Neighbors need your help

You might have heard Monday about the reporter on KTVA who dropped an f-bomb on air and quit her job to focus on fighting for a change in marijuana policy.

Charlo Greene quit during Sunday 10 p.m. newscast, and by Monday morning had raised $2,994 on the crowdfunding website indiegogo to help pay for her fight to reform marijuana laws.

There is a lot to talk about here, from the ethics of Greene knowingly reporting on a story in which she was intimately involved, to the propriety of swearing on a newscast, to the suitability of Greene as a spokeswoman for this movement.

We could also talk about the laws she questions and whether they make sense in Alaska and in the United States, whether they are applied fairly and whether they achieve their purported goals of fighting drug addiction.

We will not do any of that here.

Instead, we would like to point you to a pair of different crowdfunding efforts, that of Shawn Stiles and Kennedy Mae Robinson, on the site gofundme.com.

Stiles, a Houston firefighter, is seeking less money than Green — $3,000 rather than $5,000 — but even though he’s been raising money for almost two weeks, he is a lot further from his goal. As of Monday morning, he had raised just $530 to help restart his life after losing everything he had in a fire Sept. 11.

Kennedy Mae Robinson, whose story we also recently told in our pages, needs to move with her family to California to be close enough to a hospital when and if a donor heart becomes available for her. That campaign has raised $13,153 of its stated $15,000 goal.

We find the tragedy of a man who regularly saves his neighbors from fire losing his home to one very compelling. We were also deeply moved that a family of lifelong Alaskans would have to pull up stakes and move in order that their daughter could have a chance at living with a whole heart, rather than half of one.

Still, just like we won’t express here an opinion on marijuana laws — at least not yet, anyway — we also don’t want to tell you how to spend your money.

We will, however, plant a seed in your mind — if you liked what Greene had to say and are intending to donate to her campaign, maybe think about breaking off a chunk of that cash for Stiles and another one for Kennedy Mae.

They sure could use your help.