Equality Florida has set up a @gofundme page to help the families of the victims of the #PulseNightclub shooting https://t.co/45RxYJXdDH
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) June 12, 2016
From the GoFundMe page:
Equality Florida, the state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization is collecting contributions via this GoFundMe page to support the victims of the horrific shooting at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub…
Funds raised on this page will be going directly to the victims and families affected by the horrific shooting at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub. Equality Florida is working with local organizations – who are also helping to raise funds – to ensure the money is distributed properly. Thank you for the support!
You can also visit http://www.eqfl.org/news/pulse to get more information on vigils, counseling, and blood drives happening across the state. We’re also posting updates on Equality Florida’s Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/equalityfl…
Remember, circulating this link around your social media network helps, too. Let everyone know that we’re not defined by the monsters…
Like the GOP’s presidential candidate:
Trump: I’m Getting So Much ‘Congrats for Being Right’ on Terrorism After Orlando https://t.co/Bsg0v85qP2 pic.twitter.com/2nIU4j1vQa
— Mediaite (@Mediaite) June 12, 2016
And the guy who’s probably jumped to the top of his VP queue…
TaMara (HFG)
Shared. And I’d rather stick a fork in my eye then listen to flaccid boy say anything ever….
Davebo
Over a half million raised in 7 hours. That’s great and says something good about this country when we need it.
Hal
Blood donation also. For those inot the area.
Central Planning
I donated and put on my facebook page “Better than thoughts and prayers”
lamh36
This likely gonna be the best way folks can help…especially other gay folks, especially since:
there were some reports that the “Gay ban” was lifted on blood donations, but apparently that’s NOT the case.
Ryan
Call your Congresscritter!!!
Mike J
@Hal:
It was the first time I’ve ever seen them explicitly ask for AB-. Interesting because it is universal recipient, and can’t donate to anybody except AB-. When I was in college and donated all the time (pre-living in mad cow land) I was told my local hospital didn’t even keep enough on hand to start a heart-lung machine.
Schlemazel Khan
If you can’t think of anything else to do donate blood. Even if you don’t live near Orlando there is always a need for blood. I have donated about 4 times a year except for a break while dealing with cancer, just dropped a pint on Thursday. My work makes it easy for me since the bloodmobile stops there every quarter but check your Red Cross page for a site near you. Its not painful, takes about an hour and can literally (in a very literal sense) save a life.
Starfish
@Mike J: I thought AB+ was the universal recipient.
Ryan
FORMER speaker Newt Gingrich. FORMER. The one bright note on an otherwise shittastic day.
NorthLeft12
Count on the Donald to focus on what is important….him being “right” and all the accolades for doing so.
Of course the shooter is an American citizen born in the US, so I am really not sure what odious thing he said that he could consider himself right about.
Yutsano
@Ryan: It keeps getting worse.
Especially since this is now Trump’s new Twitter rant subject.
Helen
For all you NY’ers, there will be a vigil tomorrow night at 6pm at the Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher St. I was down there earlier today. Cops standing outside protecting the patrons. Let’s all step back and be cognizant of the differences between today and 1969.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
– Martin Luther King. –
opiejeanne
My youngest worked on the Disney cruise ship 5 years ago and has been to that club several times. All of her Orlando friends are safe but one has a friend who was shot; the last she heard they were still trying to stabilize him. That was 11am pacific.
She said all of the Orlando Disney friends were donating blood, and the line was huge.
Maybe not so huge now if they’re not allowing some of them to donate.
Felanius Kootea
Thank you. Made a donation – it at least feels like doing something.
Mike J
@Starfish: AB is universal recipient. I’ve always heard that O- is the safest thing to give without time to type, so I assumed negative was was safe than positive to give. I don’t know though.
In trying to find out, I did discover that AB is universal plasma donor, so that could explain why they wanted it (in addition to the fact that with 50 patients, there’s a decent chance at least one needed it.)
JanieM
@Felanius Kootea: Ditto.
Eric U.
@Mike J: O- is the universal donor. That’s my type.
Wish there was some other org I could donate through, because the Red Cross does everything they can to make it obvious they are a Republican front organization. I hadn’t given in a couple of years, so of course they deleted my record and made my recent donation take an extra 20 minutes.
They are always saying that they are just about out of blood. I finally gave in and donated because the emails seemed particularly desperate this time. At least the nurses were really nice this time. I stopped giving blood a while back because the people made it unpleasant. Maybe that’s because I always went in with the students, but even then there is no reason for them not to be nice to donors.
Ruviana
@Central Planning: Scalzi. Just because.
Amaranthine RBG
I understand the need to preserve the crime scene and all of that, but the fact that the police took so long to ID people and notify families is kind of worrying.
Origuy
@Eric U.: I don’t know where you are, but there are other blood banks beside ARC. In the SF Bay Area, I’ve been donating through the Stanford Blood Center.
Central Planning
My youngest’s class has been planning (eta will be) to sing the Alternate Routes’ song “Nothing More” at their moving up ceremony this week. Makes me tear up thinking of him singing this, not knowing all the horror in the world…
I love the last line.
Amaranthine RBG
@Ruviana:
From your link:
I pointed this out in a thread below and self-appointed moral purity brigade attacked me for “parroting NRA talking points”.
Yeah, I guess John Scalzi and I are just NRA parrots.
*face palm*
SiubhanDuinne
@opiejeanne:
Your beautiful garden pictures seem like a million years ago :-(
Poopyman
@lamh36: “Since 1985, have you ever had sex with another man, even once?” is still in the questions asked during screening.
I thought of this this morning, and that regular donors need to pick up our game. I doubt Maryland contributions would make it all the way to Fla, but I need to go in this week and give up some platelets anyway.
ETA: That question I quoted is from memory, and may not be 100% accurate.
scav
Honestly, at this point I’m 87% convonved the bulk of ‘mercan society like the violence of this status quo, especially as so many make money off it, and would probably end up crawling out of the hospital beds to kill each other with forks a la pretty village pretty flames. Because if they were otherwise, things would be different.
Mary G
I was surprised, but happy, to see my neighbor – extremely Republican, worships at Rick Warren’s Saddleback church, and hates Obama, still lowered his American flag to half mast as soon as they got home.
Aleta
Here’s a gofundme set up to support counseling resources (already in place and operating) to the LGBT community in Orlando and others affected. https://www.gofundme.com/29bubytq
? Martin
This is why I don’t think the ISIS connection is particularly relevant:
We have no problem initiating violent crimes against the LGBT community right here at home. We don’t need to be blaming ISIS for hate crime statistics that long predate the creation of ISIS.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
The rules are backward for plasma. There are two considerations: the antigens on red blood cells and the antibodies in the plasma. Your body will produce antibodies to various antigens, but not to the ones that you express yourself. If you get red cells from somebody with an incompatible type, your antibodies will attack the foreign red cells, making the donation useless; if you get plasma from somebody with an incompatible type, the antibodies in the plasma attack your own red cells, also making it useless. So people with O- blood are universal donors only for red cells, since theirs have no antigens, but it’s people with AB+ who are universal donors for plasma because their bodies don’t produce antibodies that would attack a recipient’s red cells.
Gin & Tonic
@Poopyman: Wish I could still donate – I have my 10-gallon coffee mug, but after getting babesiosis a couple of years ago I am “permanently deferred.” They now have a 100-donation sweatshirt that I can never get.
Schlemazel Khan
@Ruviana:
That was a double gut punch. It is an awful litany of horrors, more than I could read. But I expect Scalzi to provide a context and some prospective that helps me understand a situation and deal with it. His non-fiction stuff is unbelievably good, thought provoking and reasoned. This left me feeling more hopeless than before.
Roger Moore
@Eric U.:
Check to see if a local hospital can take its own donations and cut out the middle man. Getting the whole system set up is a big hassle- blood products are FDA regulated, so there are a lot of regulator hurdles- but it’s cheaper for a hospital that has a high demand to collect their own blood than to buy it from Red Cross. My employer has its own blood donor center because they’re one of those high volume users. It’s actually very convenient to donate at work. Not only do I automatically get excused during the time when I’m donating, I can actually earn up to 16 hours off per year for my donations.
lamh36
Time for #TonyAwards need this bit of smile right now.
JPL
It’s been a long day and tony’s award show open thread would be appreciated. James Cordan is amazing. Beautiful opening about hate..
Then a comment about diversity on broadway, in fact it’s so diverse Trump would build a wall around it.
JPL
@lamh36: great minds and all
Jeffro
This commencement address from the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education is excellent – it’s called “Good Questions”, as in ‘good questions to always ask yourself’.
http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/16/05/good-questions
#3 is, “Can’t we at least…?”, as in, “Can’t we at least agree on X or Y or to do Z?” It’s a way to at least keep the conversation going and hopefully to find some common ground for action.
I’m going to be thinking about that a lot this week, and then every letter I write to my Congressman, Senators, and other assorted officials is going to start off with that question: “Can’t we at least…?” It is past time. to. get. moving. on. this.
Helen
@JPL:
The best opening Tony awards show is by far Neil Patrick Harris in 2011. “It’s not just for gays anymore”
“Come in and be inspired; there’s no sodomy required.”
The BEST. Go google it.
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
ISIS has basically turned themselves into a hashtag. I hate my coworkers #ISIS or I hate gay people #ISIS. It gives disgruntled assholes a “reason” other than I don’t like Mondays, but let’s not kid ourselves — these murders would have happened even if ISIS never existed.
Mnemosyne
@lamh36:
@JPL:
I’m in California and they’re making us wait until 8:00 pm for the show. Feh.
opiejeanne
@SiubhanDuinne: I know. I almost missed that there was a garden thread because I spotted something about the shootings on Twitter before I came here. It’s just so terrible and all the marching moms and orange t-shirts in the country won’t make a whit of difference until we take back congress as well as keep a Democrat in the White House. At that point we might be able to do something in spite of a Republicans and the NRA and timid Democrats afraid of their constituents.
This morning the police in Santa Monica arrested a man who was heading to the Pride Parade in LA with a lot of guns, the intent being to kill some people.
We have to change people’s hearts & minds as well.
i am overwhelmed by today’s tragedy and grief.
opiejeanne
@Amaranthine RBG: I adore Scalzi but I really don’t understand this statement.
Origuy
@opiejeanne: I think he means that most gun violence happens in ones and twos, and doesn’t get the national attention of a mass shooting.
Anne Laurie
@Schlemazel Khan: Dunno — I though Scalzi said what needed to be said:
The NRA and its parasite politicians have resisted every attempt to modify gun control laws in America, but we can’t stop fighting them just because it’s hard & dispiriting.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
I donated to the Equality Florida Go Fund Me page, and also to the Americans for Sensible Solutions and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence groups. We need to help the victims and also do what we can to stop these things from happening…
Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@Origuy: OK, that makes sense. I understand that there are thousand more ones and twos, but they don’t get reported nationally unless they add a third victim, or maybe it’s the fourth one that does the trick.