linh.nguyen

Political rallies are an interesting phenomenon to me.  It’s hard to judge if they have any real effect on anything other than media coverage.   The Left and Right pick and chose extreme examples and blast each other about it, but does that change the minds of anyone or just reinforce their already formed opinions? I’m going with the latter.

But that is not what this rally is about.  This rally is about comedic relief.  And more importantly (to me), the effort to get it started.  The story is vaguely summarized here but essentially a bunch of redditors decided to put their money where their mouths were and raise money for a charity Stephen Colbert sits as a board member, DonorsChoose.  It is a charity where teachers can make wish lists for things they need for their classrooms that their budgets cannot fill.

Initially, the goal was simply reach $30k and outdo Hilary Clinton.  Well, less than 18hrs later (after the poor DonorsChoose IT folk had to fix the donation counter since donors broke it) they reached $50-70k.  I don’t remember exactly, but by the 24hr mark, $100k was breached.

Yes.  One. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars.   And 48hrs later, $200k was breached.  Yes.  Another. One. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars.

That momentum can’t be expected to be kept up (and it wasn’t, the mark currently stands just under $280k), but the goal is to reach $500k by Oct 1.  And that’s the real reason for this post.  It saddens me to read the wish list of items for a teacher… pencils, folders, books…. wtf, they need money for PENCILS?!  I don’t have a solution for our education problem, and frankly, it won’t be easy to try to turn our system around.  Money isn’t the only problem.

But until we can find a solution, our current teachers need help now.  And if we can spare it, I vote to donate a little to help out.

Oh, and it’s a good excuse to just gather on the National Mall