This image is just over 20 years old now. It was my first
experience with a number of things - the media, organizing a gathering
and as you can see, total failure. But the headline is misleading. And
this is not the first time I have had to go back and look at that whole
situation, everything that happened before, during and after it, and use
it to remind myself that not everything works out exactly how we plan
it, and that success, or at least some semblance of it, often comes
disguised as failure.
In this instance, a three-year-old child was playing in his room on the 11th floor of a public housing complex here in St. Louis. It was early in the morning, on a typically hot June day. The child's mother had made repeated requests that a torn screen be repaired, as there was no air conditioning and a fan had to sit in the window. Those requests were not answered, and on this morning, something happened, something no one will ever know for certain, and before anyone else in the apartment was awake, the fan and the three-year-old fell eleven stories. Eleven. And like that, in an instant, the child was gone, Horrifically, terrifyingly gone. The next day, the story appeared in our local paper. Not on page one. Not on page two.It was reported, but there was no anger. No parents or teachers or advocates howling for justice. All I could think of, as the parent of two young children, was the terror the child must have felt. The grief that his mother must be enduring, knowing she had tried to get the window fixed multiple times. The absence of outrage was, well, outrageous. I did not know what to do, but I knew I needed to do something. Anything.
So I shared my feelings with my friend Mark, and he was equally upset. We watched and waited for the story to explode and it never did. With my wife's help (she was an animal welfare lobbyist at the time, and had dealt with all levels of bureaucracy) we tried to persuade the housing authority to mandate safety bars on all public dwellings over three stories. Nothing. It is hard to express now, in an age of viral news stories and online petitions, how little interest there was in what had happened. Was it race? Was it because it happened at a public housing complex and not a high-rise in a better part of town? I did not know, and frankly I did not care. I just wanted someone, anyone, to be as angry about it as I was. From that, a plan was formed.
We spent the next week calling every church, every community organization, every PTA. You name it, we called it. We planned a rally, a peaceful one, to be held at the building where this happened. We scheduled it for 1PM on the upcoming Sunday. We had commitments from pastors, community leaders, parents. They would all be there. We would peacefully but sternly insist that steps be taken to ensure this never happened again. And this was before Facebook, before the true wave of social media and online communities. We were using the phone book (for those not familiar, the phone book was a large publication that would appear on your doorstep every year and had everyone's name, address and phone number in it. Residential listings were in a white book, businesses in a yellow one. It was like people search or Google Places with no pop-ups). At the end of the week, we were ready.
Once everything was set, we faxed a press release out to all the local media (for those of you that don't know a fax machine was, don't worry about it. You won't need to know.) and when Sunday came around, Mark, my wife and I all drove to the apartment building. We got there early in anticipation of the inevitable throngs of people that would soon arrive to join the rally. And we continued to anticipate. And anticipate. And Anticipate. Because no one showed up. No one. Not one soul. Oh, except for the media. They ALL showed up. Television? Check. Radio? Check. Newspaper? Check. Crowd? Zip. And for the first time in my life (sadly, not the last though. But that is another story) I was standing in front of a bunch of reporters, and they wanted to know where everyone was. So did I, but I had no idea.
As you can see in the photo that was printed on page one of the next morning's paper, I was not exactly thrilled with how the rally turned out. Of course when that picture was taken, I did not anticipate that it would BE on the front page of the paper. Nor did I anticipate that the story would lead the newscasts later that night. But here is the thing I could not and did not grasp at the time - the story of no one showing up was exactly what ended up accomplishing what I thought would require hundreds, if not thousands, of people. I was young, 29 I think, (but so, so already bald) and I was so caught up in the complete failure of my 'plan' that I simply could not comprehend what had happened. The fact that no one cared made people care. It made news. It is not, in my opinion, what it should have taken to bring attention to this matter, but it did. And the fallout from that resulted in...safety bars being made mandatory on public buildings over three stories tall. Call it what you will - God, the Universe, Taylor Swift - but what I thought required many only required three. And the media. Who I liked back then.
All this is a long way of saying that we never know what will come of our 'failures'. That there is always hope. Always a chance that your efforts will pay off, even if it is not how you wanted or expected them to. And right now, I get the sense we all feel a bit like I did in that picture. Alone, scared, disappointed, worried. Not knowing what the next day will bring. Our businesses are hurting. People are hurting. People are scared. And our resources are limited. And for the smallest of us, help is probably not on the way. So now we have to make those efforts. The ones that may not pay off like we hope or expect, but will, I believe, pay off.
We are going to try something big. A telethon, but virtual. All streaming. All live. For 24 continuous hours. We are going to raise money for the businesses and organizations that have been near and dear to us these past ten years. The Streamathon for Pets will raise money for small & independent pet businesses, services and rescues. We will try to raise as much as we can and distribute to as many as we can. We will do so by providing 24-hours of entertainment and contests and things viewers can do right from the quarantined confines of their living rooms. We have partnered with a fiscal sponsor who has set up the Streamathon for Pets Foundation, and all donations will be collected and audited by a nationally recognized non-profit. This also makes every donation tax-deductible, keeps everything transparent and will hopefully lead to more donations.
If you are a pet sitter, a dog trainer, a sole-proprietor trying to get through this, we are going to give it our best shot to try to help you do it. When this is all over, whatever the new normal is, your services and products will still be needed.
If you are in need of a grant, please fill out the form on the website at www.StreamathonforPets.com. If you can sponsor, perform, donate a product, entertain or assist in other ways, there is a form for you, too. Our team is putting out a tremendous effort, but would certainly welcome your participation.
Together, we can endure this. We can be left out when the funds run dry. We can be literally unable to do what we normally do for a living. So what CAN we do? We can innovate, adapt, try. We can make the effort. And maybe it will not turn out like we expect, but as you can see, one never knows what tomorrow may bring. What happened 20 years ago will always be a tragedy, and nothing we did or saw accomplished will ever bring that child back, or ease the pain his family felt and still feels. But that was all we could do. Today, all any of us can do is try. We hope you will join us in this effort, and we hope that when this is all over, we have lessons learned that we can share 20 years from now.
Please visit www.StreamathonForPets.com, and we will 'virtually' see you next Friday, May 1st at 4PM CST!
Yours,
William Rilenge and the Streamathon for Pets team.
In this instance, a three-year-old child was playing in his room on the 11th floor of a public housing complex here in St. Louis. It was early in the morning, on a typically hot June day. The child's mother had made repeated requests that a torn screen be repaired, as there was no air conditioning and a fan had to sit in the window. Those requests were not answered, and on this morning, something happened, something no one will ever know for certain, and before anyone else in the apartment was awake, the fan and the three-year-old fell eleven stories. Eleven. And like that, in an instant, the child was gone, Horrifically, terrifyingly gone. The next day, the story appeared in our local paper. Not on page one. Not on page two.It was reported, but there was no anger. No parents or teachers or advocates howling for justice. All I could think of, as the parent of two young children, was the terror the child must have felt. The grief that his mother must be enduring, knowing she had tried to get the window fixed multiple times. The absence of outrage was, well, outrageous. I did not know what to do, but I knew I needed to do something. Anything.
So I shared my feelings with my friend Mark, and he was equally upset. We watched and waited for the story to explode and it never did. With my wife's help (she was an animal welfare lobbyist at the time, and had dealt with all levels of bureaucracy) we tried to persuade the housing authority to mandate safety bars on all public dwellings over three stories. Nothing. It is hard to express now, in an age of viral news stories and online petitions, how little interest there was in what had happened. Was it race? Was it because it happened at a public housing complex and not a high-rise in a better part of town? I did not know, and frankly I did not care. I just wanted someone, anyone, to be as angry about it as I was. From that, a plan was formed.
We spent the next week calling every church, every community organization, every PTA. You name it, we called it. We planned a rally, a peaceful one, to be held at the building where this happened. We scheduled it for 1PM on the upcoming Sunday. We had commitments from pastors, community leaders, parents. They would all be there. We would peacefully but sternly insist that steps be taken to ensure this never happened again. And this was before Facebook, before the true wave of social media and online communities. We were using the phone book (for those not familiar, the phone book was a large publication that would appear on your doorstep every year and had everyone's name, address and phone number in it. Residential listings were in a white book, businesses in a yellow one. It was like people search or Google Places with no pop-ups). At the end of the week, we were ready.
Once everything was set, we faxed a press release out to all the local media (for those of you that don't know a fax machine was, don't worry about it. You won't need to know.) and when Sunday came around, Mark, my wife and I all drove to the apartment building. We got there early in anticipation of the inevitable throngs of people that would soon arrive to join the rally. And we continued to anticipate. And anticipate. And Anticipate. Because no one showed up. No one. Not one soul. Oh, except for the media. They ALL showed up. Television? Check. Radio? Check. Newspaper? Check. Crowd? Zip. And for the first time in my life (sadly, not the last though. But that is another story) I was standing in front of a bunch of reporters, and they wanted to know where everyone was. So did I, but I had no idea.
As you can see in the photo that was printed on page one of the next morning's paper, I was not exactly thrilled with how the rally turned out. Of course when that picture was taken, I did not anticipate that it would BE on the front page of the paper. Nor did I anticipate that the story would lead the newscasts later that night. But here is the thing I could not and did not grasp at the time - the story of no one showing up was exactly what ended up accomplishing what I thought would require hundreds, if not thousands, of people. I was young, 29 I think, (but so, so already bald) and I was so caught up in the complete failure of my 'plan' that I simply could not comprehend what had happened. The fact that no one cared made people care. It made news. It is not, in my opinion, what it should have taken to bring attention to this matter, but it did. And the fallout from that resulted in...safety bars being made mandatory on public buildings over three stories tall. Call it what you will - God, the Universe, Taylor Swift - but what I thought required many only required three. And the media. Who I liked back then.
All this is a long way of saying that we never know what will come of our 'failures'. That there is always hope. Always a chance that your efforts will pay off, even if it is not how you wanted or expected them to. And right now, I get the sense we all feel a bit like I did in that picture. Alone, scared, disappointed, worried. Not knowing what the next day will bring. Our businesses are hurting. People are hurting. People are scared. And our resources are limited. And for the smallest of us, help is probably not on the way. So now we have to make those efforts. The ones that may not pay off like we hope or expect, but will, I believe, pay off.
We are going to try something big. A telethon, but virtual. All streaming. All live. For 24 continuous hours. We are going to raise money for the businesses and organizations that have been near and dear to us these past ten years. The Streamathon for Pets will raise money for small & independent pet businesses, services and rescues. We will try to raise as much as we can and distribute to as many as we can. We will do so by providing 24-hours of entertainment and contests and things viewers can do right from the quarantined confines of their living rooms. We have partnered with a fiscal sponsor who has set up the Streamathon for Pets Foundation, and all donations will be collected and audited by a nationally recognized non-profit. This also makes every donation tax-deductible, keeps everything transparent and will hopefully lead to more donations.
If you are a pet sitter, a dog trainer, a sole-proprietor trying to get through this, we are going to give it our best shot to try to help you do it. When this is all over, whatever the new normal is, your services and products will still be needed.
If you are in need of a grant, please fill out the form on the website at www.StreamathonforPets.com. If you can sponsor, perform, donate a product, entertain or assist in other ways, there is a form for you, too. Our team is putting out a tremendous effort, but would certainly welcome your participation.
Together, we can endure this. We can be left out when the funds run dry. We can be literally unable to do what we normally do for a living. So what CAN we do? We can innovate, adapt, try. We can make the effort. And maybe it will not turn out like we expect, but as you can see, one never knows what tomorrow may bring. What happened 20 years ago will always be a tragedy, and nothing we did or saw accomplished will ever bring that child back, or ease the pain his family felt and still feels. But that was all we could do. Today, all any of us can do is try. We hope you will join us in this effort, and we hope that when this is all over, we have lessons learned that we can share 20 years from now.
Please visit www.StreamathonForPets.com, and we will 'virtually' see you next Friday, May 1st at 4PM CST!
Yours,
William Rilenge and the Streamathon for Pets team.
