Thank you for being a vital part of this amazing, challenging, inspiring and gratifying ride.

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Thank you for being a vital part of this amazing, challenging, inspiring and gratifying ride. At its peak, OEN had 830,000+ unique visitors in its busiest month. We've evoked reactions from Senators, Congresspeople and activist organizations, and we were given the Pillar Award for supporting whistleblowers. We've had readers from 200+ nations and principalities and writers, from scores of countries, publishing over 100,000 articles.

Founding and evolving OpEdNews inspired me to be fascinated with bottom-up thinking. Not that everything I did at OEN was bottom-up, but one of the best bottom-up things about OEN was the volunteer team. OEN wouldn't and couldn't exist without them. I have so much gratitude for the profound role they've had on OEN and me. These are really special people, an important part of the OEN family. Current members of the active team include Meryl Ann Butler, Scott Baker, Joan Brunwasser, Marta Steele, Egberto Willies, Mike Rivage-Seul, Jackie Dial and Lance Cepiela. Thank you all!

I've made great friendships here and I know that many of our regular readers have connected with each other, forming long lasting, meaningful relationships. Back when I ran my Winter Brain Conference, one couple came to me and told me they'd conceived their child at the conference! That story stuck with me. I don't know if any babies or marriages have been conceived with the aid of OEN, but I know we have helped many causes to be birthed and grown.

It hasn't been all rosy. My role at OEN helped me to learn a lot about narcissists and psychopaths and how to deal with them. (Tip: basically, don't give them any attention and just cut them out of your life.) Figure if they make up 2% of the population, then, OEN has seen thousands of them.

It's gratifying that a huge number of people have told me that OpEdNews makes a difference. I think the magic ingredients are to be open to allowing different perspectives and points of view. There aren't many places on either side of the political divide that do so.

Yesterday I posted an article by Glenn Greenwald, New Law Sought by Brazil's Lula to Ban and Punish "Fake News and Disinformation" Threatens the Free Internet Everywhere This article makes it clear that the same threat to censor, even imprison voices with different narratives than the powers that be is well under way in the US. That makes alternative news sites like OEN even more important than ever. It also makes OEN--and me--more vulnerable than ever.

In these severely divided times, I believe OpEdNews offers a unique forum for conversations that are not possible elsewhere, where people can civilly disagree (well, we do our best to personally encourage and monitor civility.) That openness to diverse opinions has cost us many readers who do not tolerate such diverse conversation.

Over the years, many fellow progressive publishers have shut down. To prevent that from happening to OpEdNews I am reaching out to you to help continue to make OpEdNews viable.

In the past eight months I've not seen a single penny from OEN, for my time and work, and in some months I've had to put my own money into the till to make necessary payments for expenses.

In recent years Google has been brutal with OEN, first removing us from their list of approved media sites, then changing their algorithms so we went from the top of search page results to unfindable when our most important keywords (liberal opinion, progressive opinion, liberal news, progressive news) were keyed in.

We do not have a pay wall, since we believe in open and energetic discussion and dissemination of ideas to people of any economic background. As a result, we have strongly depended on ad revenues so that we could continue to offer free memberships. Then Google began demonetizing pages on the site--not just articles, but even the front page. This is a soft form of censorship. The result has been that our Google ad revenues have dropped to less than 10% of what we used to count on.

Now, with a worldwide trend toward punishing fake news sites--which are often simply news sites that challenge the official, top-down, authoritarian narrative--OEN is needed more than ever, as a showcase for different viewpoints.

It is a meaningful synchronicity that just as OEN turns 20, our longtime OEN friend, Dennis Kucinich has announced that on this same day, he's started The Dennis Kucinich Report on Substack. What a great birthday!

I love this work, and the idea of promoting freer speech, and a platform for progressive politics. I can live without taking pay from OpEdNews, but I do need a solid financial base in order to pay OEN's expenses.

In the past, we've seen donations of $500-$10,000, which have gone a long way toward keeping OpEdNews a vibrant alternative news source. We need that kind of a response now, as well as smaller donations. Please take advantage of the tax deductible status of your donations--even premium memberships can be tax deductible if you report income as a writer, political operative or activist.

Can you help keep the voice of OpEdNews and our members strong?

We are happy to accept donations here via Actblue, credit card or check.

Please consider purchasing a premium membership here

Thanks so much for your consideration. Let's continue our progressive movement forward together.

Rob Kall

I'm hoping that you'll find it possible to make a tax deductible donation or to purchase a premium membership.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

He is the co-founder of the Arc of Justice Alliance a platform designed to help organizations and individuals working for justice and a better world to discover each other and share resources and strategies, with the hopes that this will build their power.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Join the conversation:

On facebook at Rob Kall's Bottom-up The Connection Revolution

and at Google Groups listserve Bottom-up Top-down conversation