Soup For You

Last week, Paul Ryan basically barged into a St. Vincent de Paul soup kitchen in Youngstown, Ohio after hours so he could get a photo-op of him washing pots and pans. (They were originally reported as already clean; later reports describe them as in fact dirty, but it's rather beside the point as you'll soon see.) He had not been invited and would have been refused had he taken the time to ask, because St. Vincent is and has always been apolitical and would never willingly allow themselves to be used for campaign purposes. Brian Antal, St. Vincent's local county president, said as much.

In the wake of that, the soup kitchen has found some of their donors pulling financial support for political purposes, above and beyond what St. Vincent's was trying to avoid. The exact amount being pulled isn't being made available, but it's described as significant.

If you are now outraged at the fact that anyone would try and actively harm a soup kitchen as a means of political attack- and you should be- you are probably wondering if there's something you could do to help out.

Yes, there is.

The folks over at Fark have put together a fundraising campaign on IndieGoGo, active until December 2nd. You'll see a goal amount set at $10,000; don't mind it too much. This works a little differently than the all-or-nothing nature of Kickstarter. The money will be donated directly to the soup kitchen regardless of whether the goal is reached; the only difference between meeting the goal and not meeting the goal is how much IndieGoGo takes as a fee: 4% if the goal is met, 9% if it's not. There are a few rewards, but they're very minimal: donating $5 gets your name on a card to be sent to the soup kitchen, and someone in the Fark thread is kicking in T-shirts for the $50 level.

If you've ever wanted to help out a soup kitchen but never got around to it, well, here's your chance right here. If not, or if you've got any sort of issue with this particular campaign, you could always donate to St. Vincent directly. That works too.