workNAMI Warren County doesn’t have the capacity to take monthly gifts, but I’m sure NAMI National does.
KyCole
I just renewed my membership in PP last week with a $100 donation, but I think I’ll do the monthly donation as well. They gave me my first birth control when I was a poor college student who had to ride there on her bicycle. As far as donating to Democrats, I’ll give my money to my awesome congressman John Yarmuth, or anybody that has the nerve to run against the evil Mitch McConnell.
CT Voter
Thanks, Dennis, for a useful, concrete way to put money where your mouth is. And for explaining why a monthly donation is preferable. And I will go and do likewise.
The fail-parade for Obama? I’ll sit this one out. So boring, so predictable, so…whatever.
gex
@OzoneR: Well by all means, don’t describe it! Make us all tune in so MSNBC gets more eyes.
clayton
28 states and this is the thing our friends decide to die on? Sounds like Anne Laurie and Corner Stone all over again.
But back on topic. I find monthly giving the best. It started out with my local radio station, and then UNICEF, then Hopey, and now PP.
I tried to do it with bears, but it didn’t transact. I will try again. In the meantime, Jewel’s cam is back in working order. Take a look at a wild mom bear taking care of her two cubs and tell me how Sarah Palin is NOT a bear/grizzly mom and all that.
Just take a look at the den cam is all I’m saying.
clayton
28 states and this is the thing our friends decide to die on? Sounds like Anne Laurie and Corner Stone all over again.
But back on topic. I find monthly giving the best. It started out with my local radio station, and then UNICEF, then Hopey, and now PP.
I tried to do it with bears, but it didn’t transact. I will try again. In the meantime, Jewel’s cam is back in working order. Take a look at a wild mom bear taking care of her two cubs and tell me how Sarah Palin is NOT a bear/grizzly mom and all that.
Just take a look at the den cam is all I’m saying.
Dennis G.
@KyCole: Yes, regardless of whom you give to (nonprofit, candidate or Party group), it is the power of regular action and giving that I stress here. It would be great if John Yarmuth or Liz Warren or any candidate could count on the monthly support of a group of folks. This is a way to strongly support the people and causes you believe in and a regular small donations have a big impact.
Cheers
Keith G
@OzoneR:
I have been out of the loop for a few days. Did the Obama Adm. begin messaging? Hopefully, there has been some push back.
Danny
While we’re hyped on energy and good intentions… Udall’s got this constitutional amendment that could make Citizens United a thing of the past. Why not harass people on the internet about it
ifwhen you got nothing better to do? A wise man once said that we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.clayton
@Keith G: ABL has posted a bit. Shouldn’t you be all over that instead of whining on a man’s post?
OzoneR
@Keith G:
Jay Carney did almost immediately and was relentlessly pushed on it “but the Catholic vote, but the Catholic vote, will you at least compromise? You should compromise. Ohio and Pennsylvania has Catholics!”
O’Donnell claimed Axelrod opened the door to compromise, but it didn’t really sound like it, sounded more like “yeah, fine, our compromise position is our position” and O’Donnell had on “a longtime liberal” to tell us how insensitive the decision is.
Really doesn’t matter how much messaging the administration does if there are 10 minute segments like the one O’Donnell had today. If the media never touched the issue, they would’ve gotten away with it, but they’re turning it into a “debate” and that will only make the public question it more.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Alison: Tweety was utterly incoherent on this issue tonight, even making allowances for his being Tweety. After he (along with EJ Dionne) made it clear that he disagrees with and violated in his own life the Church’s rules on birth control, that almost every Catholic he knows does/did, but this is about the “teachings” and “moral authority” of the Church. It’s not about, he declared as if he were making sense, how many Catholics actually follow the rules made by the old, celibate men. It’s about teaching and moral authority. Ten minutes later he declared himself a strong supporter of marriage equality, so I guess he doesn’t give a shit about that teaching from moral authority, either.
Also, too, as to polls, I’d like to see the Catholic respondents broken down by age and gender.
beltane
@OzoneR: Since Catholics abhor birth control so much I wonder why it is that my cousins from the Catholic side of my family have been so completely outbred by myself and the rest of the godless heathen part of the family.
J.W. Hamner
This is the same conclusion I came to this weekend when contemplating a 1 time gift… saw the monthly option and thought it would clearly be better for PP’s bookkeeping… and probably my own as well. I pay monthly for silly things like WoW, so I figured I could spare a monthly payment for women’s health.
pseudonymous in nc
@Danny:
Except that proposing constitutional amendments is, in modern American politics, the emptiest of empty political gestures.
pseudonymous in nc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Simple solution: take away the whole excruciating need for them to sign up to a plan that covers such things, enroll the employees automatically, and cover their employees through the taxes those employees pay.
That’s what happens in Canada, where there are a not insubstantial number of Catholic hospitals.
OzoneR
@efgoldman:
the public doesn’t overwhelmingly support the administration’s position, 49% according to the poll Lawerence showed.
The public overwhelmingly supports birth control, doesn’t mean they support requiring religious organizations to have it covered by their insurance.
This is the context where we lose.
RosiesDad
I’m in for $10/month to a good cause. (Add it to my monthlies to Elizabeth Warren, the ACLU and This American Life.) Definitely a good way to give if you can afford it.
tc
@gex:
Lawrence had Mark Shields on to talk about the birth control policy. The two men moaned about how horrible it is that the president is forcing Catholic Hospitals and Universities to provide women’s health care. They hoped the president would change his mind.
OzoneR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Lawrence’s poll had them; Catholic men oppose, women support, white Catholics oppose, minority Catholics (Latinos) support.
Essentially a case can be made that the Catholic opposition is already lost, but thats not the point, the point is OUR OWN SIDE is relentlessly fighting this, and that will permeate through the minds of the Catholics who oppose it now. Will it lead them to not support Obama? Probably not, but it probably will lead them to compromise.
This isn’t the first time this has happened.
Hungry Joe
Piling on is underrated.
Danny
@pseudonymous in nc: I guess you’re not the one you’ve been waiting for, yet.
ChiSharona
thanks, dennis. done.
i was inspired by the notion of targeted/sustained/budgeted giving via a colleague, an expat new to Chicago who organized her downtown living/working by focusing on a Street Wise couple who impressed her.
she gave them $100/mo (religiously) and, in her mind, freed herself from the constant tugs of so many needs and fulfilled her own need to share her relative good fortune.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@OzoneR:
That’s actually kind of a pleasant surprise. I think of self-ID’d Catholic Latinos as pretty conservative on these issues. MSNBC, ‘our’ network, is in no small measure dominated by male, baby-boomer Catholics: Scarborough (who made his political bones giving pro bono legal work to an anti-abortion terrorist/assassin), the hysterically tribal Tweety, and I”m surprised to see O’Donnell coming down in that camp, apparently (didn’t see the show). With special guest appearances by EJ Dionne, who like Tweety violates this sacred, 40 year old tenet of Holy Mother CHurch. I don’t know where Mika B shows off her Sunday best, but I can just picture her solemnly nodding along with Joey. I don’t always like her, but Joan Walsh has been a welcome voice there on this issue.
Nutella
@OzoneR:
Because we’re all talking about it as if requiring large employers who happen to be Catholic to obey the same laws as any other large corporation is a bad thing. Why should those organizations be able to treat their employees badly and increase insurance costs for everyone else?
Rastafarians use marijuana for religious purposes. Do they get to break the marijuana laws everybody else has to obey because they’ve got a religious reason? Nope. They get caught, they go to jail just like any other user.
Making exceptions to either drug laws or employment laws because some guys in pink silk dresses or dreadlocks claim a religious requirement is wrong.
We’re letting the RWAs frame this. We need to stop that now.
Every person can make their own moral decision about birth control. People are moral actors. Institutions are not.
OzoneR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sure, but much like religious blacks with abortion, they understand the necessity of it and aren’t ashamed to admit it, unlike upper middle class and rich whites who pretend to be moral but are secretly feeding their daughters birth control and sons condoms behind everyone’s backs.
OzoneR
@Nutella:
This is how Carney and Axelrod were explaining it, but the pundits have been going on and on about the votes of White Catholics in Ohio and Pennsylvania. And the soft Obama votes in Altoona and Cincinnati will take it as “I want to vote for him because of the economy, but they’r really making a big deal about this birth control thing, it must be bad”
OzoneR
@pseudonymous in nc:
It’s probably the one way to really get rid of Citizens United
Danny
@OzoneR:
And it’s more sexy than the anti gay marriage amendment!
So that birth control “mandate” – it was all 11-dimensional chess to boost Ricky, right?
Origuy
Since she’s of Polish ancestry, a Catholic church is your best bet. How often, though, is anyone’s guess.
Nutella
@OzoneR:
Heh. Well put. The chances that Tweety and all those other Very Serious White Catholic Men who are concerned about women possibly getting adequate health care haven’t frequently used contraceptives themselves is about negative zero.
slag
Agreed. Thanks for making this point, dengre!
Larkspur
Darn, I am ahead of the curve (and that never happens) – I set up a modest monthly PP donation last year.
I’ve been thinking about how SJK could rehabilitate itself. Of course, it does not have to effect any real change; it could keep going as is. But in my reality, they would finally understand that peak pinkitude is over, they would take stock of the impressive resources they have, and they’d reconstitute themselves as a formidable vanguard-y action group, and they’d zero in on funding research aimed at learning about environmental carcinogens, thus recalibrating the mission to something like the Susan G. Komen Project for Identification and Total Annihilation of Environmental Factors Linked to Incidence and Causation of Breast Cancer, or possibly something less unwieldy and more acronymically mellisonant.
Because remember how State Department personnel swarmed to cheer Secretary of State Clinton when she first showed up for work? Well, I have to think that there are lots of SGK rank and file employees and volunteers who have grown uneasy and would love to see SGK turn it all around and get back to fighting the real enemy, you know: that stupid fucking horrible tiresome cancer thing.
KyCole
Thanks for the info Dennis. I just signed up for a monthly donation to PP and will do the same for the other causes that I believe in- starting with the ACLU.
slag
Also, too, Senator Patty Murray agrees:
The video of her speech is refreshing. More like this!
Yutsano
@slag: My Senators rule. And one will get re-elected handily come November. I less than three my state. :)
slag
@Yutsano: Yeah. Gotta admit two lady senators in one state is pretty cool. Barbara Boxer who went right after her was pretty good too. Head west, young women! Head west!
Keith G
@OzoneR: Are there not more voices to be mobilized than Carney? There are strong arguments that will not make themelves – they need to be aggressively repeated
early(too late) and often. Were Kathleen Sibeleus, Bill Corr or other leaders form the administration on the air making the “pro” case? I hope they were. This is a big fight.@clayton: Wow. What’s that about?
Keith G
@Keith G: I just finished (via news podcasts) listening to various reports on this policy debate. I got so frustrated that I had to walk away a few times.
It is crystal clear that the bishops got their message out to all concerned. The same talking points (some easily countered) were on a loop. The administration side was a poorly voiced mishmash. It almost seems as if no one was able or willing to produce, organize, and distribute a direct and conclusive argument that could be used at these times to counter systemic approach of the Catholic Church.
These fights between conflicting ideals are never easy. Why would anyone feel otherwise?
OzoneR
@Keith G:
If you think these fights are never easy, then why are you so frustrated?
Why couldn’t Lawrence at least invite an administration official to go one on one with Shields instead of giving 10 uninterrupted minutes to make what was a completely anti-progressive argument? And no, Lawrence did not invite anyone, because if he did, he would have said “the administration declined to take part in this segment”
The administration’s messaging involves forums like The Lawrence O’Donnell show. And clearly the “liberal media” shows no interest in sharing that message.
I disagree, I’ve seen Carney, Axelrod and some other official from HHS make good arguments about this, and get shouted down. The rest is just pundits bickering.
Blue Galangal
Done (PP donation, I mean). Thanks for this.
staci
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Mika is Catholic – she was predictibly outraged.
bobbo
I started giving monthly to PP right around the time Dennis did – it may even have been a post here at BJ that motivated me.
staci
@OzoneR:
Al Sharpton was on Morning Joe a couple days ago defending the administration’s position. He did a fantastic job against Mika, Joe, Halperin and at least one other person.
MosesZD
Planned Parenthood, sure. Obama can fuck himself. I’m not interested in Republican wet-dream phony-liberal as President.
Keith G
You no more know what O’Donnell’s booker was up to than I do. Though, I cannot imagine the show turning down an administration official if one were made available.
greenergood
Just picked this up from ‘Dorothy Surrenders’ website:
If you are upset about the recent Komen foundation BS, you should know there is a better foundation out there for breast cancer research and advancement. The Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, http://www.dslrf.org/index.asp, is amazing and among some of their other research efforts runs the Army of Women, http://www.armyofwomen.org/. As a scientific researcher myself I have been supporting this well run organization for years now and realize that not many others know about it. It is a great organization that spends it’s money making real progress. Sign up for the emails at Army of Women to become a research participant or support the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation financially if you don’t qualify as a participant. Spread the word!