🧾 Receipts: How This Work Actually Survives
A honest conversation about who funds The North Star—and why I’m asking you to stand with us
Family,
I want to ask you something straight, with no marketing spin and no cute slogans.
Do you believe the kind of work we’re doing here should exist in the world?
I’m talking about the hard, uncomfortable stories. The detailed breakdowns of genocide in Gaza. The receipts on police violence and political corruption. The long reports that make powerful people furious and give ordinary people language and courage for what they already feel in their bones.
Because this little corner of the internet doesn’t exist by accident. It exists because a small group of people decided: No, they will not have a monopoly on the truth.
It exists because some of you looked at your budget, looked at your conscience, and said, “I can carry a little piece of this.”
If you believe this work should exist, I’m asking you today, from the heart, to click here to become a member.
Why I’m Asking You Directly
We are not funded by corporations. We are not backed by billionaires. No political party underwrites what I write here. There is no secret foundation quietly paying the bills while I roar about justice.
It’s just us.
It’s the single mom who tells me, “Shaun, I can only do a few dollars a month, but I need this work to be here.”
It’s the college student who messages from a tiny dorm room, reading about Gaza on a cracked phone.
It’s the brother in prison sharing printouts of these articles.
It’s the kid in high school who says, “I didn’t know you were allowed to talk this honest.”
I keep the reporting free to the world on purpose. I know there are readers in Gaza. I know there are readers in refugee camps. I know there are readers who are choosing between groceries and medicine and will never be able to pay for this.
So when I ask you to become a paid member, I’m not just asking you to pay for you.
I’m asking you to help pay for them.
If you’re in a position to do that, I’m asking you to click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member.
What Your Membership Actually Does
Let me be clear about what you’re funding.
You’re funding time. Time to read the documents nobody else will read. Time to sit with survivors and sources and experts. Time to write 3,000 words carefully instead of 300 words recklessly.
You’re funding fearless coverage that doesn’t have to tiptoe around advertisers or party lines. I want the freedom to say, “This is genocide,” when it is genocide. I want the freedom to call something treachery when it is treachery. I want the freedom to name names, show receipts, and not have somebody in a boardroom tell me to tone it down because it might hurt a partnership.
You’re funding infrastructure – the boring stuff nobody posts about. Servers. Editors. Tools. The actual skeleton that holds this work up so it doesn’t collapse the moment there’s a storm.
And you’re funding hope – for people who write me and say, “I thought I was losing my mind until I read your breakdown and realized I wasn’t alone.”
Why It Matters Right Now
We are living through one of the darkest, most revealing moments of our lifetimes.
Governments are openly committing atrocities on livestream. International law is being tested in ways our grandparents never saw. Social media platforms are throttling, censoring, or burying some of the most important stories in the world.
In a moment like this, you either have independent spaces that tell the truth without flinching, or you have whatever the algorithm and the advertisers decide you’re allowed to see.
I refuse to let the people of Gaza, Sudan, Congo, or our own neighborhoods become invisible because it’s inconvenient to talk about them.
But refusal is not a business model.
Refusal needs backup.
If you’ve ever finished one of these pieces and felt your heart pounding, if you’ve ever texted one to a friend and said, “Read this right now,” I’m asking you to match that feeling with a concrete step.
Take one minute. Open the link. Choose an amount that fits your life.
Click here to become a member.
It’s not charity. It’s a decision about what kind of world you want to live in, and what kind of voices you want to see survive in that world.
A Personal Promise
I can’t promise you comfort here. I can’t promise you feel-good spin or easy answers.
What I can promise you is honesty. I can promise you that I will keep bringing you the stories that are being buried. I will keep giving you language, receipts, context, and moral clarity so you can talk to your family, your church, your mosque, your group chat, your coworkers, and say, “Here’s what’s really going on.”
I will keep this work free for anyone who needs it. And I will keep telling the truth until they take the keyboard out of my hands.
But for that to happen, I need a community of people who say, “I’ve got your back.”
If that’s you, I’m asking you one more time:
Click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member.
Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun
