faythofdragons

The rhetoric isn’t nobody is doing anything.

So when you said “Why is cooperation and mutual aid so invisible to americans”, what did you mean? I understood it to mean that you didn’t think anybody was doing anything.

People who believe that are foolish, and aren’t interested in hearing from rural towns because they have already made up their mind.

But I’ve literally experienced the opposite, lol. I hear from the people themselves that they’ve just never thought that it could happen out here until they saw it happening out here. Propaganda affects us all.

there is no benefit to convincing them if they are strangers on the internet.

There is absolutely benefit to countering the false rhetoric that nobody is doing anything. I want to inspire others to do stuff in their own communities and stop getting discouraged by all the “you only have stupid protests” nonsense that gets spread around here. Nobody believes an anti-hierarchical grassroots movement could form in a rural town, because they just assume rural = trump supporter, even the people who live here.

Let me tell you, despite being in a rural town, we only get a handful of hecklers at each big protest. We routinely get a crowd of 200 protestors, dozens of people honking in support, and only a couple of people rolling coal. We keep getting people stopping to express shock that we even exist, people keep thinking they’re the only anti-trumpers living out here, but they’re not.

People aren’t going to do stuff if they think they’re on their own. The news isn’t going to spread word about supportive communities in your area. If we don’t talk about what we’re doing, who will?

None of this gets you a tax benefit, and the state doesn’t count food bank volunteer hours towards your food stamps hours or community service or anything. Another reason I say it’s mutual aid and not a charity.

We’ve also set up a tool library, and somebody is providing barn space for community repair projects. My partner is a carpenter by trade, and while he’s unemployed, he’s been showing people how to safely use the tools. I’m disabled, and unemployed, so I’m designing event fliers and providing web hosting for the group. Most of the group is low-income at best, but we absolutely chipped into a pot when a member had to undergo major surgery.

The criticism of charity that I’ve heard, is that by filling in the gaps left by capitalism, you’re postponing the revolution. People need to understand that capitalism is bad, and for that to happen, capitalism needs to fail utterly. Harm reduction and charity keeps capitalism from failing utterly, and is therefore a bad thing.

But honestly, I think 99% of the talk on the Fediverse about all this really is just people wanting to start shit. It’s easy to just say that Americans are incapable of doing anything, and then be derisive when somebody attempts to do something. I live in a rural town of less than 3k, thousands of miles from DC, so nothing I do will ever be big enough or good enough to change federal policy, and is therefore considered a waste of time by your average commenter here.

Are the people who are providing the food/funding/organization realistically likely to depend on this system in the future?

Yes? Who else would care enough?

It might be easier to think of mutual aid as an informal economy where the goal is to distribute resources and knowledge for the purpose of making sure people are taken care of vs profiting.

How is that not what I’m describing though? We want to break away from the formal system, that has failed us, and set up a parallel system of localized support.

I fail to see how bidding on a pot of money is more closely aligned with mutual aid than helping your neighbors distribute produce from the community garden.

Define mutual aid. My local group has been recently focused on bolstering the local food bank, since we found out the state funding was getting stuck in the urban area and not making it to the (largely immigrant) communities of people who cant afford to live in the city.

The local food bank is entirely volunteer driven, they only have a facebook page, and no way to accept donations online. It directs people to mail a check, but most people just venmo the urban food bank and assume the money will come our way eventually.

Due to lack of funding, they don’t even have refrigeration, and thus can’t accept fresh produce donations from the local farms or community gardens.

Here in a few weeks, we’re planning a big donation drive and awareness campaign about the lopsided funding structure, and county council has been invited to hear us talk about implementing a more decentralized food distribution system.

Opinions on the fediverse seem to think this is just more ineffective shitlib harm reduction nonsense, and we shouldn’t be wasting our time on it. I want to know why they don’t want us delivering food boxes to neighbors targeted by ICE.

Dang, they were really saying bʰréh 5000 years ago

I’ve always lowkey wondered what word has changed the least since PIE

Unpopular opinion: I never saw the appeal of Frank Lloyd Wright, honestly. I don’t know how anybody can look at Falling Water and not see a bunch of cardboard boxes somebody left at the creek.

Your dad may have had something called “dysgraphia”, which is similar to dyslexia but affects writing instead of reading.

I’ve got dyscalculia, which is similar to dyslexia, but has to do with numbers.