“Cooking is quite a challenge. I find myself picking up a precooked chicken at the store more often than I’d like, because it’s one less pan to scrub. I’m very waste-conscious, and it bothers me to toss out the packaging, but I’m at a loss what else to do.
“I’ve come to appreciate the challenges of the Occupy movement…the only difference between our current lifestyle and camping in a park is that our tent is made of wood and stone. We have all of the same sanitary concerns as a camper, making sure we use biodegradable soap since we have no drain for the soapy water to go down. We are trying to be good citizens and not let convenience trump the ecological laws we have always tried to adhere to.
“After six weeks of trying to find ways to resolve the problem ourselves in every way possible — we reluctantly admit we just don’t have the $12,000 to fix it, and everyone agrees it’s not our fault — so whose fault is it? Legally, it seems that it’s no one’s. Morally, it might be another story. Nevertheless, it was definitely not ours. The information was not on the map.
“After leaving no stone unturned, we took our problem to the community and began our FlushAid campaign. Let me tell you, talking to friends and strangers about our money problems, not to mention our bathroom routines, was our last resort.
“The ironic part is that I have really been trying to ratchet back my public life of late. I’ve written a lot about this community in my blog, the New Paltz Gadfly, and some of it’s been pretty contentious, critical of public officials. Last year, I ran for Ulster County Legislature, and after that I resolved to pull back and become a more private citizen. I even got as far as deactivating my Facebook account.
“But that wasn’t what the universe wanted, I guess, because I got flushed back into it again, so to speak.”
I asked some folks before writing this column about their reaction to the FlushAid campaign. Maybe people had no idea at all what it was, and were amused by the large banner displaying a toilet in front of Snugs restaurant last Sunday afternoon. According to Terence, the fundraiser went well; $900 was raised, rock and roll bands played, many friends came and so did a lot of strangers who were sympathetic and kind.
It can be a murky business donating money to private citizens. A distrustful soul might ask where the money is really going. What will happen to the donations if officialdom steps up to plate and eventually takes responsibility for the repair? How do we know we can trust Terence and Robin to be truthful?
I asked Terence and Robin Ward about accountability. “Before we went public we thought a lot about this… accountability and transparency are important to us. It’s easy to see that we’ve raised $2,800 online, but that campaign ends on July 24. To replace it I’m going to put a public document on the Facebook page, showing how much we’ve received so far, and to track how we spend it.
“If we have to take this to court, which we are trying to avoid by holding the campaign, there’s a decent chance we’ll get some money back, and if that means we end up with a surplus, it’s all going back into sewer problems. At first we wanted to donate it to aid New Paltz’s sewer system, which I’ve been told could take a billion dollars to fully upgrade, but it was suggested we not try to tie the two problems together. So instead, any surplus will go to the microlending site Kiva.org, which lends to small businesses in third-world countries, and we will stipulate that the money only fund projects for modern sewer systems in communities that don’t have such amenities.”
Why trust
When I first started to teach dance to prisoners, a friend asked me if I trusted them. I grappled with the question for a long time and eventually I asked a friend who had spent her life working with some questionable populations what would be her answer to this question? She said, “If you don’t trust them, they wouldn’t trust you. MY advice,” she said, “Trust until you actually have a reason not to.” By all accounts Terence and Robin are good people and contributing members of our community. In these economic times this might be the first of many occasions when our neighbors might need financial help. I hope it’s never myself and my family, but in any case FlushAid is in the vanguard, paving a way for caring about our neighbors as ourselves.
More information about what happened and what attempts have been made to fix it can be found at Facebook.com/FlushAid.
