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This page is about two men I met online, John Patrick Day and "ericdaread", who preferred not to use his real name online. I met both of them on the now-defunct "wiredstrategies" messageboard, which was set up shortly after the murder of Matthew Shepard, and which eventually fell under an onslaught of trolls. Many of us from that board migrated to the board http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MatthewsPlaceForum/,
including JP and eric. You can still read many of their posts on that board. JP lived in Edmonton, Alberta, where he worked through local political channels for human rights. eric used the Internet to work for human rights, and was a mentor to many gay youth. Here are some links that highlight their work. If the links to eric's website become inactive, some of us who consider ourselves his friends will endeavor to mirror his site and keep it up.
Update: eric's website seems to be down now. I have put the text of his story, "Diary of a Teen Suicide" here: http://www.geocities.com/ksdrobinson/diary-of-a-teen-suicide.html
A few days before his death, JP posted on the MatthewsPlace board a suggestion that since eric hadn't been heard of for some time, we should archive his work. Here is a link to that post: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MatthewsPlaceForum/message/7035
This page has two purposes. One is to remember two tireless workers for human rights. The other is to remind any of you who have material online that you'd like to continue after your death, to appoint an "Internet executor", someone who has your passwords and can keep your work going. That person should also be given a list of people you'd like notified. We didn't find out about eric's death until months later. We wish we had known sooner.
eric was the person who first twisted my arm to support the Human Rights Campaign. You can find out more about their work on their website: http://www.hrc.org/
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copyright 2002 by Karen Deal Robinson
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