As it turned out the time was too short to set up some scheme to collect funds to pay for the Globovision fine. Not to mention that I was advised to be careful in the scheme to collect funds since with the new NGO law coming, a repressive SENIAT and what not, this could be taken as an excuse against me (or Miguel) in the future if the government wished to harass us. That they will do it eventually is something very clear in my mind, but that does not mean we should simplify their task at cornering us.
What to do?
The thing to note here is that from the folks who left a comment here, to those who wrote me privately, without any effort, without any campaigning this blog could have collected as much as 5,000 USD. I do not know whether this is much or little and it really does not matter, but if we combine this effort with Miguel's blog read by more "wealthy" donors, it is quite clear that for a future cause, a well organized cause, hoping for 20,000 USD for both blogs is not unrealistic.
Simply amazing.
But there is something even more amazing, way, way more amazing: the trust that readers have put in me, willing to send me money no questions asked, for me to do as I see fit, no accounting required.
Damn! That is a lot of responsibility and a huge honor. I have been in contact with Miguel discussing ways to raise funds and I am sure he joins me in thanking all of our readers in the extraordinary trust they have put on us.
So, what to do now?
The first observation is that this time around Globovison is probably going to be able to raise its needed cash without the help from this blog. The good news about this is that we dispose of some time to figure out the best and safest way possible to canalize future funding, maybe a PayPal type of scheme that will be controlled both by Miguel and me and a third party of our trust in the US and/or Europe.
The bad news is that I understand that many of you might be frustrated at missing a chance to finally do something against Chavez besides reading this blog and confronting the occasional chavista in your country. But fear not, YOU WILL HAVE other opportunities to chip in and the money that you were so willing to send to me this week will be sent someday, sooner than expected. Worry not, I will make sure that Globovison learns about what the readers of this blog alone were willing to do (not to mention that if by Sunday Globovision does not have the money yet, we can still set up in a hurry a Paypal to collect our effort).
Conclusions:
- You are really a great bunch or readers and any blog would be immensely lucky to have as dedicated and willing a readership as this blog has.
- We do have muscle power. Fortunately it is not that much so nobody is going to try to kidnap me or Miguel for a rather meager ransom. However the potential amount is good enough that we could even publish an add in a major paper.
- I will need to work diligently at setting up a fund collecting device that could be used to pay for a future Globovision fine, to go around CADIVI for someone's trip to some Human Rights conference (not necessarily me, but perhaps we could sponsor a "dissident" student), etc... In short, we are a tiny NGO of our own! :)
-The end-