Charity Begins Online

by adminwp in Gay Geeks | 0 comments

Well, geeky ones, ‘tis the season: Of bright lights and winter wonderlands, of a score of delightful A Christmas Carol productions, of at least a dozen religious and cultural symbols, and of parties where your employer asks everybody to bring white elephant gifts and you end up bringing home a dollar store bra that itches, so you never wear it. True story. It’s a season of unparalleled beauty and, of course, Utah’s blistering cold. As I write this column, the November weather is sunny and crisp — however, I am skeptical. But I digress.

Most importantly, this is the season for giving.

As you probably noticed, this issue is largely dedicated to a number of worthy causes, organizations and people that are in need of your money, donations, time and loving-kindness as this bastard of a year draws to a close, and this bastard of an economy keeps on being a bastard. I hope that you can offer some help, or at the very least some prayers and/or good energy and thoughts to at least one (note: PWACU’s poinsettias make gorgeous and affordable gifts that can and do outlast Christmas trees. Just sayin’).

Winter makes me cold and miserable, but for some reason (because I’m stuck in the house being cold and miserable?) it also makes me more reflective — particularly about ways in which we can all be more charitable, how we can, as Charles Dickens so beautifully put it in A Christmas Carol, regard our fellow humans “as if they really were fellow-travellers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

Quite serendipitously, a perfect example tumbled into my lap about a week ago.

Among my many author friends is Catherynne M. Valente, who writes fantasy novels and poetry of dizzying imagination and delicious post-graduate vocabulary, and whose novel Palimpsest (speaking of other awesome giftmassy things …) provided fodder for this column in March or so. Earlier this month, Catherynne and her fiancé Dmitri got hitched and headed off on a honeymoon in St. Petersburg — because Dmitri was born in Ukraine, because Catherynne’s latest novel is set there, and because they are both of questionable taste and actually like subzero temperatures. I say the last with affection, you understand.

Before disembarking on their honeymoon, the two consulted with Expedia — the cheap-o air fare/hotel booking site Dmitri’s parents had used to book the happy couple’s trip as a surprise gift — to make sure they had their travel documents in order. An Expedia agent told them that they would not need travel visas to enter the country. Dubious, they called Expedia and received the same information. Assured, they packed their bags and headed off for a week in subzero temperatures.

Since I’m not writing about dorky Christmas specials or why zombies are, indeed, awesomesauce, you can probably guess that their trip didn’t exactly go smoothly. Upon arriving in Frankfurt, Germany to switch flights, Catherynne and Dmitri were informed, surprise! You do need visas after all. After a lot of phone calls, they managed to get the Russian consulate to give them an exception if Expedia provided a letter of visa support. Expedia refused, proving once again that corporations are love.

Now, this story could have had any number of increasingly unhappy. Dmitri and Catherynne could have spent their honeymoon in Germany. They could have turned around and flown home. They could have been stranded there still even as I type this because bureaucracies are sometimes awesome like that. As I write this column, however, they are happily ensconced in a St. Petersburg hotel room.

Thanks to the charity of a bunch of geeks in their pajamas.

Being, like many members of Generation Y, pretty down with the intranetz, Catherynne posted about the fiasco on her blog — which is fairly high traffic, thanks to her awesome writing skills. Running low on funds, she very grudgingly asked friends to make a donation to an online novel she is writing. People did that, but a few angry geeks took it one step further. Like many protesting injustice, stupidity and downright bullshit, they organized a Facebook page encouraging people to call Expedia and, uh, demand that they stop being jerks. The call for the cavalry blazed through blogs, chatrooms and Twitter like wildfire. Heck, Neil Gaiman himself even re-tweeted it! In a matter of hours, Catherynne and her husband had money to help them, a sympathetic Expedia agent on the horn and a company desperately trying to backpedal while wiping drippy yolk from its face.

Folks, these kinds of things happen all the time. I don’t just mean a company behaving abysmally when they can easily help someone. I mean people losing their homes to foreclosure, losing their jobs and wondering if there will be a next meal, people being hurt and denied justice (remember D.J. Bell and Dan Fair?). People in dire situations whose cries for help go ignored and unheeded, not just because of uncaring bureaucrats and CEOs, but because we simply don’t know they’re out there.

And, you know what? Geeks can change that.

We saw that we can in Catherynne and Dmitri’s case, we saw it in D.J. Bell and Dan Fair’s case, as their friends put up injustice801.com hours after their brutal beatings and Bell’s unjust arrest. People being hurt, neglected and in need who are reaching out for help through the internet. In the 10 years since I first logged onto this “series of tubes,” the wired world has evolved into, yes, a place for harassment and degradation, but also a place of incredible charity and kindness. In the last year alone, I have seen online campaigns raise thousands of dollars to help people keep their homes, to help uninsured patients for life-saving surgeries, to let the world know that one of our fellow travelers to the grave is frightened, despairing, in need.

Geeky ones, we have so much potential to do good, and it’s often as easy as making a blog post, Paypalling a few dollars to a stranger with a broken home or a broken bone, or just spreading the word accompanied by the characters RT @. As we enter the holiday season, please don’t forget how truly powerful you are, and how little it takes online — or off — to do good, and to remind the world that we are all one people, bound on the same journey.

Alas, if only re-tweeting “JoSelle wants a green Christmas of 70 degrees! Please send Heat Miser!” had the same result.