Does anyone really enjoy having to beg for money all the time? Isn’t money worthless? Doesn’t everyone really just want to eat and drink what nourishes them; reside in a safe, comfortable space; and have a supportive community where life’s inherent dignity is respected? Couldn’t that happen by sharing, communicating, and working with the resources that surround us?

Instead, here at the end of the fall fund drive we have received less than $1,000 total. That is less money than it takes to put out the Asheville Global Report for one month. It is not because of lack of concern. Our loving friends and community have been contributing what they can, either with money or time they devote to helping to put on benefits and put out the paper. However, although we are hardworking people, we are financially poor people. We share, communicate, and use the resources around us to survive and sometimes thrive, but not one of us could write a check for $7,000 and say, “This is for the AGR. I’m really tired of seeing that pained, stressed-out expression on y’alls faces.”

People who have the ability to show that type of support have been very, very quiet. The AGR is an impressive newspaper. Utne Reader just informed us that we have been nominated for an award for excellence in international coverage. We will be mentioned in the November/December issue and the results will come out in the January/February issue. Last Saturday we were not able to be present at the Project Censored awards ceremony in San Francisco, California. We received two awards this year, we have won nine over the past three years. Still, somehow this does not lift our ever-constant burden of always having to beg for money.

Please send us money! PLEASE! We love the Asheville Global Report! We want to keep doing it! We’re glad that people across the world like to read it! We need money sooo bad! We are poor! Please, please, please, please, please, please help us!

Really, that was not pleasant. But what does it take? We need support from our readers or there could be a day when the Asheville Global Report isn’t published because we don’t have any money. A lot of people would cry a lot if that day ever came.

The especially sad part about it is that all this worry is over something as superficial as money. Energy that could be spent thinking about places where we could hire reporters to do original coverage, how we could expand distribution, and things we could do to otherwise improve the paper — or our own quality of life for that matter — is instead spent getting stressed out, sad, and irritated trying to figure out how to get enough money to survive. It is a twisted situation, and it is a reality.

The AGR is very grateful for all the support it receives. Our friends at the Asheville Community Resource Center — who provided rent-free office space to us and other non-profit groups until this spring when we were evicted by landlord John Lanzius — have offered to split the money from their Halloween benefit. The benefit is going to be held on Sun., Oct. 31 at the Big Idea on Carolina Lane in downtown Asheville. There will be bands, a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show at 7pm, a circus, and a haunted house. So, if being provided with a high-quality, award winning, grassroots, free, weekly newspaper dedicated to reporting on unreported and underreported stories with an admitted bias towards social justice is not enough to give us some cash — then here is some Halloween fun as well.

This is the last week of our fall fun drive and desperate From The Editors letters for this year, don’t let it be one of the last weeks for AGR as well.

Sincerely,

The Asheville Global Report editorial collective