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Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Ways to Give:

thetoweratcharm's sister has left an abusive relationship, but has POTS and is experiencing ill-health. Her doctors want her to get on disability but her initial claim was denied, and while she has a lawyer working on the problem, at the moment she's just trying to stay in her apartment without any income. You can read more about POTS here and help her keep a roof over her head here.

hypernatraemia is a chronically ill trans man, who has a job which provides insurance, but his car has broken down. Without his car he can't get to work, and he really needs to keep this job. He's raising money for a new (to him) car to help him keep his job and thus his insurance for healthcare and transition expenses. You can read more and help out here.

prismatic-bell's synagogue was vandalized on the first night of Chanukkah recently; you may have seen the news stories about someone ramming a truck into their outdoor chanukkiyah and vandalizing their Holocaust memorial. You can read more about the hate crime here, and give to support the repairs and rebuilding here. In this kind of situation, giving isn't just to help people recover damaged property -- it shows support for the community and a stance against hate.

Anon linked to fightbackfic, an organized effort to encourage people to donate to charities in return for thank-you fic. They currently have thirty-two people offering fifty stories in more than eighty fandoms. You can sign up to be an author before January 20th here and read more about how donation works here.

thephoenix04's partner, Zeah, is fundraising to afford bottom surgery. She has some money saved towards the surgery but an earlier surgery slot opened up and she's trying to pull the rest of the funds together as quickly as possible. You can read more and donate here.

rilee16 is still struggling to cover medical expenses after two head injuries last year, and hasn't been cleared to return to work, thus can't earn money to cover basic living costs, let alone the bills they've received, including a recent rent increase. You can read more and help out here.

dreamwaffles's job ended and she's trying to make ends meet until she can land another one. She has a donation page up here but is also selling beaded jewelery through Etsy; you can check out Saxifrage Designs and make a purchase here.


Help For Free:

soc_puppet linked to Carnation Books, which is creating a charity anthology for Trans Lifeline; the anthology will feature new stories with characters from classic literature reimagined as transgender. Authors are encouraged to submit fanworks for any work in the public domain. Initial proceeds go to the charity, but authors retain the rights to their work and can republish after 12 months. You can read more about submissions here.


News To Know:

brithistorian linked to an updated version of LJArchive, for archiving Livejournal posts and comments, which is a little less buggy than the one circulating. I can vouch for this one; I use it myself. You can download it here. He also linked to LJ-SEC, a bulk post-management tool that allows you to lock, replace, or delete posts en-masse. You can download LJSEC here. I don't use it so can't vouch personally, but I know people who do and nobody's reported a problem. Brithistorian says "You can only delete about 800 posts at a time because of LJ's limits, but by deleting them in chunks (choose "select all" and then "delete selected" - it'll stop automatically when LJ cuts it off) every hour I was able to delete 4000 entries in the course of an afternoon."


Activism:

whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome has noted that on January 20th, the @POTUS twitter handle will transfer to Donald Trump, in effect giving him a 13M follower bump. Whatdoyoumeanitsnotawesome proposes a mass-unfollow on the 20th at noon eastern, to tweak him and to show your protest of his administration.


And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help (or ask for help!). If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

I had SUPER WEIRD dreams last night. In one of them

I had SUPER WEIRD dreams last night. In one of them I’d found a Secret Condo in the building I now live in, which had not just two bedrooms and a nice big kitchen but windows that looked out on the giraffe enclosure of a zoo. (Note: there is no zoo located in the immediate vicinity of my current home.) The problem was I couldn’t figure out how to contact the person selling it to make an offer. 

This is attached to a real life problem I am having which is how do I go look at condos when my realtor is in the hospital and how do I ask my agency this without sounding like a douchebag? I’m really worried about her but I am also really worried about buying a home.

In the other, I got to watch an extended trailer for a movie I’d written about a guy who has a three-month break between jobs, so he decides to take a culinary “boot camp” (they do offer a “bread boot camp” at the Chicago French Pastry School and I’ve wanted to take it, but it costs thousands of dollars and takes eight weeks). He’s embarrassed that he’s not a professional chef, so when everyone asks him where he works he invents a restaurant, and the restaurant is so secret and develops so much buzz that he has to actually set it up and invite everyone to have a meal there. 

I think it’s a pretty good pitch, I might give a shot at writing it. Maybe he lives in a nice condo overlooking the Lincoln Park Zoo. 

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