There is no need for separate accommodations for trans women, because they can be housed with the other women. Separating trans women from their larger community of women is pretty fucked up.
This is REALLY concerning, because while trans women are most likely to be safe with cis women, in this culture of toxic masculinity, trans men are way more likely to face violence if cis men discover that they are trans. A single private shower stall could prevent this.
I think the salvation army is creepy, and I’ve never given them anything. But I confess I find the ringing kettles sort of festive. It probably helps that I have zero guilt about not giving to them, if they made me feel guilty is probably hate them.
There are lots of fine charities that help the destitute. I give to soup kitchens and shelters that don’t have a weird Christian agenda.
If there is such a thing as a residential treatment program run by AA, I’ve never heard of it. They also do not provide medically-supervised detox. Detoxing from alcohol addiction without medical supervision is a very good way to die.
Around this time of year, I always print out a few of these anti-bigotry 3-dollar-bills, and keep them handy to put in their red buckets.
Many years ago I volunteered at a Christmas Exchange program; the objective was to match donors to needy families and to catch duplicates — no sense one family getting two Christmas dinners while another needy family went without.
Many of the donors put restrictions on its donations. (For example, Friends Outside was mainly for families whose breadwinner was incarcerated.) And often there was no donor available to take on a needy family. What did we do then? We just added them to The Salvation Army’s list: they promised Christmas dinner to any and every family whose name and address we sent them.
That’s why The Salvation Army has a special place in my heart.
Never seen those. Is it a deliberate play on the phrase “queer as a three-dollar bill?”
Except, as the article says, NO ONE there has separate housing for trans,* except* the SA (and only partially).
The SA seems to be at least trying.
I always buy my cookies from the same friend (or rather from her kids), and every year I ask if I can donate extra money directly to the troop, or to the national body via the troop (GS being an organization whose goals I am totally on board with). She always tells me they can take it, but it goes straight to a fund that helps veterans and/or deployed service members. What’s up with that?
How weird. That’s a pretty deviation from their mission, unless there’s some aspect of the veteran group being helped that could have some tangential connection to the GS mission.
The GSA website has a donation page, and will allow you to donate directly to your local council.
Edit: it has a box to input your zipcode on, and it takes to your local council’s donation page. Plugging in a few different zips shows that each page has some indication of how your donation will be spent. I’d be interested to know if yours will show something different than “veterans”.
Never heard that before- we happily took directed donations, from people who didn’t want to buy cookies but wanted to support us. There was a place on the form (or a separate form?) to record these donations.
Perhaps this something new(ish)- I’ve been out scouting directly for about 10 years.
My local council’s page only shows GS-related donation opportunities. I’ll have to ask her about it.
In our GS Council, you can donate directly to the council, but when you donate via cookies, it goes to troops serving overseas (functionally, if you give a Girl Scout “extra” money during cookie season, the council uses it to send cases abroad). I don’t believe there is any restriction on donations direct to the troop.
(And I haven’t given money to a SA bell ringer in years - I have other things to do with my charitable dollars - and I seldom have cash or even spare change on me. I suspect that is one of the SAs biggest fundraising issues - many people would overlook the homophobia if they had spare change - but not many people carry cash (or want to stop to dig it out of the bottom of their purse. Belk is hitting people up at the register - as many companies do now - where you don’t need spare change. But they know their customers patience for being asked for money constantly is not inexhaustible. )
I suspect there is a misunderstanding somewhere, because there’s no reason a troop/council or national couldn’t accept donations - they do it all the time. When my daughter and niece were Girl Scouts, the cookie order forms had a section to “buy cookies for the troops” , where you could pay for a certain number of boxes or cases of cookies, and they would be sent to the military to be included in care packages to deployed service members. My guess is that a combination of the word “troop” and your interest in donating during the cookie sale is causing confusion. Try offering a donation to your friend outside of cookie-selling season.
I dug Shaw’s Major Barbara and Lindsay’s “General William Booth Enters Heaven,” but that’s as far as it goes. Must be that I can appreciate literary quality apart from its subject matter. Both those works recall at time when the SA was known affectionately for crappy little brass bands instead of homophobia and kettle bells.
Their characteristic instrument, aside from Booth’s “big bass drum,” was the cornet, which is like a trumpet but has a fudgier tone and is easier for amateurs to blow. Cecil Forsyth’s classic textbook Orchestration comments: “Players on the F-trumpet are not heard at street-corners.”