(sorry for the dupe, but you know, I did actually send it and all...)
To: <president@whitehouse.gov>
Subject: Thank you for your generous contribution to the Tsunami Fund, Mr. Bush.
Dear Mr. Bush,
It's been a while since I've written--I apologize, I've been busy doing the very hard work of preserving democracy at home. But it's good to see you're staying on top of the march for freedom in Iraq and the tsunami relief efforts. I was extremely moved by the way you dug deep into the bulge of your own pockets and sent a whole 10 grand over there to help those people. What a wonderful thing to do.
I've been contributing to other causes these days: I sent some phone cards to the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed and a bunch of winter coats to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Since our state university no longer has the funds to do it, I'm picking up the tab for lunch at an educational event later this month. Then of course I've sent a few hundred to some of the efforts to help straighten out this election mess. What a debacle, huh? We really need to get a handle on that--who'd have thought that counting votes would cost so much. But hey, it's better than counting sheep.
The bulge in my pants will never come close to the one you've got, so I haven't even hit the 4-digit mark in my contributions--but I've been doing what I can to help keep our people stay afloat while you concentrate your efforts on freedom for Iraq and tsunami victims in Asia--and I know thousands of Americans who are doing the same.
It sure is unfortunate that I didn't get this message until after I'd sent so much money to all these other causes because I got a call for help today that just about floored me: I found myself wishing I hadn't made all those contributions, because, well, these people REALLY need our help. Anyway, I got to thinking: that Mr. Bush, he's a generous man, and he sure has a lot of money. Maybe he'd be willing to help. So I decided to break my long silence and drop you another line, just to see if you might be willing and able to help me out here. You know God will love you for it, and we sure would be grateful--forever and ever, we would pray for you and pray and pray that all the blessings and burdens you have worked all these years so hard to earn should rain down upon you -- like justice in a sea of infamy.
What the heck, Mr. Bush, I'm just going to cut to the chase: I got this message today and I don't know what else to do with it but to pass it on to you in the hope that you may be able to do something about it. I hope so because frankly, I'm just tapped:
Can you help?
A true emergency is confronting the Indian People on the Sioux
Reservations of the Northern Plains in South Dakota. Sarah Swift Hawk, a
Grandmother living in the village of Spring Creek on the Rosebud
Reservation, froze to death in her own home (meaning a shack) because
she couldn't afford to pay for fuel. The cost of propane fuel, which
is used by most of the people on the reservations who have any capacity
for heat at all in their homes has become so inflated that record
numbers of families are in grave danger again this year. The federal low
income home energy assistance program (LIHEAP) in South Dakota recently
lost $300 million in energy assistance funds. The Pine Ridge Reservation
by the way is the most poverty-stricken community in the United States.
To meet this critical need the American Indian Relief Council has
established a Winter Fuel Emergency Fund to subsidize Propane purchases
for those most at risk on the Sioux Reservations -- THE ELDERS. Since
you will not see this emergency crisis dramatized on TV or in the
newspapers it is all the more important that contributions of any amount
be sent to:
Winter Fuel Emergency Fund American Indian Relief Council
PO Box 6200
Rapid City, SD 57709-6200
http://www.airc.orgThanks for your time and attention, and God bless, Mr. Bush Forum: Native American Community · Post Preview: #172439 · Replies: 17 · Views: 78