We realize of course that we have been stretching it here. Supporters have backed us through the recent donation drive, as well as giving generous support to Sage Gerard and his sterling efforts with Zen Men.

And yet again we have a moral imperative to seek your support again, should you be inclined.

It was my desire for some time to help Dean Esmay with his dental work. With the expense of two children, including special needs, a life consumed by activism when he is not working his job, and almost squat in terms of dental coverage, his health in that area has suffered.

I want to ask this community to help him, please. I will be donating the personal funds that I can, but I don’t have enough to take care of it on my own. I don’t even have enough to do what I am going to do, but I am going to do it anyway.

Fact is, Dean deserves this. He deserves more, actually, but we hope to make this small thing happen for him.

He works hard on behalf of people he does not and never will know, and I am hoping that our community will see this as an opportunity to help one of our own when it counts.

A message from Dean’s wife, Gi, follows the video. Thanks to all in advance for having the back of a man who has yours. PE









It is never comfortable to reach out for help. And it is even more awkward when being angry, but I just can’t do this without getting something off my chest first. John Hembling’s attempt to use my husband as a human shield to distract from his own perfidy will not work. I have three things to say to John, thank you very much for the $100CAN. Thank you for the “Fix your tooth, motherfucker” in the subject line of the donation email, and go fuck yourself.

As for the charge that Paul doesn’t care about men in general and the people who work for him in particular: total bullshit. I support the work that Dean does at AVfM because I know how much it means to him and I recognize how needed it is. But if I believed that Paul didn’t give a shit I wouldn’t have volunteered my time and energy to help organize and run ICMI14, I wouldn’t be on the planning committee for ICMI15 and I certainly wouldn’t have traveled to Toronto for the Nathanson/Young talk.

I was Agent Tungsten at that event and I was asked to go there by Paul because he wanted someone to have JTO’s back. Too bad JTO decided to slip a knife into Dean’s.

Now, as to why I am here now. As anyone who is following this knows, Kevin, an attendee of ICMI14, gave Dean a check for $2,200.00 for use toward getting a tooth repaired. Dean reluctantly and gratefully accepted. When we visited the dentist we found there was substantially more work that needed to be done before he was willing to address the reason we came in the first place. We went ahead with that treatment, including the first step in the procedure for crowning his missing tooth and figured once I was working again we would finish the work. I am still unemployed and looking.

That is the long and short of what happened, at least as it relates to Dean’s dental work.

I want to thank everyone who has supported Dean, and who will support him in this fundraiser to help him out. He works hard every day, trying to make a difference in the lives of people he does not even know.