***** How I'll spend my eight hundred million dollars from my Powerball winning ticket:
Two nights ago I was awake much of the night thinking what I would do, excuse me, what I will do, with the eight hundred million dollars. It was 100% clear to me throughout this mental evaluation that I have zero interest in even $1 for myself. (I have food, a sleeping bag, a waterproof sleeping bag cover, and enough money for guaranteed Internet. And enough money for signage for my activist work in DC. I need nothing else. Resources do not help me serve be on that.) There are so many thousands of things on my passionate desire list above even $1 for any ridiculous personal expenditure. If my winnings were 30 trillion I might then have a dollars left over for me. But with upholstery 800 million dollars there wouldn't barely be a dollar left over for me. So much needed, so little time. So many people suffering, so little time. Seriously.
In summary, more detail below, my strategy for the 8 hundred million is to see if it would enable, even all of it, to enable Bernie Sanders and or Obama to stand for the full and immediate human rights of Palestine, the rollback, redirection, of the federal budget from war making and the expansion of the Empire of the elites to peace building foreign and domestic; more likely, and this would be 95% of the 800 million, supporting the few true activists already living in full solidarity serving the following populations, Palestinians, current victims of US colonialism in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere, to serve the population that was and is robbed to fund white America... the African Americans, serving the population that was exterminated in genocide for America to clear the land for whites ... the Native Americans. Oh, and our Hispanic brothers and sisters who's countries and livelihoods we have and continue to systematically rape, Rob, and destroy through our colonialism, our white supremacist colonialism. Finally, there are individuals in my personal life that seem to be substantially good people that in our hideous, cold, dead, heartless, Godless, anti-Christ, Satanic, broken culture lack the basic needs for basic life, several sisters that I've come to know, several African American men, most or all of the men have done time in prison, who still have a spark of goodness and have been so deprived systematically of decent resources, so abused, so victimized, so neglected. Oh, and a few people that have just been tenaciously kind to me and my work over the years, I'm thinking in particular of the manager and his staff at a local coffee shop.
Number 1. I will approach Bernie Sanders and if I find that with 800 million dollars he will feel free to, out of his own passion and conviction, fully support full human rights for Palestinians, now, as a central priority, and similarly if he is there by able and desirous of standing unequivocally for the major redirection of ungodly military funds toward global peacemaking and domestic human rights and development, &, if he is totally committed to the fact that the president is basically powerless unless the citizenry is active 24/7 during their campaign and plans with a credible approach to make that clear during his campaign and to leading and organizing accordingly as president, if he checks out on those three issues then he will have as much of the 800 million as he needs, up to, and including, all of it. If he checks out on those three issues then he is the last and only Hail Mary pass that creation has. The last. The only. And you would be worth every penny I had to increase the odds. But not unless he checks out on all three. If he did not he is a 0 hope to America or to creation.
Number two, and of this I am less convicted, I will similarly approach President Obama and understand if in some ways that I can't yet understand I can free him up on all of these three issues by donating some or all of the money according to his vision, then I would be totally delighted to do so, up to and including every last cent.
Number 3. If the two items above do not delete all of the funds, and sadly, I suspect that none of the funds would wind up going there, then all of the funds with a few tiny exceptions will go toward the global least of these especially the groups I mentioned above.
My strategy is simple, to find the gold star charities that are already serving, through proven, selfless, courageous, dedicated service in solidarity with the neediest on earth in the groups that I mentioned. They are fairly easily located I found through such things as the Charity Navigator website. I would envision, not that it would be easy, I would envision year by year trying to increase their budget by about 30 to 50% to accelerate their own efforts and to ask them to do on a smaller scale with some of the money what I am doing with them, to find those that they can see that are already doing heroic work in solidarity with the neediest whose work might be amplified with some additional funds.
And finally, I know 10 or so individuals in my life in categories I mentioned about to whom life has been so unjust. I believe that it is right for everyone to have a roof over their head, basic food, decent environment, decent access to education and culture. Something like two times the federal poverty level. For the 10 individuals I'm thinking of I would set up some very modest trust fund that could move them significantly, if not all the way, in that direction.
Oh, yesterday afternoon I bought my one and only ticket, ( spoiler alert) but it is the winning ticket, so I did not need to buy a second, which I would not have, on any account. But seeing as it is the winning ticket....
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