MJ – I hardly agree that the victories are “small”. These are significant wins. Not only were we successful in blocking the enactment of a law that would effectively preclude internet use for registrants, but we sent a message that we are unwilling to sit back and take it.

Just because we’ve not gotten the entire registry scheme tossed, does not mean that what we are doing in chipping away at it is “small”. Even if we had lost (which we didn’t), legislators will think twice about the challenge they will inevitably have to defend against if they try to pile more unconstitutional punishments on our population.

I take offense when anyone suggests ‘FAC should…’ or the ‘ACLU needs to…’ or that our victories are small. The ACLU was THE FIRST to take up our Residency Restriction challenge that, after over a year, is still being litigated to the appellate court and back. FAC, despite consisting of leadership that is entirely made up of volunteers and a membership that (as you pointed out) is predominantly broke, scraped together enough to kickstart and support three federal lawsuits.

Nobody disputes how badly it sucks to work three part time jobs and earn only $1700 a month, but you need to keep in mind that for some of us, FAC is a part time job for which we earn ZERO dollars a month fighting for that to change.

As you prepare for one of your three part time jobs, think of those who would be grateful to find just one or who woke up next to a railroad track this morning. Set yourself a personal timeline to suck it up and give your full effort to meeting a goal of launching a full challenge to the registry in Q1 and let’s all suck it up until then and do what we need to do to accomplish that goal.