The AGR Spring Fund Drive, now in its third week, has not yet reached $100 and we have less than $3,000 dollars in the bank. Now that we have been evicted from our office in the Asheville Community Resource Center, which provided us with a rent-free space, we have the extra burden of paying $350 dollars in rent each month.

Plus, the DSL line, the phone bill, our one news wire, office supplies, and weekly printing expenses are classic Asheville Global Report stresses. We are poor individuals working on a poor newspaper. “How will we pay the bills each month and get what we need to survive and grow?” is a question we are nearly constantly asking in both our personal lives and with the newspaper.

Another mentally and financially taxing trend is AGR staff and editors being violently arrested by police at demonstrations. At the Mar. 6 “Sanctity of Marriage” demonstrations, where gay rights protesters were forcefully removed from a public gathering at City-County Plaza, three of the eleven arrested were AGR staff. Then on Mar. 19, at an anti-war demonstration and march, seven people were violently arrested, including two AGR staff and one editor. These arrests were made merely because people were expressing vocal dissent and disagreement with a system that is more akin to fascism than democracy. A new running joke in the office is we need a line in the budget for bail money and that in every local demonstration, a new quota requires at least one arrestee to be from AGR.

This crackdown on dissent is putting a strain on our paper, because the more AGR volunteers are forced to spend time recovering from police-inflicted injuries, meeting with lawyers, or making court appearances, the less time and energy is available for the paper. Those of us not actually arrested still deal with the stress of having our friends injured and/or caught in the legal system, and picking up what they may not be able to do because of the situation.

However, in the face of all odds — getting evicted, moving, being arrested en masse, being broke and having two long-time editors step down in the past six months — we are still here! We keep on improving and coming out regularly every week! Our local coverage section has become a regular feature and we have been expanding our distribution and improving our website. Plus, our culture section consistently features AGR originals about events influencing our society -- locally and internationally.

We are all painfully aware of the current bleak economic situation and that we are not the only ones experiencing serious financial hardship. In Western North Carolina alone, a historically poverty-stricken part of the country, textile factories are closing on a regular basis, putting thousands out of work. These closings affect not only the factory workers, but all of us, because there are less money and jobs to go around.

This being the fundraising season for other non-profits as well, we know it can be hard to find a way to donate. But donations are imperative if the paper is to continue. Really, any amount is helpful. And if you are short on money but interested in volunteering with the AGR in some capacity, please call or email us to let us know.

Of course if it wasn’t for the readers and volunteers (everyone who works on the AGR is a volunteer) AGR wouldn’t exist. With the large-scale assault on civil liberties the US government has launched in the name of “Homeland Security”, it is as important as ever for us to stick together and help each other. Helping to keep information that would otherwise be supressed accessible to the public -- speaking truth to power -- is a function AGR strives to fulfill. So, please, we ask you to help us keep going by making a donation.

In Solidarity,

The Asheville Global Report Editorial Collective