Crowdfunding increasingly used for basic survival needs

[eridani]

http://www.occupy.com/article/era-hunger-artist-were-crowdfunding-just-survive#sthash.wIZCj2tl.dpuf

Kafka’s hunger artist made performance of suffering his art. In the dismal twilight of corporate capitalism, many of us are becoming hunger artists by necessity, performing our suffering in hopes others can help us out. Originally a way for entrepreneurs, social visionaries, artists and musicians to fund projects that didn’t appeal to traditional investors, social media-based crowdfunding has become a strategy for survival in a society where governments have neither the means nor, in many cases, the moral inclination to meet basic human needs.

“It can be helpful,” Syracuse University professor Dana Cloud told me about crowdfunding. “But it puts the burden, once again, on the exploited and oppressed.” Cloud, who has published extensively on the way capitalism strengthens itself through transferring responsibilities to its victims, added that today's crowdfunding of life puts a “falsely collective face on privatization.”

Pick which campaign shocks your conscience the most; they’re all here. For me, it was the sight of domestic violence victims (not just the nonprofit programs tasked with helping them, but the victims themselves) posting pictures of their cut and bruised faces and asking for money so they can leave their abusers or pay their medical bills. DV survivors are often the starkest examples of the cruel and morally arbitrary effects of poverty – they are seven times more likely than the general population to live in low-income homes.

And that's just the beginning. If you’re concerned about constitutional rights, meet the public defenders in New Orleans who are crowdfunding their operations. Or if public health is your cause, you might already know about the doctors and scientists crowdfunding their life-saving medical research.

If you care about families, you should know that child support payers and payees are asking for help – sometimes combining rent and support in their campaigns. The family of a terminally ill father raises money for medical bills and the security of the man’s daughters, a picture of his sickly face prominent on the campaign’s web page.
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[rjsquirrel]

1. We have this on DU

Begging campaigns complete with PayPal and go fund me links and sad stories that may or may not be true.

[eridani]

2. If we had a decent social safety net, I don't think we'd be seing much of this crap n/t

[area51]

3. +1 n/t