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Help give Briarpatch a technology upgrade!

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Late one night at the Briarpatch office, while Saima is putting the finishing touches on the layout of the upcoming  issue of the magazine, the editor's decade-old computer starts glitching. The little spinning wheel pops up on the screen, and for the next hour it doesn't stop spinning. Then the computer just shuts down. This is very, very bad.

We've been putting off upgrading our technology at Briarpatch because we haven't had the money. But these old computers are really holding us back now, and on top of that, we don’t have the same caliber of design tools as our more resourced corporate competitors. We're hoping you can help.

We need to raise $10,000 this spring. $5,000 of that is for technology upgrades for our entire office, and the other $5,000 is to keep our normal operations going. We're doing some offline fundraising (snail mail! telephones!) to raise part of it, and this online campaign to raise the other portion.

Even while pulling our hair out fighting with the  computers at the office, we’re pretty proud of what we’ve been publishing. Our Just Transition Issue featured incisive and visionary writing about addressing climate change from contributors across the country. It was the kind of intervention you won’t find from Maclean’s (which gets at least $1.5 million annually in federal government grants, around 80 times more than Briarpatch receives). In previous issues, we’ve published an investigation into right-wing politicking in Toronto’s Chinese suburbs, reflections on collective care in activism, an essay about growing up queer in Inuit Nunangat, deep dives into the new anti-occupation Jewish left in Canada, and lots more.

For our Saskatchewan readers, we launched the Sask Dispatch last fall to fill a void in the province’s media landscape. We’ve written about the province’s abysmal minimum wage, early efforts to build a movement for a just transition, and numerous labour disputes. We even broke a story about thousands of people being cut off a social assistance program, which the Ministry of Social Services definitely wasn’t going to tell you about.

With a technology upgrade, we’ll be able to do even more.

There are two ways you can support Briarpatch right now.

The first is to make a one-time donation using the "Donate Now" button on this page. No donation is too small. Five dollars helps! And if you are able to give more, we encourage you to push yourself to give boldly. The most common amount for one-time donations is $50, and several people give $500 or more. All of these contributions are essential to keep Briarpatch going strong.

The second way to support is to become a monthly donor, which we call “sustainers.” Current sustainers, who contribute one third of Briarpatch’s revenue, give anywhere from $5 to $130 per month. This funding provides crucial stability, and with more sustainers we can continue to produce even better content, and more of it. If 50 people become sustainers at an average of $20 per month, we could hire a (very) part-time staff member to help out our (very) overstretched team of two.

To become a sustainer, visit the donate page of our website, or give us a call toll-free at 1-866-431-5777.

We believe it’s important that our financial support comes from our readers. We don’t want to rely on car companies, for example, for ad revenue, nor on a just a few major donors. There is too much danger in that approach of becoming beholden to the big funders, and not wanting to piss them off. Or, if we did piss them off (which we would), of them taking away the funding, leaving us in a desperate situation.

We hope that if you value what we do, you’ll consider supporting Briarpatch today by either making a one-time donation or by becoming a sustainer. Thanks so much!

Sincerely,
David Gray-Donald, Publisher
Saima Desai, Editor

Organizer

Briarpatch Magazine
Organizer
Regina, SK

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