A mom needed a Christmas miracle, and Eddie Vedder delivered.
Like this family, 1 in 3 children are growing up in low-income households.
Facing eviction and the prospect of not being able to give her children the Christmas she felt they deserved, Tyshika Britten took to Craigslist hoping for a miracle.
“I am a mother of six, 5 boys and 1 baby girl,” she wrote on Craigslist. The 35-year-old hair stylist worried her children would wake up on Christmas morning to disappointment. "I'm trying my best. I pray every day and now I'm begging for help. I know it's not about the gifts, but they are kids! I'm such a failure right now. ... Please help me."
Help came in the form of Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder.
On Dec. 20, the Washington Post featured Britten's story as part of a wider-ranging article on the struggles facing poor and working-class families around the country. That same day, Vedder and his bandmates were named to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's class of 2017 alongside the likes of Joan Baez, Journey, and Electric Light Orchestra.
After hearing about what Britten was going through, Vedder decided to send a check for $10,000 to her family. Others joined in, as well, sending the family a Playstation 4 and a tablet, among other things.
Eddie Vedder at a baseball game between the Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates in 2015. Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images.
In Britten's plea for help, Vedder saw echoes of his own childhood.
"I was just so moved by the story and what this mother did for her children," Vedder told the Washington Post, recalling Christmases in which he received used and sometimes broken toys as a child. "I thought those kids must be so proud of their mother for reaching out. That takes a lot of courage."
Working families shouldn't have to struggle to afford the basics, especially over the holidays, and yet more than 1 in 3 children are growing up in low-income households.
Eddie Vedder saved the day for Tyshika Britten, but the problem goes much deeper than one family's Christmas. Vedder himself referred to the gift as a "tourniquet" to help one family through what is hopefully a short-lived rough patch, but poverty is a complex, wide-ranging issue affecting the lives of millions nationwide.
Photo by Samir Hussein/Getty Images.
Last year, rapper 2 Chainz engaged in a similar act of generosity, bringing Christmas to one family by paying their rent for an entire year. These acts of good faith and charity are heartwarming, but they're also just temporary.
We may not all be rock stars, but there are surely things we can do to help out those less fortunate this holiday season.
There are thousands of families in need. Why would Vedder choose this family? Because they reminded him of his own family's struggles years ago, their story moved him powerfully to act.
It's easy to turn off stories of poverty when they feel far away from our lives — but when we can see ourselves in the shoes of those who are less fortunate, it's easy to do something. Our similarities may not always be glaringly obvious, but if we look hard enough, those stories aren't so far away from our own.
Men try to read the most disturbing comments women get online back to them.
If you wouldn't say it to their faces, don't type it.
This isn’t comfortable to talk about.
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and violence.
in 2016, a video by Just Not Sports took two prominent female sportswriters and had regular guys* read the awful abuse they receive online aloud.
Sportswriters Sarah Spain and Julie DiCaro sat by as men read some of the most vile tweets they receive on a daily basis. See how long you can last watching it.
*(Note: The men reading them did not write these comments; they're just being helpful volunteers to prove a point.)
It starts out kind of jokey but eventually devolves into messages like this:
Awful.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
These types of messages come in response to one thing: The women were doing their jobs.
Those wishes that DiCaro would die by hockey stick and get raped? Those were the result of her simply reporting on the National Hockey League's most disturbing ordeal: the Patrick Kane rape case, in which one of the league's top players was accused of rape.
DiCaro wasn't writing opinion pieces. She was simply reporting things like what the police said, statements from lawyers, and just general everyday work reporters do. In response, she received a deluge of death threats. Her male colleagues didn't receive nearly the same amount of abuse.
It got to the point where she and her employer thought it best for her to stay home for a day or two for her own physical safety.
The men in the video seemed absolutely shocked that real live human beings would attack someone simply for doing their job.
Not saying it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Most found themselves speechless or, at very least, struggling to read the words being presented.
It evoked shame and sympathy.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
Think this is all just anecdotal? There's evidence to the contrary.
The Guardian did a study to find out how bad this problem really is. They combed through more than 70 million comments that have been posted on their site since 2006 and counted the number of comments that violated their comment policy and were blocked.
The stats were staggering.
From their comprehensive and disturbing article:
If you can’t say it to their face... don’t type it.
All images and GIFs from Just Not Sports/YouTube.
So, what can people do about this kind of harassment once they know it exists?
There are no easy answers. But the more people who know this behavior exists, the more people there will be to tell others it's not OK to talk to anyone like that.
Watch the whole video below:
.This article originally appeared nine years ago.