There will *always* be more good

This morning, I woke just past 5:30am and planned to go back to sleep for an hour, but I picked up my phone to have a look at Twitter instead (this is nearly always a mistake).

Sadly, what I found was that not even an hour earlier, my lower-tier colleague had tweeted this:

This is the second time that St. Catharines City Councillor Karrie Porter’s home has been vandalized in the middle of the night.

The first time, it was graffiti sprayed all over the side of her house.

This time, it’s a rock through her front window.

Both times were following anti-vax protests and Karrie calling out racism, anti-semitism, and other bigotry on social media.

Events like this are frightening. It is because of events like this that at least three women politicians in St. Catharines now have cameras set up at their homes.

Fortunately, no one was hit by that rock. Fortunately, it didn’t do more physical damage than break a window.

Here’s what it did do, though…

It prompted me to immediately post a fundraiser to pay for the damage, so that Karrie and her husband and children don’t have to pay for this twice. They’re already paying emotionally. They shouldn’t have to pay financially too. They shouldn’t have to make a claim against their home insurance and potentially see their premium increase (thereby, paying for the damage to some extent).

It prompted a few dozen community members to make donations to the fundraiser.

The fundraiser was posted at 6:56am, and by 8:47am on a Sunday morning, we’d surpassed the $2,000 goal.

We showed Karrie and her family that we have their backs.

We sent a message to the people who engage in this behaviour that there is far more support for Karrie and the excellent work she’s doing on St. Catharines City Council than there is of this kind of disgusting behaviour that’s directed at her and other women politicians.

There will always be more good in this community. Of that, I’m certain.