fundraiser
Skwawkbox keeps ignoring ad requests and relies on its readers. If you’d like to help, read on
Skwawkbox continues to receive almost daily requests from companies to carry advertising and sponsored posts. This site continues to ignore them, relying entirely on the support of its readers in order to keep articles free to all and free from clutter – and it continues to break exclusive news that many would prefer to keep hidden.
A selection of the regular ad requests Skwawkbox receives – and rejects
Skwawkbox needs your support – and periodically needs new supporters to sign up to replace those who, in a tough world, inevitably have to drop out. If you would like to donate to Skwawkbox and can do so without hardship, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
Skwawkbox continues to receive and reject ad requests. If you’d like to support, here’s how
Skwawkbox continues to run entirely on reader support
Skwawkbox runs entirely on the support of its readers, to bring them and you the news that ‘mainstream’ outlets will not – and it continues to break exclusive news that many would prefer to keep hidden.
This site continues to receive requests every day from advertisers and every day it ignores them. Here are some of today’s:
If you would like to support Skwawkbox and can do so without hardship, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
Woman walking 450 miles to fund legal costs of Israeli pro-Palestine activist
Lucy Boyle hopes to raise tens of thousands of pounds for Palestine Action activist Ronnie Barkan, who was convicted at Bristol Crown Court
Activist Lucy Boyle is hiking 450 miles in an attempt to raise funds to cover the legal costs of an Israeli Palestine Action activist facing a potential custodial sentence for defending Palestinian lives.
Ronnie Barkan, a co-founder of Israeli BDS group Boycott from Within, was convicted on Monday, alongside Stavit Sinai, Eliza Sarson-Diment, Archie Sadler, Finton Owens, Jarvey Georgson and Paul Shortt on one count of burglary and one count of criminal damage, after damaging equipment and spray-painting ‘Free Palestine’ at a factory owned by Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems, who produces weapons used against Palestinians. The UK government has intensified its legal pursuit of Palestine Action in an attempt to quell protest, in both prosecutions and intimidatory arrests.
Barkan’s own crowdfund has raised £24,000 of the £50,000 costs he faces. Ms Boyle is hoping to cover the remainder.
Her fundraising page says of Barkan:
He has given his life in pursuit of Palestinian freedom and universal human rights, co-founding the Boycott From Within movement in Israel amongst many inspirational campaigns and actions. Many of these have led to repeated arrest, imprisonment and at times violent suppression.
Israeli dissidents are amongst the strongest, most noble of people and deserve the highest level of solidarity.
I am planning an approx 450 mile hike across Northern Spain to try and raise funds to help Ronnie pay his £50,000 legal fees as a result of this trial. Please sponsor this hike not only for Palestine and Ronnie but for all people in the world who resist what is clearly and fundamentally wrong.
Even historical figures involved in direct action will have at times felt daunted when faced with the damaging outcomes of their activism at huge personal expense. I hope that this hike and any money raised will show anyone brave enough to resist that there is solidarity. That they matter to us and that what they do matters to the world. No donation is too small.
In a 2023 video, Barkan explained why he takes action against Elbit and Israeli apartheid:
The group will be sentenced on 22 March. The crowdfund page can be found here.
First Sub-Saharan Ethics Center Approaches 5th Anniversary; Seeks Funds for Conference
EthicsLab, a research center in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, is organizing a conference in celebration of its upcoming fifth anniversary, and has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help people attend it.
Created in 2019 and based at the Catholic University of Central Africa, EthicsLab (previously) is the first ethics center in sub-Saharan Africa. Its mission, in part, is
to amplify the African perspective on global and regional challenges, and to build connections between African scholars and scholars from other regions of the world. EthicsLab offers scholarships to young African philosophers, organizes academic conferences, and organizes debates on challenges facing Africa. It also organizes a summer school, the Yaoundé Seminar, which has become an international institution.
The conference will take place in June of 2024. It’s aim is to “bring together a large group of scholars from Africa and the rest of the world.” The organizers say,
The conference aims to provide an opportunity for academics from all over the world to engage with many of the talented scholars from across the African continent, and vice versa. In our view, there is far too little interaction of this kind, and the conference represents one way in which EthicsLab is aiming to facilitate more of it.
The fundraiser is “primarily to fund travel and accommodation expenses for philosophers based in Africa to attend the conference,” says one of the conference organizers, Brian Berkey (University of Pennsylvania). Funds will also be used to help keep EthicsLab in operation.
You can check out and contribute to the fundraiser here.
The post First Sub-Saharan Ethics Center Approaches 5th Anniversary; Seeks Funds for Conference first appeared on Daily Nous.
Diversity Reading List Dollar-Matching Fundraiser
The Diversity Reading List (DRL), which gathers and organizes philosophical texts written by authors from groups that have typically been underrepresented in philosophy so as to make it easier for others to make use of them, and puts together reading group blueprints on various topics, is currently running a fundraiser with the Marc Sanders Foundation.
The Foundation is offering dollar-matching on all donations of $2000 and less (so if you donate $100, Sanders will donate $100).
DRL managers Simon Fokt and Clotilde Torregrossa write that donated funds will contribute towards the ongoing work of maintaining and developing the DRL, including:
- Compensation for editors and managers
- Website development costs
- Ongoing costs, including web hosting and promotion
- Putting on events
- Pursuing research projects
- Creating teaching materials such as Reading Group Blueprints.
The also note the option of institutional memberships:
We encourage universities, societies, journals and other institutions to send professional contributions of any value to the DRL, to be received as professional dues for your institution’s supporting membership in the DRL. To recognise substantial support of $500 or more a year, the DRL will:
• Feature the donating institution on our official supporters list for a year
• Invite the donating institution to list their support for the DRL in any relevant promotional materials, publications or reports.
• Deliver a workshop on the topic of curriculum diversification at the donating institution (subject to staff availability).
You can donate via this page.
The post Diversity Reading List Dollar-Matching Fundraiser first appeared on Daily Nous.
Skwawkbox needs to buy new equipment – can you help?
After around 3.5 years’ hard use, computer gear needs to be updated
After about three and a half years of heavy use writing thousands of articles, and editing hundreds of videos, in support of justice, the oppressed and vital causes, Skwawkbox’s computer equipment, purchased with the help of its incredible readers, needs to be updated, so that time isn’t lost fixing the issues that come up constantly as tech ages.
If you are able to contribute to the cost of this without hardship, please consider clicking here to arrange a donation via PayPal or send an email to tips@skwawkbox.com with the amount you’d like to chip in, so that Skwawkbox can send you an invitation to make a one-off donation via GoCardless. Please also share this post.
Thank you for your support, it’s essential.
Skwawkbox exclusives of 2023 – please support the work if you can
It’s that time of year again – here is a little of what Skwawkbox brought its readers in the past year
That time of year has come around fast. Skwawkbox has continued to bring its readers news that other media outlets often don’t – and it needs your support to keep doing it. Below are a few of this site’s many exclusives from 2023 – if you’d like to support Skwawkbox and can do so without hardship, see the end of this post for details of how you can do it.
- Skwawkbox revealed that Unite was allowing supporters of its general secretary Sharon Graham to stand in the union’s executive elections despite their ineligibility – and despite candidates’ racist comments
- When Graham denied knowing one of the racist candidates, Skwawkbox showed their history together
- When Starmer support ‘Supertanskii’ tried to deny that she had posted grossly antisemitic comments, Skwawkbox exposed the claim
- Skwawkbox revealed that disgraced senior TSSA figures had suppressed a merger approach from fellow rail union the RMT in favour of a proposed merger with a right-wing US union. The merger collapsed
- After TSSA union general secretary Manuel Cortes was suspended for sexual harassment, Skwawkbox brought readers the news that the official groomed to be his successor had also been suspended
- When union insiders said that ‘Labour’ leader Keir Starmer and the TUC leaned on unions to accept awful offers to end strike action – undermining growing Labour movement resistance to austerity – Skwawkbox exposed it
- Skwawkbox revealed that Graham’s supporters spent unaccountable ‘dark money’ on ads in the Unite executive election – forcing the ads to be deleted
- While the UK media misreported the trial of Tony Greenstein and other Palestine Action activists, Skwawkbox was at the trial bringing readers the real news
- Skwawkbox revealed that the Labour party was imposing a right-wing candidate heavily involved in the antisemitism smear campaign
- Skwawkbox exposed bargains struck by a right-wing smear merchant and deputy Wirral council leader with the Tories to secure their support for his leadership bid
- When the notorious Jewish Chronicle claimed Anglican archbishop Justin Welby had expressed ‘revulsion’ toward former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Skwawkbox obtained comment from Welby refuting the false claim
- Skwawbox revealed that Sharon Graham’s team had ordered staff to attend her unpopular ‘tour of the regions’ and even bussed in staff from other areas to pad out audiences
- when Graham’s paid officer broke the union’s rules to try to marshal support for her on the Unite executive after her faction performed poorly in elections, Skwawkbox broke the news – and when Unite invited Keir Starmer to speak at its conference despite his anti-union positions, and told delegates not to protest, Skwawkbox broke that too
- Skwawkbox exposed Graham’s manoeuvres to ban showings of a film revealing the Labour right’s anti-democratic assault on the left – and a book exposing the antisemitism smear scam
- Skwawkbox revealed that the Labour regime had locked women out of it member system to stop them discussing a local right-winger who had been convicted as a paedophile – and allowed to stand anyway
- When Unite tried to justify Graham’s film ban by claiming it called rabbis ‘the enemy within’, Skwawkbox exposed that for pure fabrication
- When Labour went on manoeuvres to block a crucial NHS policy motion from debate at its annual conference, Skwawkbox exposed it
- Skwawkbox revealed that the Labour party had done no assessment of its draconian fiscal plans before announcing them
- Skwawkbox revealed that Sharon Graham and allies were being sued by Irish union legend Brendan Ogle for defamation and abuse
- When Unite paid off a senior employee who quit after just three months because of alleged ‘senior management abuse’, Skwawkbox revealed it
- When Labour banned MPs and councillors from attending pro-Palestine demos under threat of expulsion, Skwawkbox exposed that
- And when Jewish pro-Palestine activist Tony Greenstein was arrested by police under anti-terror laws for a single tweet, Skwawkbox brought you the news
Of course, these are just some of the exclusives Skwawkbox has brought. This site has also stood squarely throughout the year, as always, with the victims of genocide and with working people fighting for decent pay and conditions, covering news much of the so-called ‘mainstream’ either ignores or misrepresents.
If you’d like to support Skwawkbox bring all this and more to public attention, please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thank you for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job in 2024 and beyond.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Philosophers Against Malaria: Fundraising Competition Results
The “Philosophers Against Malaria” fundraising competition among departments of philosophy has concluded, and in total generated $27,089.
That’s enough to buy over 10,000 mosquito nets, says fundraiser organizer and philosophy PhD student Malte Hendrickx (Michigan), who shares the competition results:
Michigan came in first—I hope my home department sees the win as compensation for the relentless nagging they had to endure.
Virginia Tech came second, propelled by an incredibly generous anonymous contributor who gave $7200, the largest donation of this year.
The University of Colorado, Boulder came third, helped by the generosity of graduate student Kyle York, who offered to match donations by his department.
You can check out the results of the competition here.
The post Philosophers Against Malaria: Fundraising Competition Results first appeared on Daily Nous.
Urgent call goes out for support at picket of Royal Society of Arts Israel fundraiser
Staff walk out in protest but need support
An urgent call has gone out from staff and activists for supporters to join them outside the Royal Society Of Arts (RSA) building at 8 John Adam Street, next to Charing Cross station.
According to sources at the demo, the RSA organised a fundraiser for Israel, without notifying staff, with Israeli president Isaac Herzog and far-right Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely, who this week dismissed the idea of Palestinian statehood. Staff walked out in protest to mount a picket but need support to bolster their numbers.
SKWAWKBOX needs your help. The site is provided free of charge but depends on the support of its readers to be viable. If you’d like to help it keep revealing the news as it is and not what the Establishment wants you to hear – and can afford to without hardship – please click here to arrange a one-off or modest monthly donation via PayPal or here to set up a monthly donation via GoCardless (SKWAWKBOX will contact you to confirm the GoCardless amount). Thanks for your solidarity so SKWAWKBOX can keep doing its job.
If you wish to republish this post for non-commercial use, you are welcome to do so – see here for more.
Philosophers Against Malaria: Fundraising Competition Across Departments
What good can philosophers do? Let’s see.
As in years past, Malte Hendrickx, a philosophy graduate student at the University of Michigan, has set up a charity “competition” for philosophy departments to raise money for the Against Malaria Foundation.
Here’s what he says about it:
Mirror, mirror on the wall—who’s the most virtuous department of them all?
As in previous years, there’s an end of year interdepartmental competitive fundraiser for the Against Malaria Foundation. This year’s fundraiser runs until December 24th. All donations are tax-deductible, and 100% of donations go to the purchase of long-lasting insecticidal bed nets.
Roughly 250,000,000 people fall sick from Malaria each year, roughly 625,000 of which are killed. More than three quarters of these deaths are children under the age of 5, who are especially vulnerable to infection. These deaths are as tragic as they are preventable: long-lasting insecticidal nets cost around $2 and provide effective protection to the households that receive them.
The Against Malaria Foundation has an excellent track record in distributing such bed nets. In the last 19 years, the 250 million nets they funded and distributed protected 450 million people. It is estimated that this translates to roughly 185,000 deaths prevented, and 100 to 185 million cases of malaria averted. It is also estimated to have led to an improvement of US$6.5 billion in local economies since malaria is a crucial factor in reducing the productivity of those it affects. AMF has been rated as a top charity by GiveWell, a charity evaluator, each year since 2009.
You can take part in the fundraiser and see the current tally here. If you want to add your department to the list, you can email hmalte@umich.edu with the name of the department you want to add or do it yourself by using this link. Sharing the fundraiser via social media, mailing lists, or other means is highly encouraged!
At the end of the competition, I’ll post about the results.
The post Philosophers Against Malaria: Fundraising Competition Across Departments first appeared on Daily Nous.