Thank You!

I am one step closer to being able to write and consult full-time

It seems I am a officially a Substack bestseller!

I have recently acquired a cluster of new paying subscribers. Thank you, Catherine, Ned, Diane, Cheryl, David, Heather, Howard and Pete, and especially to my founding members, Michael, Lore, Paulo, Sherry, Louise, Jim and Robert. I deeply appreciate all of you who have enabled me to reach a landmark in my goal. That goal is to keep writing and keep supporting individuals in danger of cancellation and organisations trying to rid themselves of authoritarian Critical Social Justice influence full time. I currently have enough of a financial buffer to keep doing this until October after which I will have to take on outside writing and editing work. Every time someone becomes a paying subscriber, the date that I run out of funds and have to do something else gets pushed back a little further. My hope is that we can keep pushing it back so that I never have to do anything else!

Currently 4% of you are paying subscribers and this has pushed my yearly gross income up to $9000. (I am always amused at those who call me a ‘grifter’ and imply that writing things that piss off authoritarian ideologues of all kinds is wildly profitable. I earn about £4.50 an hour). Nevertheless, I am approaching a landmark. I need to earn £24,000 (about $30,000) a year to cover our basic living expenses and I am nearly 1/3rd of the way there.

Thank you! If I needed to take on other work tomorrow, I would still be able to dedicate at least a third of my time to writing and supporting people in trouble. Sometimes, the people I help with an authoritarian CSJ problem in their organisation are in a position to pay me, but more often they are not and your contributions to my Substack helps me to support them. I currently have a national organisation of clinicians under threat from anti-science decolonial activists, a school proposing both CSJ gender and race activism classes, a charity being paralysed by both critical race and decolonial activists and a technician and a social work student facing spurious disciplinary action for “colour-blind” & gender critical views respectively. You have helped free me up to help them mount the strongest possible defences against this.

It is also very important to me to keep all my written content free and my comments open. The feedback that delights me the most is when somebody tells me that I helped them to clarify in their minds an issue they were conflicted about or given verbal shape to something they feel strongly about but have been having difficulty confidently articulating. I want this to be a place where we navigate the realities and ethics of pressing issues from that broadest liberal perspective that belongs to neither the right nor the left but to everybody who values individual liberty and opposes authoritarianism consistently. Therefore, it is wonderful that I have so many thoughtful subscribers who raise issues that are on their minds, add their thoughts to my ideas and help me develop them or, alternatively, challenge me and help me refine them. You’ve been particularly engaged recently and my health has been subpar so I’ve missed answering a few of you but I read and think about them all and they influence what I write.

I do not want there to be any barrier to the highly productive interactions we have been able to have here. Being able or unable to pay for a Substack subscription tells us nothing about how thoughtful or worth engaging with anybody’s ideas are, and I do not want anybody to be shut out. Those of you who are able to be paying subscribers enable me to keep my writing free and thus also my comments open to those who want to read and engage, but cannot afford to take on any new subscriptions right now. I show my appreciation with additional benefits in the form of voiceovers and, now that my health seems to be improving, am starting to organise podcasts and hangouts. (My tentative plan to learn to knit and make all my founding members unique tea cosies is not going terribly well. Even my dishcloths are wonky and have holes in them. I may have to rethink that idea).

My paying subscribers enable this place to buzz with views and feedback and insights from people from all over the world and all over the political spectrum. I believe that, in our own small way, we are doing our bit to make the world just that little bit more liberal and provide some defence against various forms of rising illiberalism. I appreciate every one of you. I will continue to read and write and engage with you all and to develop my Substack with more interesting features. If we can keep momentum going and continue this gradual climb in paying subscribers, you will enable me to keep pushing back the date at which I will need to take on outside work until it never comes, and we can keep growing this space together.

May the overflowings long continue!