In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy.
She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500. One fails, nobody gets paid.
The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%.
She handed out the checks herself.
In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college.
When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months.
You've probably heard that part.
Here's the part you haven't:
The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top.
Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave.
She built her county an entire hospital.
She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women's center in it.
In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees.
Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal.
In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn't be released back into the wild, no press release.
And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it.
She didn't owe North Carolina anything, but she helped us anyway.
She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn't read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did.
Rest in Peace, Dolly 🇺🇸
The Taco Bell finger pointing is a psyop to redirect attention from the real culprit, the deregulation and lack of oversight in our food supply. pass it along and live más comrade
The first victims of war are always disabled people. Thousands of Cuban dialysis patients are going to die because hemodialysis needs electricity.
This, too is a genocide
you quite literally cannot be an enviornmentalist if you aren’t anti war, anti colonialism, and anti capitalism. and the sooner you understand that, the better our chances are at building a future where we actually survive the climate crisis that is ALREADY HERE.
I don’t want data centres. I want better roads, equipped hospitals, safety social nets for the unemployed, old and disabled, and developed public schools.
ICE is terrorizing our communities with military-grade assault rifles & tear gas. For decades, our neighbors in Southwest Detroit have warned us that they're too militarized. They're right. Stop funding them.
ICE needs to be abolished.
Our government always has the money to bomb people, unleash violence, and fund ICE to execute people in the streets, but they just made a $1 trillion cut to our health care. It's deranged.
Congress should not vote to send another dollar to DHS. Abolish ICE.
There are professions where personal, religious and moral biases must stop at the door deliberately and healthcare is one of them. If you can’t separate evidence based care from your prejudices then you shouldn’t be making decisions about anyone’s health.
Fun fact, it’s estimated to cost between $11-$30 billion to end homelessness in America. Our lawmakers still haven’t found the funds for that but they’re funneling $75 billion to ICE’s budget.
(In no way disrespect to anyone killed by ICE) but the way in which the media coverage is only focusing on Renee and Alex but never Keith is terrible anti-blackness. This is why "SAY HER NAME" was never applicable to Renee because we know her name. We have to say HIS
In Palestine, the phrase “Mourn the Dead and fight like hell for the living” helps us keep moving forward. I ask Americans to resonate with this, empty words can’t help, we must mourn the dead and most importantly we must fight like hell for the living.
as an american my full support is with the people of venezuela as they resist US invasion by any means necessary. venezuela has the right to defend itself.