Progressive Nonprofits Must Help Build Social Media Ecosystems Rooted in their Values

by Ben Carter in

Progressive nonprofits must reach people where they are (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter). But, while we're there, shouldn't we also lead people to spaces where our relationships aren't mediated by billionaires? Platforms that aren't controlled by venture capitalists, funded by nations with interests very different than our own?

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I'm Asking for Money to Fight the Power and Build the Power

by Ben Carter

A friend of mine posted something last night that made me think and made me a little mad.

I totally agree with this sentiment. Sometimes it feels like society expects us to "make do" with what we've got when what we've got is not enough to meet our challenge. KEJC's small team has performed amazingly during this pandemic and with our partners and allies have helped achieve good outcomes for individuals and systems during a crisis.

But, at every turn, we are rationing our services. Personally, I have felt like I needed to focus almost entirely on evictions to the detriment of my ability to work on the shortcomings of our unemployment insurance program.

That's frustrating because I know people are being hurt every day by unfair, unthinking systems that we could fix if we had the chance.

Today is the last day of the Good Giving Challenge here at KEJC. I'm asking for money because we need money to fight the power and build the power in Kentucky.

Please donate today.

I want to tell you a little about what I've been up to with evictions during this pandemic. Multiply this by the 15 other hard-working, full-hearted people at KEJC and spread it across health care, public benefits, workers' rights, immigration, debt collection abuse, housing, and more and that should give you a sense of the incredible scope of work the team at KEJC does every day.

When the Kentucky Supreme Court convened a task force on evictions early in the pandemic, KEJC was invited to participate. I researched and drafted these recommendations. (We still have a lot of work to do to make eviction court processes uniform, safe, and fair for Kentuckians.)

When landlords in northern Kentucky sued in federal court to challenge the Governor's Eviction Moratorium, KEJC wrote and filed an amicus brief. We explained to the Court the flimsiness of the landlords' claims and highlighting all the cases around the nation in which other judges found eviction moratoria like Governor Beshear's to be a reasonable, necessary response to an unprecedented pandemic.

We have sued landlords, built apps, written columns, testified in Frankfort, convened countless training and strategy sessions, represented Kentuckians facing eviction (as written about in the Washington Post), advised partner organizations.

Most recently, we've written a letter to Louisville's Mayor, Greg Fischer, demanding that he order an eviction moratorium in Jefferson County through (at least) March 31st.

We have not done it all: we've done a lot and our best. But, we've been rationing our services. I'm not doing anyone any favors pretending otherwise.

I'm asking for money to fight the power and build the power. We can do both in Kentucky, but not for free.

Please donate today. The Good Giving Challenge ends tonight at midnight.

Thank you so much for supporting KEJC. I really appreciate it.

The Carter Family's 2020 Christmas Card

by Ben Carter

“It’s weird that you’re not in our Christmas card,” Sarah said a few days ago.

“Hon, I wrote a two-column sermon on the back of it. I think I’m in the Christmas card.”

It’s true. Here’s the front and back of our Christmas card this year. I’m sharing it in the hopes that you will decide to support, as I nakedly and shamelessly asked my friends and family to do in our Christmas card, the work of my employer, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center. You can donate here. 🙏🏻

As I sit down to write you—our friends and family—I am a little bit buzzed on pecan pie and (like you) a lot bit heartsick over our ongoing, escalating pandemic. I feel a lot of grief over the ways our systems and institutions—political, social, national, local—failed to respond and provide for us and our neighbors during 2020. I’m not talking about Donald Trump. Well, of course I’m talking about Donald Trump, but not just Donald Trump. Like, our institutions failed. A total, systems-wide failure.

15 percent of adults in Kentucky reported living in a house where there wasn’t enough food to eat last week.

Last week (forgive me), I said on Twitter:

Twitter Image.png

I think a lot about politics and policies. It’s sort of my job. Or, at least, tangential to my job.

I often feel like our political problems are fundamentally spiritual problems. Will has been asking recently, “Why did God make the world?” and “Where does God live?” We talked about that a few weeks ago. We talked about how the word for “spirit” and “breath” were the same word (pneuma in ancient Greek) and decided God sort of lived everywhere. Our connection—our bond—is undeniable, yet we try to live as individuals. We pretend that we are capable of isolating ourselves physically, spiritually, biologically, emotionally from each other, pretend that my health is separate from your health, that the strength of my breath and depth of your spirit are somehow different things. As though my redemption didn’t depend on our redemption. As though selfishness isn't just greedy or puerile, it’s foolish: the “self” we’re “ish-ing” is a myth. A powerful, intoxicating myth. Wouldn’t it be nice?!?

Anyway, in the midst of:

  • grieving our failing institutions propelled forward by the inertia of our racist past (and present) and
  • grieving the unnecessary dead, unnecessary evicted, unnecessary hungry and
  • grieving the alternate history in which a pandemic was not a catastrophe but an epiphany, an insight, an ecstatic moment in our collective imagination, an integral (as in, wholeness, integrity, integrate) experience for humanity when we, at last, embodied the truth of living in our “inescapable network of mutuality”

—in the midst of all that—Malcolm has learned to tell really good knock-knock jokes. That’s one for the “win” column!

We can’t wait to see you all once we’ve cracked this vaccine over here. We’re hoping for a Jubilee. The boys are so fun. Mostly.

For more of me waxing on about society, check out "Just Print the Money".

The nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that I work for, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, is having our week of Good Giving fundraiser the week of December 1-7. We work on preventing the “evicted” and “hungry” above. If the spirit moves you, you can support KEJC at bit.ly/kejc-stay-strong.

Stay healthy, stay home, stay strong,

The Carters (mostly Ben here)

P!S! One thing our fam has really gotten into is our 🎉Yoto Player🎉! It’s a speaker for kids with different cards for stories, music, or other nonsense. We’ve got some blank cards we can upload our own stories, books, home-made radio shows (nonsense) onto. So, one thing that would be awesome is if you would record yourself reading a kids book or a poem or singing a song or telling a story. You could text or email us the recording (just do it on your phone, no big deal!) Then, we could put it on a card and listen to it again & again on our Yoto player. (If you’re going to buy one, use my affiliate link 💸. )

(They’re really great.)

Help KEJC Win $15,000 Today

by Ben Carter

I am blown away: we are two days into our Good Giving campaign and we've raised more than $3,500 towards my personal goal of $4,000 and, as I write, 114 people have donated more than $11,000 to KEJC. That's amazing!

I am going to ask you to do two things today: 

1) Promote KEJC on social media and,

2) Join us in demanding that Louisville's Mayor, Greg Fischer, extend the CDC's eviction moratorium until March 31st locally.

1: Promote
For each day of the Good Giving Challenge, the Blue Grass Community Foundation has a different contest and today (Thursday), it's all about the raw number of donors: the organization with the most people donating more than $25 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. wins a $15,000 endowment prize. 

Can we do it? I have no idea.

But, here's what I do know: today is the day to ask you to promote KEJC on social media. 

What can you say? How about: 

  • The Kentucky Equal Justice Center is raising money to support their work of ensuring Kentuckians are treated fairly in all aspects of their lives: renting a home, buying a car, getting medical care or health insurance, getting unemployment insurance, and so much more. Please join me in donating $25 by 9 pm today at bit.ly/kejc-stay-strong.

Or, 

  • The organizers, social workers, and lawyers at the Kentucky Equal Justice Center work across the state—in Frankfort, in state and federal court systems, with communities, and alongside directly impacted people—to help protect and build systems that ensure every Kentuckian has the food, shelter, medical care, and security they need to thrive. Join me in donating $25 to support this essential work at bit.ly/kejc-stay-strong.

Or, even more selfishly, 

  • In September, the Kentucky Equal Justice Center built an app to help people review, sign, and send to their landlords the Declaration required by the CDC's anti-eviction Order. Since then, more than 12,000 people nationwide have used the app (at HomerenterDeclaration.org) to protect themselves from eviction during our deepening pandemic. This is just one small part of the work this remarkable team does—pandemic or not—to protect Kentucky's most vulnerable people and preserve our social safety net. Please consider donating $25 by 9 p.m. today at bit.ly/kejc-stay-strong.

(Alternatively, you could follow and boost my social media today: I'll be posting some (one cool and some silly) today-only incentives on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.)

If you're tweeting, KEJC's handle is @kyequaljustice. 

If you're posting to Instagram, here's an image you can use and the link, once again, is bit.ly/kejc-stay-strong:

Thanks to the folks at Kertis Creative for designing this awesome image for their work on the KNOW Homelessness campaign.

Thanks to the folks at Kertis Creative for designing this awesome image for their work on the KNOW Homelessness campaign.

2: Demand
Speaking of staying home, KEJC has drafted a pretty good letter to Mayor Fischer explaining the public health necessity of extending the CDC's eviction moratorium until March 31st in Louisville. We have an online petition with more information. Please sign on at https://bit.ly/Fischer-Petition

Thank you so much for supporting KEJC. I really appreciate it. 

Sincerely, 

Ben

P.S. If you haven't had a chance to donate yet, today would be a great day to do it. In addition to the dumb swag I've made for everyone and the amazing Zoom backgrounds people who give more than $30 give, people who donate today are entered into some drawings. Like I said, watch my social media...

A Happy Estate Sale

by Ben Carter

Look at these two dumb lovebirds. 

Look at these two dumb lovebirds. 

My mom got hitched recently and she's moving to southern Indiana. Happily for you, that means she's selling a lot of high-quality stuff on Saturday from 7-12 at 2010 Emerson Avenue in Louisville. Below are some galleries of some of the stuff that will be available. If you are interested in pre-purchasing something and picking it up on Saturday, text or call her at 606-923-3885. 

I  know she's my mom so I'm biased, but the taste-level on this yard sale is off the charts. Extremely good stuff (and great prices) here, peeps.

(Also, if you're in the market for a house, she's listing it, too, soon. Come take a look.) 

Check back in to this site over the next few days. There's a LOT more odds-and-ends that will be going into the sale and we'll try to post representative pics of some of the stuff here. 

Furniture

Household Items

A Loom

(I'm serious, a loom.) Here's what my mom says about it: "This loom was bought in 1972 in Hawaii, and at the time we were told that it had originally been used in a school in California in the late 1800’s and then was shipped to Hawaii. This is an antique floor loom, 4 Harness, Counter-Balance, 36" wide, sinking shed with metal heddles in the harnesses." (I have no idea what any of that means.) $500

Workout/Sports Equipment

Make Art, Dummies

by Ben Carter

A presentation's slides should be completely inscrutable without the presenter's narration.

With that unimpeachable truth stated, here are my slides for a presentation I'm giving tomorrow to the Terry Scholars, new and (like me) old, down at Davidson College. I'll be talking about the dispute between the Smoketown neighborhood and MSD over the construction of a combined sewer overflow (CSO) basin in Smoketown.

But, really, this is a talk about why and how to make art in our lives and communities. Art happens when we bring our full humanity and expertise to a problem. Creating art in your career or personal life requires hard work, courage, and curiosity. You need a high tolerance for not knowing why you're doing a thing or what it will lead to and a deep commitment to growing as a person, getting to the margins, gaining expertise, and giving gifts. 

I'm pretty excited about giving this presentation, seeing my amigos at Davidson, and honoring the legacy of Dean Terry. If you want me to give this presentation to your org or business, I require a sliding scale honorarium that begins with BBQ and ends with a number in front of four zeros. ;-)