UPDATE: Sunday, October 3rd, 2021, 11:41 AM - today was a pretty spiritual day, I attended Kidane Mihert Ethiopian Orthodox Church at 5:00 AM only to then head out to other local churches. To my great consternation, almost all of the churches were closed until I drove by a Catholic church. I saw a bunch of people walking in and my first thought was “hell no” because Catholocism is the one sect that I do not abide.
I decided to disregard my reservations and attended mass around 10:00 AM at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Falls Church, VA. As I walked in, I met a priest named Father Anthony and we shared a conversation, he a “white” Catholic and I a brown Orthodox Christian. At that exact moment, it hit me, religion has become co-opted by the spirit of the devil as we disavow what Yeshua taught us and condemn one another instead of loving each other as brothers and sisters.
I repented at the Catholic church and asked for forgiveness because our Father who is in heaven sees everything and His spirit is omnipresent. That is when another revelation hit me, my anger towards churches accepting money in churches—a beef I’ve harbored since I was a child—is too puritanical given that we live in a broken world.
As I describe in the article below which was written two days ago, I am repulsed at the idea of monetizing the Ghion Journal. That is why we refuse to take a penny from corporations and why we don’t raise money through ads. The only source of revenue is derived from reader contributions and even that makes me swallow hard because I despise asking people to give money to the Ghion Journal when there are so many other people hurting throughout the world.
My reservation ends today, after all, I am currently working at a Fortune 500 company where I make a pretty decent salary. However, my refusal to ask people to contribute to the Ghion Journal keeps me wedded to a job that I am good at even though my passion is journalism. Going forward, I am going to explicitly ask people to contribute as they are able because there is nothing wrong with asking people to pay for goods and services they find valuable.
The problem is greed, which money is the number one source of, but until we arrive at a time where we can revamp the world to introduce a better exchange of goods, we must conform to the world and wear togas in Rome even if my preference is to wear Ethiopian clothing. To this end, if you find the work that we are doing at the Ghion Journal beneficial, I ask you to contribute to us so that we can turn a passion into a truly viable source of information that can push back against the never-ending lies of mainstream media.
I especially ask you to contribute today because I want to send one big blast of emails, text messages and pay for Twitter, Facebook and Google ads to push this information about an imminent domestic terror attack that can occur at any time and an act of terror that Joe Biden/Kamala Harris are committing against my birth land Ethiopia at this exact moment. Our political leaders and the supposed “free press” are suppressing this information, I have tried my best to let people know as I’ve posted endless articles and printed out thousands of cards and handed them out to random strangers in the DC metro area.
But I am exhausted, I can’t do it on my own, so I ask you to not only spread this potentially horrific attack that is coming for us but to also contribute any amount you can so that I can push the articles more effectively. The name of the fundraising campaign is “Arm David with 5 smooth stones” for a reason, David picked up 5 stones and a slingshot and aimed it at the head of Goliath. I am asking you to arm Ghion Journal with 5 smooth stones by way of contributions so we too can slay the Goliath lies of the establishment. You can contribute today by CLICKING HERE or by filling in the information. below. Thank you.
From the outset, my wife and I were not interested in turning the Ghion Journal into a cash cow, that is why we disavowed corporate contributions of any sort and we decided to make this website ad-free other than the couple of ads we give away to local/regional businesses who can prove that they are doing good for the communities they live in.
Our “business model”, if you can call it that, was inspired by a restaurant in Fort Collins I used to eat at on numerous occasions called FoCo Cafe when I was homeless. Instead of charging fixed prices, they let diners contribute as they are able. Some gave a lot, others gave nothing at all.
We have been using that same model to keep offset some of the costs of maintaining this website and marketing our articles (email, text messages and an occasional spend on social media). However, even with the decision to minimize the sources of revenue coming into the Ghion Journal, I have been very sporadic in terms of asking people to contribute.
My hesitancy goes back to the time I was a child and would accompany my mom to church only to see priests and people of the church asking for money when the person they worshipped explicitly stated that money should not be traded in “his father’s house”. My aversion to money only grew as I grew older and realized just how much of this world’s evils is rooted in currency.
The events of the past week have collided with my hate/love relationship with money. Three days ago, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, a man whom I was having backchannel conversations with about faith, family and love of country, got locked up for speaking his mind. This morning, I received an email from my job that lets me know that it’s a matter of time before they start firing people like me who are “unvaccinated”.
That is when it hit me, I face the prospects of leaving my wife and my child out in the cold if something happens to me or face the possibility of enduring homelessness yet again, this time with people who depend on me in tow.
Beyond personal motives, which I had to express in the interest of openness, I realize that my idealism is keeping the Ghion Journal from growing and becoming a serious source of news for a wider audience. We live in a time where serious journalism is needed more than ever, to that end, our hope is to fill a vacuum that has been created by mainstream media’s clownish acts.
For nearly six years, the @GhionJournal has been struggling to stay afloat as we've had to finance the publication out of our pockets to keep it afloat, we ask our readers to help make our endeavor sustainable. #EmpowerGhionJournal Click To TweetTo this end, though we are not going to take a penny from corporations and we will continue to be ad-free other than the ads we give away for free, I am going to be a bit more explicit in asking people to contribute to the Ghion Journal. Ideally, our readers can become subscribers so we can have a reliable source of revenue in order to hire staff and put structure to our organization, but any contribution would further our aims.
The motto is the same, give as you are able so we can give back as best we can. I thank you for being a continued supporter of our noble experiment.
To contribute to the Ghion Journal, CLICK HERE to be redirected to the DonorBox page where you can make contributions or contribute below.
You Can also Contribute with CryptoCurrency like Bitcoin
by CLICKING HERE , clicking on the icon below or scanning the QR code below that
The donate button at the top goes to the Ghion Journal general funds to offset costs and to grow our capacities, the contribution button found the bottom of each article goes 100% to the respective authors. Contribute you can, but most importantly, continue to share these discussions. We are planting seeds, it is up to the readers to nurture it.
- Mark Out From the Market: Looking for Matthew to Answer the Call and Make a Put for Justice - October 6, 2021
- Broken Sparrow No More: the Revelation We Have Been Waiting for Starts with Us - October 3, 2021
- Arm David with Five Smooth Stones to Slay Goliath Lies - October 1, 2021
