Friday, August 27, 2010

The Center cannot hold ...

... onto the gains it's been making for market anarchist access to the mainstream media, unless it has your support.

You know I'm a "matching funds" kind of guy, so here's the deal:

The Center for a Stateless Society pays me $640 a month, in return for which I work 20 hours a week on media stuff (building lists, submitting our commentaries to newspapers, posting our materials on the web, attempting to book our people on talk radio, etc.), as well as writing an original piece of my own once a week or so (here's my latest, which is a little bit "inside baseball" -- I usually do news-oriented stuff for mainstream media submission), helping edit and proofread other writers' submissions, and answering the Center's phone when it rings.

This month, I've pledged to donate $100 of my pay back immediately upon receipt, as well as to cover the $30 tab for extending the Center's phone service by two months (it's a prepaid cell linked to a Google Voice number) out of my own pocket.

Why not just tell them to dock me $100? Because I want my donation to show up on the "ChipIn" meter that totes up the fundraiser's progress:



When people see a bigger total and more donors on the meter, they tend to be more willing to "chip in" themselves.

This week, we've managed to get our pieces into two print newspapers, with notification from a major US newspaper that they'll be running a C4SS commentary on Monday, and from a Canadian monthly that they'll be running a second C4SS piece in their September issue.

For more on what's happening, see my weekly Media Coordinator Update. Since June, we've gone from pretty much zero on the media front to putting market anarchist pieces in newspapers large and small from coast to coast US-wise and and abroad.

We've got some momentum going here (I personally expect us to be at 5-10 US media pickups per week and 10 or more per week abroad -- I'm working on building an Australian media list at the moment, having covered much of central and southeast Asia yesterday and earlier today -- by the end of the year), but if we can't pay the bills we can lose that momentum quickly.

Obviously not everyone can match a $100 or $130 donation, but every little bit helps, so please do what you can. Thanks in advance.

Update, 08/28/10: I've now been paid for July, and have, as promised, donated $100 of that pay back to C4SS. It's impossible for me to tell for sure from here whether or not KN@PPSTER readers have been behind the jump in the Center's fundraising (from less than $500 to more than $1500 in a couple of days!), but based on exit pages, etc., my guess is "yes" and I thank you for it.

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