Rad Geek People's Daily

This is from Roderick’s blog. I’m sure just about everyone who reads this blog regularly already knows who Roderick is, but for you irregulars out there, he’s a friend and an old teacher of mine, a left-libertarian, Anarchist philosopher and one of the founders of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left, and a swell guy who definitely doesn’t deserve anything like this. Nobody deserves anything like this, but this in particular hurts. So let’s do some mutual aid and go ALL out for a comrade and a friend.

Please pass the word about this to anyone who might be able to help in any amount. (Not many people can chip in $8,000 for random anarchists in distress, but there might be a few hundred people who can chip in $20 in the name of mutual aid, which comes to the same thing.) Also, if you know anyone who might be able to help with the legal situation, please pass the word along.

Request for Emergency Help

I’ve never asked for money on my blog before, but I’ve just been hit with a major financial emergency.

Several months ago, the Alabama Department of Revenue decided I’d underpaid on state taxes from ten years earlier. (I wasn’t aware of having done so, but I don’t have those records any more and so can’t prove otherwise.) After they’d added on interest and late fees, the total due was about $12,000. I submitted a request form to pay it off in installments; they never said yes or no to the request form, but I kept sending in payments and they kept cashing them, which led me to be more sanguine than in retrospect I should have been.

Then suddenly today, without warning or announcement (either from the tax department or from my bank), the tax department completely cleared out my checking account, and my savings account, and my mother’s checking account (I guess because we’re joint on it), leaving me $8000 overdrawn to boot.

I found out the money’d been taken only by checking my balance online today – and I had to go to the bank in person to find out it was a tax levy (the online balance had no information about who’d withdrawn the money).

My college salary doesn’t start up again until September, and I have no relatives from whom to borrow, so here I am with no money (or actually, negative $8000) for food, rent, or bills for the rest of the summer.

I haven’t had a chance to contact either the tax department or a lawyer yet (having spent the afternoon waiting and waiting at my bank), but I’m not exactly optimistic about getting a swift and favourable resolution.

Which is why I am desperately requesting help. If you can help, please let me know whether it’s a gift or a loan, and send either via PayPal:

or to my snailmail address:

Roderick T. Long
402 Martin Ave.
Auburn AL 36849

— Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-07-21): Request for Emergency Help