Last week Plebity awarded its most recent Free Speech Fund grant to Valerie Pelletier. Valerie is a feminist, survivor of the sex industry from age 16-23 years old and was fired from her job at a woman’s shelter in Montreal for her facebook posts about gender ideology. We’re pleased to have been able to offer our support to Valerie. That is the purpose of our Free Speech Fund. See our interview with Valerie Pelletier here.

Plebity is equally pleased to thank Jodi Shaw for her recent and generous donation to our Free Speech Fund which makes our support for individuals like Valerie possible. We’re grateful that Jodi has chosen Plebity and specifically our Fund to allocate a portion of the money she has raised in her recent, ongoing battle with Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Our support for Valerie was possible in no small part thanks to Jodi Shaw and her recent and generous donation to our Free Speech Fund. Jodi’s contribution provides us with the substance behind the promise to come to the aid of those who have been punished for their speech.

In turn, we are committed to putting these funds to use in a way that is compatible with the principles and goals of our Free Speech Fund.

“I am glad to offer a donation to Plebity to help support people that stand up for what they believe in. Plebity is doing important work in the continued fight for free speech,” said Shaw.

The Free Speech fund was founded when Sasha White was fired last August from her job as an assistant literary agent because of expressing her personal opinions outside of work.

Plebity then formed the Free Speech Fund as a way to provide concrete support for others who may have been fired for their speech or forced out of their jobs due to a hostile work environment. For those who have experienced the cancel culture mob first hand we know that it is ferocious and can have a devastating effect on people’s lives.

Jodi’s contribution provides us with the substance behind the promise to come to the aid of those who have been punished for their speech. Mobs that target people for their speech pick off their victims one by one. By banding together as a community of people who support free speech for all, we can stand up to the self-appointed thought police and the Twitter mobs that doxx people and contact employers in the hope of depriving them of a livelihood. 

Jodi Shaw is an equal rights activist who rose to prominence when she blew the whistle on the hostile and discriminatory work environment she encountered at Smith College. This experience led Jodi to begin advocating on behalf of others in similar situations, including by raising awareness and funds in support of embattled individuals. Jodi recently joined Counterweight, a non-partisan, grassroots movement that fights for liberal concepts of social justice, viewpoint diversity and the free exchange of ideas. Jodi, a singer-songwriter with four albums and describes herself as a proud lifelong liberal. Read more about her at www.jodishaw.net

The reality is that not everyone is able to gather a nest egg that would see them through the hard times of sudden unemployment. People are afraid, afraid to speak freely, afraid to lose their jobs. And rightly so, the group-think mob has learned that it has the power to target people’s jobs. Getting people fired has become the go-to strategy of thought control.

We can only stand up to this mob if we join forces and do it together. That is the purpose of the Free Speech Fund. We thank Jodi for standing with us so that we can stand with others who are in need. We give grants to those who have been materially punished for their speech or have been subject to a hostile work environment on the basis of ideology or opinion and are in economic need as a result.  Our first grant went to French feminist Marguerite Stern, in the amount of $1300. We are looking to give similar grants to other recipients. To apply for the Fund, fill out this short form on our site: https://www.plebity.org/free-speech-fund-application. To support Plebity and the Free Speech fund join us on Patreon – here.