Ask me about Christmas shopping, and I’ll happily direct your attention over to Buy Nothing Day, Buy Nothing Christmas, and Bill McKibben’s Hundred Dollar Holiday. This year, though, I’m encouraging everyone I know to spend a ton…on a house. A house on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota: the Pretty Bird Woman House.
From their website:
Pretty Bird Woman House, a domestic violence and rape shelter on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, has no house. Arsonists destroyed it…Without a place to go, women–and their children–will stay with men who hit them. Rape victims will remain in the same apartment complex as their rapists. You cannot flee without a safe destination. Right now there is no sanctuary.
As Reverend Billy says in the new and completely awesome documentary What Would Jesus Buy?: “This Christmas, spend half as much as last year, and give twice as much.”
Here’s your chance. Go read more of the PBWH story. Then give and give big. Maybe even scale back your usual Christmas spending, so you can give to the women and children in western South Dakota who need your help so much. Then help spread the word.
