Sitting on the sidelines during a football game and watching it happen, then stepping in at the 2-minute warning and scoring a 3-point field goal does not make you the reason your team won when the final score is 59-10. I’m sure the team that played all 4 quarters would appreciate getting ‘credit’ for the other 56 points. I am addressing the reasons I got blocked from the Stars page in this post. The people who REALLY need to read it are the people who blocked me and I’m hoping they will, but it probably won’t make any difference. This is the only way I have of addressing them and I know they watch this page carefully because they copy our posts all the time and claim them as their original work or ideas. If you choose not to read it, simply keep scrolling. I have said it many times before and I will repeat it again: NONE of what we do on this page is about me, the Oakaholics, or ANY one person. We are ALL volunteers and ALL of us matter. To attack me means you attack the Oakaholics, and that is unacceptable. I have never denounced the good works that ANY organization does. I don’t care about credit for what we do. What I DO care about is when someone who had absolutely nothing to do with the successes this group or any other group has had decides that THEY are the ones who accomplished it and refuse to acknowledge how much work OTHER people contributed to ‘their’ successes. In February of this year, I was making arrangements to meet one of the administrators of the page that blocked me last night, as he traveled through Fargo on his way to Minot. That night, the Star page asked people to share their favorite star and say what the star meant to them. I posted the Love from Fargo star (pictured in the comments) and briefly told ‘my story’ – that Nel Summers had painted it for me and it meant a lot to me. The reason that star meant so much to me is because Nel painted it as a ‘thank you’ for the help I provided to Minot during the 2011 Coke contest for Oak Park. I was touched that someone would do that for me and I have had a special place in my heart for the Stars ever since. Every chance I got, I tried to Pay it Forward. I did so by nominating Minot in contests, voting in and promoting them, donating so Nel could go to New York with the Stars, donating to help Minot MAKE stars, sharing the Stars story (check my timeline on this page or the one on my sister page - kxfba - and you’ll see that we even tried to help them build up THEIR pages and promote THEIR Pay it Forward). I did ALL of these things anonymously, but these people still accuse me of wanting to take ‘credit’ for things THEY are doing! I assure you, I did none of these things for ME! Shortly after posting the Fargo Star, my post was removed from the Star page and I was blocked from the page with no explanation whatsoever. Inquiries sent to the page as to why it was removed went unanswered. I did not know at the time that that page was administered by the same person who has me blocked from Recovery Warehouse’s page and what used to be the Oak Park Coca Cola voting page (*see footnote about why THIS is at the end of this post). That SAME evening, I was blocked from the Joplin Contest Voters page and the Joplin Star page – all with no explanation. The person I was to meet in Fargo in February has not spoken to me since. This week, the Stars people gave a ‘shout out’ to one and only one person for their help in this year’s Coke Contest, claiming it was because of him that the contest was brought to everyone’s attention. This is despite the fact that MANY people were in the Alliance for Moore from Day One of this year’s contest. This is the person I was supposed to meet in Fargo. This is the person who allowed Sabrina to run the Vote for Moore and Joplin Contest Voters pages exclusively during this year’s contest, but removed the page shortly after the contest ended and went on the Stars pages and thanked everyone there for voting. (I believe the Stars pages posted the contest a total of 4 times during the course of the contest, but I can’t check because ALL of those pages have also disappeared from facebook.) Last night, the Stars page asked people if they remembered to vote in the contest they are currently in. (I didn’t dare post that contest here after what happened with the Stars’ Photo Contest for the television for the Sipmas, but I have been voting in that contest.) My comment last night was simple: “Yup…wish there was a leaderboard”. That is all I wrote. This morning, I found that my comment had been deleted, along with a comment I had posed a couple days ago about whether or not it was still possible to purchase Stars for the Pay it Forward to Moore, OK. That comment was also deleted and I was subsequently banned from the page. I’m not sure what was so offensive about these comments that led to me being blocked . It should be obvious to anyone that follows this page (or sees our profile picture) that we are still trying to help Moore (and Joplin and Minot). My sadness over these continued actions is NOT because of the impact it has on ME! My sadness is because of the impact these people’s actions have on all of us and our ability to Pay it Forward. Minot, Joplin, Moore and THOUSANDS of people helped Veterans Memorial Park win the $100,000 Coke grant. By trying to hurt and discredit me and the Oakaholics, these people are losing sight of the fact that they are also hurting Joplin, Minot, Moore, and any other community we try to help. THEY ARE HURTING JOPLIN - because they refused to help spread the word to vote for Joplin High School in the Celebrate My Drive contest which could have resulted in a $25,000 grant. ALL Joplin pages dedicated to helping Joplin through facebook contests have been deleted from facebook. This leaves Sabrina the task of trying to REBUILD the pages SHE had already built up. THEY ARE HURTING MINOT – because they have asked me to STOP nominating Minot in contests and all of the voting pages dedicated to voting for Minot have been removed from facebook. That leaves this page and my sister pages to help Minot in voting contests. To be honest, it’s exhausting trying to keep up with everything at times, but I’m not going to give up on Minot if I can help it! THEY ARE HURTING MOORE – because some of these people deliberately voted for Roosevelt Park in Minot in this year’s Coke contest to make it look as if we were secretly voting for our own park while publicly promoting Veterans Memorial Park. (We stayed silent about this during the contest so the focus could remain on voting, but we were quite aware it was happening and monitored it carefully.) Who knows how many other contests they are doing this in? They are also hurting Moore because the page dedicated to voting in contests for Moore has been removed from facebook and the 1200 people on the Vote 4 Moore page who sincerely wanted to help Moore have no idea what happened. Ironically, these same people are wondering where all their voters are and have publicly stated, “We need more voters”. THIS is where they didn’t just hurt US, but ultimately hurt THEMSELVES. By removing all of the Joplin, Minot, and Moore voting pages, they were left with just TWO groups supporting them – the Oakaholics and Hope & Help Through Caring Hands & Hearts (Sabrina’s page). Had they NOT removed the other pages, they could have reached far more people. Now that I have been blocked from their page, that leaves them ONE page besides their own to promote voting for them. Since Sabrina is the person who was removed/blocked from Joplin Contest Voters and Vote 4 Moore after dedicating her summer to helping build up those pages, good luck with THAT! (And Then There Were None…?) Just as our ‘ripple effect’ of Paying it Forward has had consequences far beyond anything we could ever have imagined 2 years ago, their actions have also created a ripple. If I publicly stated that NONE of what we do here would have been possible without these two people, that would be a lie and would be discrediting all of the people who have helped us over the past 2 years and I’m not willing to do that. It is, however, what they want me to publicly declare. They want me to say THEIR names so you can all publicly acknowledge them as heroes for all the help THEY have provided, while at the same time admitting that nothing I have done matters at all. The thing is, nothing I have done DOES matter because it’s what all of YOU have done that DOES! You ALL deserve the credit for what has been accomplished. You do NOT deserve, any more than I do, what these people are attempting to do, nor the consequences their actions are having on Joplin, Minot, and Moore. By continuing to insist that THEY are the reason we have met with success, they are turning people AWAY from helping! They are discrediting the work that all of YOU are doing to Pay it Forward. We do not want people to believe that we do any of this for any personal recognition. We do it because we want to HELP and it’s the only way we’ve been able to do that from such remote locations. Ive been told by these people that I need to put any negative feelings I might have about them aside and to keep my focus on what really matters - helping Minot. Sadly, they arent extending the same courtesy to me. I WILL keep helping Minot (and Joplin and Moore) because it IS the right thing to do. My HOPE is that they will some day extend the same courtesy to me, but I wont be holding my breath. *Footnote: WHY are these people so angry with me? This is my best guess: Many of you know that the whole idea for “Adopting” Ramstad was because, when I received my “I Helped Rebuild Minot” t-shirt in 2011, I found out the colors of the shirt were actually Discovery’s school colors! I took that as a sign and, 9 months later, what started as a simple project, resulted in a donation to Minot of more than $4400 along with presentations that had no monetary value but meant the world to our students and staff and Ramstad’s students and staff. Unfortunately, during the course of the fundraiser there was a misunderstanding of WHEN we would be taking the group photo of our staff and students wearing their shirts and presenting that as a ‘thank you’ to all of the groups who helped us Pay it Forward. What was supposed to occur shortly after Christmas did not happen until April of that school year. It was for a very GOOD reason – the kids did a ‘Flash Mob’, made a scrapbook, decorated ceiling tiles to present to Ramstad, and the choir needed to prepare and sing Bridge Over Troubled Water. All of those things took time and were recorded on a DVD. This was presented to Ramstad. In the interim, this page and one of my others were attacked by someone who believed WE owed Minot a ‘thank you’ that we never delivered. I was also attacked for not promoting a contest on my pages for the Recovery Warehouse. I NOMINATED Recovery Warehouse for a Wonder Bread grant and privately told RW about it and they put the information on their web site. The person who attacked me did not understand that we do not share some things publicly because we know our pages are watched. I was told that, because we never sent a ‘thank you’ to Minot, I had burned the bridges I would need some day. I attempted to explain the delay and even told these people that the ‘thank you’ would be sent (it eventually was). HOW is the Discovery Project connected to the current problems? Funny thing is, in order for the Discovery project to work, I needed contact people IN Minot and the person I was working with was the SAME person who has now blocked me from EVERY page she is associated with. My guess is, their problem with me DOES have to do with the thank you. It was after the misunderstanding over that project that everything I did became tainted and no matter what I have done or tried to do since then has made a bit of difference in changing things.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 23:26:30 +0000
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