March 9, 2009
Crisis Sparks Action: EmailHope.com
With partisan bickering back in high gear, it’s easy for politicians
and pundits to forget or disregard the millions upon millions in
this country suffering during this economic crisis.
The full extent of the country’s fear and pain became unavoidably
clear to Jerry Biederman three days after President Barack Obama’s
inauguration. Biederman, a Los Angeles-based author and reality TV
show developer, casually e-mailed a friend he’s known for 15 years,
“How are you doing?”
The return e-mail, from a man we‘ll call Steve Jones, hit Biederman
like the proverbial lightning bolt. In his lengthy reply, Jones
revealed that he and his family are hanging on financially by their
fingernails, and that he was to the point of despair over his
inability to pay overdue bills and provide for his wife and
children.
“So what do I do now?” Jones’s e-mail summed up. “When working hard
is no longer working, what do you have left?”
“It’s the most devastating e-mail I have ever received from a close
friend,” Biederman says. “My friend put words and an identity to
this financial crisis. The statistics don’t do justice to the pain,
fear and desperation people are going through.”
With his business income collapsing, Jones says he and his wife have
cut out as much household and personal spending as possible, and
still their finances deteriorate. “Behind every foreclosure is a
person who’s suffering. I know what it’s like to worry about that.”
Wanting to help his friend, Biederman forwarded the e-mail to his
mailing list. He asked his correspondents to send back a few words
of support. Did they ever, passing the e-mail along to their e-mail
lists in turn. Biederman was soon awash in responses from around the
country and even across the globe. All of the correspondents wanted
to offer something encouraging.
Biederman decided to set up a web site,
www.emailhope.com. The site asks visitors to leave messages of
encouragement and support, and to share their stories of struggle
along with their insights.
“I wanted a do something positive in response to something so
bleak,” Biederman says. “There’s a lot of quiet desperation behind
closed doors. People don’t want their family, friends, and neighbors
to know, but they have to open up about this. It’s empowering to get
rid of your secrets.”
E-mail Hope posters have opened up. They speak from the heart and
pull no punches. One woman reveals that her mother recently
committed suicide over her lost money, leaving her and her family in
anguish. Another hope e-mailer talks about selling her house to pay
for treating her daughter’s cancer.
They’re funny and poignant, too. One contributor suggests “a Crayola
bomb” as “a happiness weapon” to cure our ills, while a second
offers, “God bless you – things WILL get better – just hold on,
please.”
“E-mail Hope is working for me and a lot of people who are coming to
read it,” Jones says. ”All these letters coming in are amazing
reading. You know people get what you are going through.”
This site should be required study for all those politicians,
regulators and financial executives whose ideologies, negligence,
greed and outright fraud helped bring about this fiasco.
“We’re a whole nation of people who are scared,” Jones says. “You
did a good job of scaring us. Now what are you going to do?”
Any answers?
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