Anyone currently living in (and possibly soon to leave forever) the northeastern United States has been dealing with the winter onslaught since late January. By the time Winter Storm Juno rolled through, additional storms, polar vortices, and other frighteningly-termed weather phenomena were setting their sights on New York and New England. This is all especially troublesome for “the T,” Boston’s outdated public transit system operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).
With constant weather-related delays for the past two weeks, things won’t be improving anytime soon. That’s why Janssen McCormick created the “Modernizing Boston’s Transit” GoFundMe campaign:
If the internet can help one working class guy in Detroit who struggles every day to get to work surely we can help the hundreds of thousands of working class people in Boston who rely on the decrepit MBTA to get them to work, school, doctors appointments or the grocery store.
Seems simple enough, right?
All we’re asking for is 30 billion dollars (GoFundMe limited this to 300 million dollars though).
I’m not sure what scares me more about this last bit. It’s a tie between (a) the asking price, (b) how the asking price was determined, and (c) why GoFundMe’s maximum limit is so f*cking high.
However, the donor rewards as described are quite enticing — even if it’s all a part of an elaborate joke. For example, there’s the laughable first award for a $50 donation:
$50: a homeless man will scream your name on an Orange line car for 45 minutes during rush hour.
I say “laughable” because Boston’s resident homeless population does this free of charge on a daily basis — rush hour or not. Otherwise, additional rewards include $200 for being allowed to “forcibly remove backpacks from passengers” to make room, $130 million for your own Legoland, and $30 billion for a “transit system barely adequate for the needs of a 21st century global city.”
As of this writing, only $10 have been donated to the cause.
(Via GoFundMe)