John Henry

Hi, folks, my name's John Henry and I'm your host today.  Thanks for considering becoming a Patron! 
 
I have a website, and a body of work.  With that in mind, rather than writing extensive content here at Patreon, I'm going to try to keep this as brief as possible, but I enthusiastically invite you to visit my site at 
<a href="https://johnhenry.us" target="_blank">JohnHenry.US</a>.  There's extensive content found there about who I am, what I do, how and why I do it, and why I'm crowdfunded; just check under the "About" menu at the top of the page, right next to "Home!"  Plus, you'll find links to all my social media, YouTube channel, and more. 
 
With that said, here's the short version:
 
 
About Me 
<ul>
	<li>Born 1970. </li>
	<li>Musician (drums since 1978, guitar, vocals, recording), actor (stage &amp; camera), most of a BA in media production with a political science minor at Western Michigan University 2010-2014.  Long-time (beginning mid-80's) left-wing anti-authoritarian (but not anarchist) activist and writer.  Long-time engagement in environmental issues.  Longtime engagement in social justice issues.  Often mistaken for a Democrat by Republicans; occasionally mistaken for a Republican by Democrats.  (If you really speak polisci I'm a strongly anti-authoritarian small-l libertarian small-r republican.  I don't want the government one inch more in a person's business than necessary to keep the peace, but strong engagement and regulation on business and industry with a robust social safety net with an ultimate coal of providing the greatest opportunity the world can provide to everyone who lives in it.  Polemicist, podcaster, personality, and a bunch more, I am a man who has led a very unlikely life</li>
	<li>Yes, that's my real name, first and middle.  My last name is DeJong.  John was my dad, Henry was my grandfather on my mom's side.</li>
</ul>
About My Work

<ul style="">
	<li>I write about everything I'm interested in, from music I like to politics and social issues.  I've built up a nice little following of a few thousand folks over on Facebook over the years, but for the last couple of years haven't been creating any new content to speak of.  I'm now "back in production" on the "easy" stuff - writing, and I'll be getting some podcasting and other live work together as well, plus curating my old content.</li>
	<li>I went to school in part to become a documentarian/journalist/storyteller, and it's my goal to create that kind of work in addition to all the other things I do.  More detail about specifics regarding that work, e.g. individual projects, my long-dreamed Faces of American Poverty project, which started with me filming myself when I was living on the streets in 2009 in Woodland, California.</li>
</ul>
Where The Money Goes
Everything I do costs money to some extent, and there's always more I can spend on it.  I'm going to document more specific goals over time, but perhaps your dollar a month helps defray website costs, or your fifty dollars a month pays for a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (which I desperately need), or for that matter your five thousand dollars a month pays for more serious equipment - musical instruments, audio mixers, higher-quality cameras, travel expenses to a broader variety of contexts in which to create content.  There's no reason this couldn't get to full-out feature documentaries with six-plus figure budgets - that's up to you. I don't mean to be vague and mysterious.  I'm taking small steps first - let's get a regular podcast happening and regular written content up again, add the curated content so new folks know I didn't just show up, and we'll build it forward from there as far as it goes. I will be laying out more specific plans, goals, and needs in various places on the website we well.  I may even come back and edit this document when big changes have happened.  But for right now, I'm getting started.  I could use that Adobe subscription.  I need to buy some bright lights so I can use my greenscreen instead of this basement office piled high with random mess.  Every little step is a step forward. Finally, an important content note:  While I do not produce "adult content," that is to say content created specifically for adults, I do sometimes use adult language and discuss topics like sex, addiction, psychology, family dysfunction, and more in frank - although generally not vulgar - terms.  My influences include a number of great masters of profanity including George Carlin, Bill Hicks, and Stephen King, and my language tends to reflect that.  Much of my content is suitable for the whole family; some of it is not.  I do my best to be clear when something may not be entirely appropriate for children, e.g. as above.

Free

Are you a Patreon user looking for ways to offer simple support to independent creators and don't much care about rewards? This tier is for you! No muss, no fuss, no merch, no shout-outs, just the knowledge that you're pitching in to help an independent creator and activist create and stay active!

Basic Support

Benefits include:<ul><li>Lifetime access to the supporters portal at <a href="https://lib.johnhenry.us/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Supporter Portal - JohnHenry.US Supporters-Only Portal</a>. The login information for that site only is the same for everyone, and can be found in a patron-only post on this site, or at <a href="https://johnhenry.us/supporter-home/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Supporter Home • John Henry</a>. You have to be logged in at <a rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">johnhenry.us</a> to see that information! Fortunately for you, you're Patrons, and that means you can log in with a single click from the login page at <a href="https://johnhenry.us/sign-in/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Login – John Henry Forum</a> - just click the "log in with Patreon" button, don't have to fill out the form or do anything else. (CAPTCHA maybe, don't know yet. You may be asked to fill out basic account information the first time you log in with Patreon.)</li><li>Access to the private facebook group at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/johnhenryusgroup" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/groups/johnhenryusgroup</a> This is a group for supporters and followers, but also had an open invite early on so there's a fun group of folks there already as well as some friends and of course people who have contributed to my work over the years. (Note well: go to this link and request the invite to be added, please; I'll try to be pro-active about this, but privacy settings and other issues may prevent me from adding you to the group unless you request it.)</li><li>Lifetime (* as long as they exist) access to the podcast archives.</li><li>Advertising is shut off for logged-in patrons at JohnHenry.US</li></ul>Be sure you're logging in at JohnHenry.US to take advantage of all your perks including access to "locked" blog entries and project files at <a href="https://lib.johnhenry.us/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Supporter Portal - JohnHenry.US Supporters-Only Portal</a> and specially-tagged supporter-only content in the body of some content on the main site as well!

E-Perks

Monthly subscribers get access to the entire Pattern Dynamics library including the founding "Genesis" documents. All benefits are delivered electronically unless otherwise specified.

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