since people are asking, here’s a list of places you can donate to help the australian bushfires. donating literally $1 means you have done more than our prime minister. (* = can donate internationally; for the other ones you might have to google it)
here is a list from the abc (but maybe don’t donate to the salvos bc they suck) (x)
i’ll keep it updated as i find more
If you want to avoid the big organisations and help the battlers more locally on the ground, here’s an incomplete list. The firefighters are vital and working hard, and some local stations are set up to take donations directly. But if you want a more animal-focused bent (because that’s what I do)…
Mallacoota Wildlife Shelter (koalas and wildlife in the thick of the East Gippsland fires in Victoria right now, bank details on the Jan 2nd post)
Vets Beyond Borders is a large organization which will accept donations, and also coordinated AVERT - the Australian Veterinary Emergency Response Team. Vets, vet nurses and vet techs can register as volunteers there.
And there are other organizations that can be helped in other ways.
Medical Pantry, a collective which gathers unused or surplus medical supplies for redistribution. They will be helping supply what they can.
If you have space in your home, Airbnb Open Homes lets you register your home for displaced people or relief workers to offer them accommodation.
There are fodder drops being organized for livestock in affected areas but…well, some of these areas are not accessible yet and nobody’s quire sure what’s alive down there. But there will be a need for fodder and agistment paddocks for horses and livestock.
Some shelters or vet hospitals will also need things like feed/waterbowls and dog crates to house wildlife. A local organisation might have a pickup point near you, or some clinics will have staff registered to go as volunteers when asked.
In addition, some local knitters/sewers/crafters guild will be turning old cotton and flannelette material into pouches and wraps for injured wildlife. If you’ve got a local group, see what they’re doing and what you can donate out of the cupboards. I know Wonderground in South East Melbourne has a sewing day this Sunday (5thof Jan) and they are local to me, but see which groups are local to you.
This is the most up-to-date list of crafted products required that I have at the moment.
‘Cause when you think you might be heading into a period of massive income inequality and strife, the Pinkerton’s record in the 19th century is REALLY the thing you should be trying to invoke, apparently.
Some key bits from the article:
The Pinkertons wanted me to picture myself in a scene of absolute devastation. “A hurricane just wipes out everything, and you need to feed your children,” Andres Paz Larach said. The power grid is down, shipments of food are cut off, the water is no longer potable — how do you get what you need to survive? What risks do you take?
…
Pinkerton began noticing a growing set of anxieties among its corporate clients about distinctly contemporary plagues — active shooters, political unrest, climate disasters
…
You’re going to turn to desperate measures,” he said. Everybody will. The other Pinkertons nodded.
…
He gave the example of a drought. “If a client has food and water and all the other stuff,” he said, “then they become a target.” López Portillo and Paz Larach uttered small words of consensus in Spanish, while scanning through email on their phones. “And if and when desperate people discovered that cache of water and food,” he continued, it was the Pinkertons’ job to protect it at whatever cost.
…
Later, after Paz Larach took his turn on the range — during which he emptied a Galil ACE assault rifle into a human-shaped cardboard cutout, then quickly drew his nine-millimeter, grouping four shots in the chest-cavity bull’s-eye — he offered the example of Hurricane Maria. On the day the Category 4 hurricane made landfall in Puerto Rico in 2017, he received more than 30 calls from American businesses and multinationals. He wouldn’t go into detail but explained that many chief executives felt blind to the situation and effectively tendered a blank check if Pinkerton could provide security. Over the next few days, as the company deployed hundreds of agents to the island, some of them, Paz Larach claimed, reported seeing firearms brandished at gas stations. “We had to escort the cargo with real agents, have cars chase the main truck,” he said. “Those who did not have protection were having their cargo hijacked.”
Aware that he might end up sounding vampiric, Paz Larach hesitated, then eventually confessed what he’d wanted to say in the first place: The future looked pretty good for Pinkerton.
…
Paz Larach rattled off a suite of services that were not, strictly speaking, covered by that piece of paper: armed warehouse defense, executive extraction, 24-hour surveillance, chartered helicopters and planes, escorted cargo shipments. “If you abandon your property, you’re kind of just blindfolding yourself,” he said — checking news, hoping for the best. “We’re your eyes and ears on the ground.” During the 2017 hurricane season, the Pinkertons chartered half a dozen planes across the Caribbean, each of them full of food and under armed escort, to the tune of around $100,000 each. Ordinarily, Pinkerton bills on a relatively cheap hourly basis, but during a state of emergency, the rate soars, something Paz Larach compared to Uber’s surge pricing. By the end of the season, after Maria, Harvey and Irma, Paz Larach told me the company billed tens of millions of dollars.
…
Later, at the racetrack, we watched three young men suit up in ski masks to shoot paintballs at our S.U.V. Even among my Pinkerton handlers, the theater of exercise seemed to strain the reasonable connections between tactical response and climate change. Throughout my visit, I wondered whether I had caught Pinkerton in the midst of an awkward organizational transition, or if the company stood merely to capitalize on the world’s growing panic — and if the difference really mattered. They had, after all, taken me to fire automatic weapons, ostensibly as a training exercise against desperate, disaster-ravaged people. It was impossible to experience that and not project it into a future in which, in the absence of true climate policy or mitigation, capital felt free to protect itself from outside risks — whatever form they may take.
Take note of what they’re emphasizing as needing protection: cargo, goods, resources, executives. Wealth. They try to spin a wealthy person hoarding necessities like food and water as being someone in need of protection, rather than the desperate poor with no access to the essentials of life.
And more significantly, they make a point of selling potential and active customers on the idea that the people who will come after their hoards will be like paramilitary goons themselves, equipped with high-powered guns and numbers. They frame this hypothetical attack as being like an invading army has come for you, not starving refugees fleeing environmental disaster brought on by the policies of the same companies now hiring Pinkerton.
They want to scare their clients into believing they need to sit in fortified mansions atop stores of wealth while a private army protects them from the rabble.
