I have lived for the last ten weeks with Andy Stephenson’s cancer. And in the most useless way. I couldn’t take it away, couldn’t relieve him of it, couldn’t mind it for a few hours so he could be freed to do the election reform work he so loved.
Andy was one of the most luminous people I have never met, because we never shared room temperature. I read his posts to a discussion board, then exchanged email with him. Later, when he was casting around for access to medical care, we had phone contact, increasingly as his situation became more obviously urgent.
And through the unfolding of our friendship, I understood that this being on the other side of the keyboard or the phone line was remarkable, was a gift walking among us. Sometimes a prickly gift or a demanding one but, all gifts have their peculiar qualities, if only to soften brilliance that laid bare would be blinding for most eyes.
I've heard Andy jubilant and terrified, laughing and sobbing. Playful and petulant. My deepest regret is that I won’t hear him again.
When Andy knew his ill health was serious, I offered to make calls for him. I have made calls for families unable to find resources for over a decade. The public health care system nearly killed my husband, and when we were given a reprieve, I swore I'd work to help anyone to find the care they needed.
I had little real success in finding resources for Andy, except in the sense that we widened the circle of friends who helped us look. One of them struck gold, and was able to get Andy taken on as a patient by a respected doctor at Johns Hopkins. This seemed no less than a miracle to us. There are many cancer patients in the world and no matter their net worth, they are not taken on easily by doctors at Johns Hopkins.
That left only the money. Out of state patients must be prepared to pay the full costs of their surgeries in advance. So, a group of Andy’s friends set out to try to raise the funds needed, armed with only love and hope and a very narrow window in which to come up with the cash before the hospital would turn us away.
That we did indeed raise the $50,000 fee in 11 days, in small donations and in many currencies, is a measure of how beloved Andy was. None of us had the skill to open wallets, per se. This was for Andy, for his dedication to clean elections and his boundless generosity to the movement.
And at this point, the story becomes bifurcated. One fork is the progress of love and hope and generosity that he elicited in the progressive community who shook junk drawers and upended sofa cushions and did without one trip to the mall to send in a donation. They made Andy’s surgery possible. And it is true that when I announced to an incredulous employee at Johns Hopkins that we had raised the money, I’m sure she heard me say, we found Monopoly Money and would she accept that? Paypal and Amazon accounts seem not to be used very often by the Johns Hopkins clientele.
But the other fork of this story is the profound disturbance it created in the Bush right wing. I didn’t understand this until much later. But, the watchers saw our effort, watched the community response and were inspired with what can only be called hatred. Because only such a reaction could account for the vicious attack that was set into motion.
The first weekend of our fundraiser was without incident, but our jubilation at raising $25,000 in only one hundred hours must have goaded the Bush right. Before the week was out, the rumors of fraud and malfeasance crept over the internet. I began to get anonymous email demanding to know Andy’s most personal information. During the second and last weekend of our effort, the contact information I had made available to donors resulted in my email box being spammed with hate mail. I at that point ignored it. It simply never occurred to me that our effort for our friend would become a political death struggle.
I was in no way prepared for what followed. And, although I have no proof, what followed was a concerted political attack on Andy, on our progressive community, and especially on our ability to raise funds for our projects, as well as an attack on Andy’s productive work as an elections reform activist and watchdog.
What followed was a coordinated effort to block Andy’s medical care or his benefit from the medical care we could secure for him. In specific, the opposition had its agents make small donations so they could then call Paypal with allegations of fraud that froze Andy’s account. They also called Paypal, misrepresenting themselves as the hospital, to “verify” that this effort was a scam.
And it got more vicious from there. Due to the frozen funds – exacerbating Johns Hopkins' mislaying of a deposit check -- and the confusion it caused us all, Andy’s surgery date was canceled by Johns Hopkins. It was with great difficulty that we were able to persuade the doctor to be put Andy back into the surgical rotation. That cost him two weeks while he suffered from the most aggressive, invasive form of cancer.
The smears and the rumors were seeded all over the internet. Ill, on hold waiting for his surgery, Andy and the rest of us cast about trying to answer questions that were more often simply calculated accusations meant to discredit us all, meant to make Andy’s health care as difficult as possible.
Andy called me one day, happy because he’d been given a new date. Then called again, because they’d moved the date up. He was terrified, sobbing and I was caught flatfooted. Torn between trying to mind Andy’s care and trying to stop or answer the horrible accusations being sown all over our community, I had very little to offer his terror, dealing with my own.
Beth Ferrari has lost touch with reality and I have to wonder what opednews.com was thinking when the published this rubbish.
My name is Steve aka Anonymousarmy. I post on Kos and on May 2nd I started asking questions about this undocumented fundraiser that was asking that all donations for a cancer operation be sent to Andy’s personal accounts instead of a charitable trust set up in care of Mr. Stephenson. I was told on Kos the answers to my questions were none of my business. I wasn't satisfied with that because Mr. Stephenson has/had a less than stellar record fundraising in the progressive community. At the time Beth Ferrari became his official money collector for the Hopkins surgery Andy and Will Pitt had been "raising to the roof tops" Andy’s need for money for several months and there had been no public disclosure about how much had been raised before Beth claimed 50 thousand dollars was needed for Hopkins.
Ray Minchew, who works for Patty Murray told me to ask Beth my questions directly at an email address he provided. Here is that exchange...
From: s n Reply-To: s n To: "INFO@DOUGZILLA.COM" Date: May 3, 2005 4:56 PM
Subject: Andy Stephenson
Could you please point me in the direction of proof that Andy needs 50
thousand dollars for Johns Hopkins.
I was given this email address assured proof would be provided.
Thank you in advance.
She replied...
Quote:
From: Elizabeth Ferrari To: s n Date: May 3, 2005 5:06 PM
Subject: Re: Andy Stephenson
Hi there,
I don't respond to anonymous emails. Please don't
email me again until you have an identity I can verify
as I'm blocking this one.
Frankly, I have my hands full at the moment. If Mike
Malloy, Will Pitt and Thom Hartmann's word aren't good
enough for you, I doubt I can help you.
Elizabeth Ferrari
1445 48th Avenue 1
San Francisco CA 94122
***-***-****
Wow. As you can see she wasn't very accommodating. She never even gave me a chance to tell her who I was before blocking my email address. Had Ray told me I needed to give my name, address, and phone number before a question would be answered I would have provided it but Beth’s reaction made it clear she wasn't interested in questions.
In this op-ed she claims I asked for 'the most private of medical information" but as you can see that is hardly the case.
After the email exchange with Beth I, unlike any other "reporter” that has covered this story thus far, actually started to check out Andy and Beth’s stories. I called Hopkins trying to find out how much a whipple surgery cost and how much money was required up front to perform the procedure. To my dismay I was told that ALL out of state, uninsured patients were required to pay $50 thousand and no more than 50% up front.
My dismay because Beth had spent the better part of a week patting herself on the back saying she had fought tooth and nail to get the price down to the bargain basement price of $50k and she claimed Hopkins was demanding ALL the money upfront because he had no insurance.
What would any concerned lefty do at this point considering this story was now circulating the entire lefty blogisphere and even being repeated on nationally syndicated radio shows?
If the fundraisers were lying about this, what else were they lying about?
On May 10 Beth claimed Hopkins had cancelled the surgery because they couldn't find certified cashiers checks supposedly lost in the mail room but signed for.
After this I called Johns Hopkins Oncology Department to see if they had ever heard of Andy Stephenson. To my absolute amazement the nice woman that answered the phone told me it was a scam. Wow I thought. So I posted what I had been told on Democratic Underground along with the phone number for others to confirm on their own. SEVERAL others did.
None of this can be disputed. There are at least three independent verifications of this information but even still Beth and the money collectors went into a frenzy calling me and the others liars and cited HIPAA privacy laws as proof.
The problem with that however is HIPAA laws only apply to patients.
The important part of this however is Beth's claim that Hopkins incompetence was to blame for the cancellation. This claim was later backed up by Andy himself.
Fast forward to this fantasy piece posted by Beth and you can see that she is now saying that PayPal was contacted by people claiming to be employees of Hopkins to say the fundraiser was a fraud and these calls are what prompted PayPal to freeze life saving funds which in turn made Hopkins cancel the surgery.
Night and day wouldn't you say? Beth goes even further to say the people that did this are responsible for Andy's death.
Why the 180? What possible reason could Beth have for changing her story and Andy's story so drastically? It is clear she was lying during one of these versions of reality but which one? If it was the original version why was Andy lying as well?
Beth, not to be out done by her own lies adds several more whoppers with cheese hopping this lie gets lost among the other heinous acts she claims were committed against Andy. The problem is she hasn't offered A SINGLE SHREAD OF EVIDENCE to back up ANY of her story.
If the original story was legit Beth should be helping Andy's next of kin sue Hopkins and Paypal for MILLIONS of dollars as a 15 day delay could have proved fatal.
If the new version is the truth why am I, Beth’s boogey man, not in jail, not sued for everything I own, and not taken offline by my isp like she threaten to have done to me.
It is safe to say Beth Ferrari can't verify any of this op-ed nor can she verify how much money Andy collected before his apparent death.
She also can't prove there was ever a may 10th surgery or that Andy had been diagnosed with Cancer when she and others were collecting money, with his help, on those grounds.
Instead of proving anything she spent several hours creating this fairy tale about evil freepers.
It is obvious to those of us that have been paying attention Beth is desperate to obfuscate the truth because it is damning indeed. Sshe thinks it is always easy to vilify the right wing and has chosen to try and scapegoat them instead of fess up.
Unfortunately for her many lefties from DU and other progressive sites realize the damage she and Andy have done and we aren't letting it go unchecked.
OpedNews.com needs to remove this fiction and seriously consider legal action against Ms Ferrari for willfully putting the reputation of this site at risk by submitting a story she knew to be a total fabrication.
But I know that’s silly. The real blame for this appearing here belongs to the editors of this website for not checking a single claim made in the piece.
What a totally shambolic job the editors here have done and the ridicule from all side is sure to follow.
Steve
by
AnonymousArmy (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Thursday, July 14, 2005 at 10:47:19 PM
Well, anonymousarmy, it IS interesting to hear your side. It would be more credible on your part if you did not hide behind an alias.
Before you go attacking OpEdNews.com, you might want to note that this article was published as an op-ed-- an opinion piece, not a news story.
I could get into details, but prefer not to, though the parts about threats and harrassment are disturbing. The one thing I may do is change the title. I may have blamed right wingnuts for actions by lefties. Aristotle was right about extremes.
by
Rob Kall (807 articles, 3921 quicklinks, 332 diaries, 1702 comments)
on Thursday, July 14, 2005 at 11:15:56 PM
However I must not have made myself clear in my post. I, and others asking questions are the ones who have received the threats not Beth, Andy, Will Pitt, or Ben Burch.. I have had two so called reporters try and find out personal information about me instead of trying to verify the claims the fundraisers presented on too many progressive websites to mention.
And to top it off BOTH reporters passed the information they were able to obtain over to Stephenson’s supporters to use to try and intimidate me and stop the questions.
So when I see ANOTHER site I had respected post a story from one of the fundraisers and it contains only lies, distortions, manipulations, a contempt for the reader understand I'm not very happy.
None of these people feel they owe anyone any kind of accounting for their actions during the fundraiser or after it. Nobody will ever know how much money was raised even if Beth lies and says she is registering the fundraiser. The checks have long since been cashed.
If anyone thinks it is abhorrent for a progressive to work with a conservative to expose lies then you must also find people like John Kerry abhorrent and you must not want to ever get to the bottom of Bush’s lies because it’s not going to happen without cons helping out. I guess when I put it like that eh? It’s just hard to take for some when we use conservatives to stop the liars on our side instead of theirs. Some even think its ok to have people among us that will bring shame on the community. Beth and her “Andy’s Angles” have pissed all over progressive sites with the hypocritical fundraising yet they pretend it was only a Democraticunderground group hug.
Also they can spare me the "attack a sic man" sympathy bullsh*t. If anyone cared about Andy's mental condition they would have posted the proof people sought right away if not before they started. Beth Ferrari says they didn’t have time to set the fundraiser up legitimately but this is also a lie. Will Pitt was posting on Truth Out and Smirking Chimp in February that six figures would be needed for Andy’s medical bills and he asked everyone to dig deep. So had anyone involved cared about Andy they would have insulated him from criticism by doing things right. Instead they attacked viscously anyone that asked a question.
Anywhere.
By morning you will see what I am talking about on your blog. All of that assumes that this is all on the up and up and innocent mistakes were made. However when you read something like the above and know from first hand experience it is all lies you wonder what the hell is going on. And many of us do.
It's easy to call scamdy.com a right wing site if you aren't prepared to look at the facts but they put up a letter 7 days before sending it to the fbi asking any of the fundraisers to answer the questions so they wouldn't have to send it. Why on earth would they offer the fundraisers that “out” if this was a rightwing hit job?
Lefties wanted answers to questions and they weren’t getting any help from there own so they got help from conservatives who were also starting to ask questions but hadn't been feed the “Andy hero for democracy” line 24/7 for 4 months. It is that simple.
I'm going to end with a couple of love notes I've received and I challenge Beth to do the same since she claims to have received hate mail too. Thank you for your time and leave you to administer your site as you see fit.
Steve
From: Eric John Anderson To: xxx@gmail.com
Date: Jul 9, 2005 9:25 PM
Subject: Scamdy -- i support you 100%
I lied, so youd' read it.
You have no shame. Fuck you , your kids, your dog and your mom, and your goddamned grand kids if you have any.
You are worthy of hate. May you contract some horrible random disease other than your mental diseases.
fuck off and die please
Siegfried Kemper To: xxx@gmail.com
Date: 10 Jun 2005 06:56:56 -0000
Subject: A warning.
They have your address and plan to pay you a visit.
by
AnonymousArmy (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 2 comments)
on Friday, July 15, 2005 at 1:47:36 AM
I could get into details, also, but I won't. I absolutely agree with you about extremes. While I had long watched the extremes on the right, I had never had an occasion to see them on the left.
What I learned from this fiasco, is, there is no difference. The search for truth is just as reviled on the left, as it is on the right. If Malloy, and Pitt, and Hartman say it's so, it must be so. And if the President says it's so, it must be so.
I can think of few times in my life when I have been so disheartened and disgusted by my own party members.
When the DCCC called for a check the other day, I told them I could not give, and why; until the ache in my heart disappears, my wallet is closed.
by
michala jefferson (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Friday, July 15, 2005 at 2:32:40 AM
Your right the religous right will destroy freedom
It is sad to see the religous right attack a dying man. But remember Europe and the Dark Ages When religous leaders and monarcies ruled Europe with a Iron Fist.
Where torture and murder by the religous right fascists was an every day occurance.
That is why it is called the Dark Ages.
That is why many immigrated to America to escape the Religous rights dogma and fascists powers.
That is why we have a constitution seperating church and state.
Brain Dead George Bush has unleased this monster in America. These Religous Right Fanatics will use every dirty trick in the book to justify their
taking contorl of the American people.
The Evangilicals will murder, lie, torture and corrput a govenment to achieve their demented views and force their beliefs on the American people.
LIke one Evangilical told me when we were discussing freedom, Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
"There is no Constitution or Bill of Rights in the Ten Commnadments."
This is the danger in America
Howard
by
Howard Boyer (6 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 1 comments)
on Friday, July 15, 2005 at 8:46:56 AM
Few people have had such a positive impact on my life as Andy did, though I only knew him a few years and we met only once. What a tall shadow his absence has cast in my life, such that I will probably always feel it. My heart often goes out to Ted and their extended family, because I do know what a gaping, ever-weeping wound is created when someone so cherished is gone.
A particular thought nagged me throughout events surrounding Andy's death. In highly competitive undertakings, the better side of being human rings loudest and most true when acknowledging quality in the opposition. It is perfectly sad, that Andy was denied such acknowledgement. What a small concession that should have been for decent, self-respecting people. None of Andy’s opponents, that I’m aware of, even offered a token appreciation for Andy’s effect of motivating people from all sides to work harder and better at rebuilding a broken system.
The relentless cruelty of petty, mindless robots toward Andy and the din of white noise they created only obscured truths to everyone's detriment. A speed bump, Andy called it. Chaos was the only goal and it was achieved.
Andy had extraordinary willpower and inner clarity. There is no doubt in my heart’s mind that Andy would have survived his cancer without his opponents’ interference. Hopefully, someone has the intent, means and forbearance to legally make them feel the personal and undeserved agonies they perpetrated on Andy and those close to him.
I can only hope fewer people than it seems were fooled by the desperate acts of this group of people who cannot stand in the face of universally beneficial truths and the light of day. I fervently believe they eventually will fail by their own efforts, though innocents will be unnecessarily dragged down with them. It’s a dubious aspect of human behavior, that we haven’t learned from history how co-exist better by now. I miss those conversations with Andy, too.
If I believed in an afterlife of any sort, I would pray often for Andy and Ted. But I don’t and as it is, I can only be thankful I was privileged to know Andy. When someone speaks against him and those things he believed in, it’s immediately apparent what they are and are not and I know how to proceed with my support. The opposite direction may be insufficient, but it’s a good start.
To Andy’s most vocal and faithful supporters, thank you all. I haven’t been so well myself until recently, and though it may be about all I can do, I am constantly pointing people your way and will continue to.
by
straw_citizen (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 1:30:55 PM
7 comments
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