Disabled Texoma Woman to Begin Fundraiser for Internet Tower in Her Neighborhood
A disabled Texoma woman can make a very decent living if she could get internet. Instead, she’s become poor, applied for food stamps, and will soon be without water and electricity. One neighbor will supply her with water, which she will have to haul to her house to flush toilets and water animals. She will be heating her house this winter with firewood and living without basic amenities. This woman doesn’t want to be a tax-payer burden and apply for SSID disability benefits. She has a college education, years of experience behind her, and the ability to make a living via the internet. There is no reason for her to be poor. At this time she’s looking for foster homes for her dogs, because it’s not their fault she can’t feed them.
In the past 13 months she’s been through the gamut of ISPs. Satellite only works in good weather. One cable company won’t supply her with the speed she needs, for which she was paying 170.00 a month; with that ISP, her internet was down two weeks a month from Feb. to May, 2016, and that ISP wouldn’t reimburse her for the time she was down. She couldn’t take on jobs because she couldn’t promise she would have reliable internet. People can’t just tell their employers “I can’t work today. I’ll be back to work when my satellite comes back on.” Or “I’ll be back to work when my ISP pays to fix their equipment.”
For example, from Aug. 2015 to Aug. 2016, she wasn’t able to put more than $110.00 a month into the local economy. The only two local businesses, which profited from that measly amount of money, were the grocery store and the feed store. She managed to feed herself on $60.00 a month and pay for her dog feed at $70.00 a month. Had she been able to work, the amount of money she would have contributed to the local economy would have at least tripled. Frontier can’t keep their internet service up on a steady and stable basis, and has businesses and residents without service or very slow much of the time.
You might ask “Why doesn’t she just move to town where there are more resources?” The answer is that she only became disabled three years ago, and was working up until then. She bought her Texoma property ten years ago. Her property carries NO mortgage, and its taxes are PAID. She can’t afford to, nor should she need to, move.
In the 13 months that she’s been fighting to get stable internet, she’s found that her only alternative is to build her own tower. Her property can support a 65 foot tower. Her neighborhood won’t benefit from that. Children can’t complete their homework and studies adequately, seniors can’t make their appointments or refill prescriptions, and people like her can’t work. This deletion of service also includes very bad or nonexistent cell phone reception.
Her neighborhood needs a 125 foot tower. The most a tower will cost is $2000.00. Not one corporate internet service provider has bothered to build the infrastructure needed to keep the Texoma region up-to-date with technology, nor are they willing to do so now. The Texoma region is using 25 year-old internet technology. She has found a neighbor who will put a tower on his property. She has found three broadband ISPs who can supply internet to that tower at very reasonable rates. She has found an experienced ISP owner who can build a tower.
What she has to do now is begin an insurmountable feat of fundraising in order to get that tower built. She has no money for flyers. She is going hand-write her flyers on paper given to her by a neighbor. She is going to door-knock. She is going to speak to community organizations and leaders. She is going to mount a humongous media publicity campaign. At times she is going to have to drive 22 miles to a public library to perform the email campaign and create a Go Fund Me Page for the neighborhood. She wouldn’t have to drive that far if Frontier would supply her neighborhood with steady and stable internet, because there is a library in her neighborhood. She is eventually going to contact every business and neighborhood in Texomaland with the information they need to do the very same thing.
She is only able to take on this badly needed project, while at the same time she’s only able to afford to eat meagerly and live without utilities, because of the kindness of her neighbors. If you live in the Gordonville and Willis communities and have any resources that can help her campaign, if you want to volunteer your services, if you want to build a tower for your community, or if you have any experience in how to conduct a feasibility study on how much money Texomaland is losing due to negligence and absence of technology, please write to [email protected].
