My friend Andy Stephenson. PHOTOS

[yewberry]

47. Andy

Andy was a DUer back in the old days when we were still learning about about voter manipulation and suppression. He was very active in work around what was happening with voting machines (in particular with right-leaning tech companies supplying elections boards with their own proprietary software, e.g. Diebold).

Andy got sick. He had pancreatic cancer, which is a very difficult cancer to treat. He didn't have medical insurance, and there was a pretty surprising effort across Dem sites (and particularly on DU) to raise money to get him treatment from the best possible doctors.

Unfortunately, there was a group of, uh, 'people' who believed that Andy was faking his illness. They spouted their vile beliefs and accusations in several locations, going as far setting up an entire website to debunk Andy's illness (scamdy.com). They essentially decided that their mission was to catch Andy in some great lie, so they effectively placed a bounty on his head, They tried to catch him out, sending people to his hospital or to his home while he was sick with cancer. Worst of all, they contacted Paypal, the site through which all of the fundraising for Andy's surgery had been raised, and claimed that it was a scam.

Paypal held the funds.
Andy's surgery was delayed.
Andy later died.

We did love him.