extra credit paper

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/07/gofundme-crowdfunding-essential-america-safety-net

Go fund yourself: crowdfunding is now an essential part of America's safety net

In the past, local activists may have turned to elected officials to raise funds, but now

they rely on crowdfunding sites to pay for basics – including school lunches

Alissa Quart

Mon 7 May 2018 06.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 7 May 2018 11.01 EDT

Annie Hanshew turned to GoFundMe to raise $100,000 for families who hadn’t paid for

school meals and were facing collections. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

For years, Annie Hanshew has wanted things to change in her hometown of Helena,

Montana – she even ran for the local school board. But her activism came to a head

when she found out in April that a collection agency planned to squeeze more than

$100,000 from families who hadn’t paid for school meals, Hanshew, 36, felt she had to

take strong action, especially after she discovered, to her horror, that school district

officials hadn’t been tracking which student debtors actually qualified for either free or

reduced lunch: she knew that this move would further burden area low-income families.

In the past, a local activist like Hanshew might have simply called their school board or

complained to an elected official and Hanshew and other people did do the latter. But

these are dark times, filled with distrust for efficacy of the established order. So

Hanshew then reached for the authority many Americans have resorted to as of late

when confronted by an emergency or a personal tragedy: GoFundMe.

Her GoFundMe campaign has so far earned $4,545 out of Hanshew’s $100,000 ask.

A press release from GoFundMe in 2017 estimated that its platform raised $33.8m to

pay for school room basics

Hanshew chose the platform for a reason: citizens in Seattle and Fargo had already

used it to raise money for school lunches in their community. There are also dozens of

school lunch-specific campaigns on the site, so that kids with unpaid meal accounts are

not “lunch shamed” in places like Richmond, Texas. Indeed, since GoFundMe started in

2010, there have been tens of thousands of campaigns to support K-12 teachers: a

press release from the company in 2017 estimated that its platform raised $33.8m to

pay for school room basics.

Crowdfunding companies like GoFundMe are in themselves not evil. But the fact that

we have to rely on them to pay for our basics is. That schools and their defenders need

to raise money for things like lunches is an outrage. People have paid their taxes. Why

were these meals not simply provided gratis to kids from struggling families?

Here’s why. Our social fabric is sundered. GoFundMe and the other crowdfunding sites

that have proliferated since 2010 are an example of what has sprung up in its place,

what I have called America’s dystopian social net. That is, we now require private

solutions to what are public problems.

We needn’t wait for the negative futures promised by sci-fi films such as Mad Max or

The Hunger Games, where the wealthy live in luxurious places and the rest of us dwell

in a rotting world ruled by an antagonistic government. This bleak future is here now,

and exists in tableau after tableau on charity crowdfunding sites.

These campaigns form a frightening archive of America’s failings. There are calls for

help relieving healthcare-related debt and shortfalls, victim’s compensation or for gun

violence victims. As one campaign put it: “Matt was shot in the chest and had to

undergo surgery late last night to remove part of his lung … I know the medical bills will

be piling up soon.” Healthcare is another thing, of course, that I believe civilization

should pay for and it seems dreadful that each of these pity stories should be pitted

against each other, a veritable Fight Club or battle royale of misery. Read together, it’s a

catalogue of despair that also can represent the redirection of our social rage to penny-

ante altruism.

In particular, the requests for payments for health or IVF treatments are unabashedly

plaintive, their authors willing (and perhaps desperate) to expose their illnesses and

suffering to whoever will read on. The site also encourages something I think of as “sob

story-ism” or, to quote the famous Russian saying, the worse the better. This is not just

my lit crit interpretation. The GoFundMe site lays it out pretty clearly, offering

campaigners “tips” for writing a “A great campaign Story” (capitals theirs). That story,

they say, “will outline your cause clearly, in a way that is engaging to read … all while

speaking from the heart”.

In 2017, crowdfunding scholar Daren C Brabham wrote in a paper in the journal New

Media & Society (he had previously published online) that there is “no surprise that the

same language used to puff up crowdfunding as a democratizing force in the media

bears a striking resemblance to the free-market economic arguments used by political

groups on the right to justify stripping the NEA and other organizations of public

funding”.

Brabham’s case studies were online fundraising for the arts. But his words pertain to

school-oriented campaigns as well, as classrooms are also turning into DIY efforts,

sticky-taped together, more Etsy than the US Department of Education.

That’s not to say that GoFundMe and the like can’t offer moments of inspiration.

Hanshew, after all, is a woman who simply hates to see poor families as well as

teachers shell out some of their meager salaries to pay their students’ lunch debt, and

knows two teachers who have attempted to do just that, offering to put me in touch with

them. (One of them was Melissa Romano, Montana’s teacher of the year.)

If anything, Hanshew’s good citizenship should serve as a model.

To me, though, the need for these efforts is a symptom of a whole generation of parents

under siege – overworked and haunted by debt, abandoned by existing structures and

unable to pay for anything extra for their kids.

Even the lucky campaigns tend to point out societal gaps and prejudices, too.

As Hanshew sees it: “In a perfect world, kids would just get meals without means

testing. It’s never going to happen in Montana and the fact that we have to fundraise to

make up the difference is bad, but I am so used to this reality that I can’t imagine

change.”

The Helena public schools ultimately decided, at least partially due to the pushback

from the community and the public GoFundMe campaign, to forgive the lunch debt of

families that have demonstrated eligibility for free lunches. Of course, that still didn’t

cover the children of working-class families whose kids were free lunch ineligible yet

struggled to pay for the meals.

Meanwhile, Hanshew has also come to recognize that GoFundMe, while a great outlet

for her and others in the community, hasn’t been the most effective tool due to the fees

– the crowdfunding site has been taking money off the top of her campaign’s donations

and they aren’t tax deductible. For this reason, Hanshew is looking into a new way to

cover school lunch debt. It’s – what else – founding, with teacher Romano, her own

non-profit.