I regularly reblog posts and publicly answer asks from people raising funds to survive in or escape from Gaza.
Many of these fundraising campaigns have been vetted by other tumblr users. Some have not. I want to make it very clear that I do not personally have the means or resources to vet every campaign I reblog/share.
It’s on each of us to decide what we’re willing to risk—in terms of money or reputation—when we support any kind of crowdfunding campaign. In light of the dire humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s violent aggression in Gaza, I am personally willing to signal boost (and, when I have funds to spare, donate to) campaigns without being able to 100% guarantee their veracity. Whether or not you are is up to you.
1. The Republican Party turns out for EVERY vote. Primaries, local elections, midterms, you name it. Most dems show up once every four year and then get defeatist when things don’t immediately change. It took the Republicans YEARS to overturn RvW but it has been a long game goal of theirs. YEARS of voting, and you’re gonna opt out after one vote. Okay.
2. Primaries are when you vote for who you want. Elections are when you vote for who you can. If you’re not voting in the primary, you’re letting the moderate centrist do-nothing candidate win.
3. Local elections affect your daily life. That sherif in Texas who is refusing to enforce the abortion ban? Local election. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, so much of this is trickle up from local politics.
4. Call your damn representatives. Even if it feels hopeless. The gun control reform that just passed (as minimal as it is) was bipartisan because people showed their reps that they wanted change. Get vocal as a voter and prove courting your vote matters.
5. If someone in your area is running for office and needs votes, be a signature for them. Not everyone can afford to pay to run. You want to support better candidates, put your name behind them (only in your district and always read what you’re signing first).
6. The two party system is shit. We know that. But the democrats are a big tent housing a lot of different opinions and trying to cater to them all. Republicans are generally united in one mission of dismantling everything and protecting only their own. This is also why Dems don’t have the same type of “super majority” and can’t easily whip the same voting results. And anyone who thinks Obama had a super majority for enough time to codify roe does not understand politics. He had about 18 days of actual in-session time, split into two different sessions.
7. Purity politics isn’t going to get you anywhere. The candidate is a bus stop getting you closer to where you want to be. They’re not the end goal, and a smart voter knows that.
8. Voter suppression is huge in America. Help other voters register and get to the polls. It’s not always indifference keeping people from voting. Do something to help disenfranchised voters.
Let me repeat: The two party system is shit. We need to get rid of the electoral college. We need ranked choice voting. We need to get rid of Citizens United. Our country is an oligarchy. Always has been. Not denying that. But Living in these ideals of what we should be without creating any change now isn’t going to get you anywhere. Being defeatist and abstaining from the process is cutting off your own nose to spite your face. Its saying “the other team is scoring too many goals, so instead of playing, I’m just gonna sit on the sidelines. That’ll teach everyone.” No, you’re just gonna keep losing. Maybe, instead, vote in the primaries and choose better teammates.
Y’all kill me with these “hot takes.” They ain’t even half baked.
Now, if you want to talk about the other things we should be doing IN ADDITION TO voting, like general strikes, organizing, etc. Then that’s a different conversation we should also be having.
if you're subscribed to Microsoft word, you probably received an email recently saying they're upping their prices. Like, a lot. ($9.99/month instead of $6.99)
guess what though? you can log into your account, click Cancel Subscription, and get the option to continue your subscription at the same price WITHOUT their bullshit AI.
That's right, the new, higher price is actually a different subscription that includes AI that everyone is being opted into by force! What a cool and fun product that clearly everyone wants.
you can also choose to buy Word 2024 without AI for a single lump sum that will be yours in perpetuity, with no updates, for one computer.
Check your subscription if you need Word for work! Don't get duped into paying for something you might not even want
As Elon Musk cements his place in history as a fascist tech overlord and the rest of the world looks at us in horror, I really do want to reiterate what I feel will be lost to the history books
Nearly everyone in america has thought and continues to think that Elon is very cringe.
Despite not being a USA citizen, everyon has... no, MUST remember that the billionare Elon Musk has such a tiny, pathetic and childish ego, that he had the need to lie about being a hardcore epic gamer in Path of Exile 2, only to be caught red-handed as the hilarious sham that he is, and ban everyone who exposed him.
the doge meme is from 2013. its easy for dates in history books to get kinda blurry and to just print something like "the department of government efficiency was named after a popular meme at the time", but i think its important to record that musk named the agency that is illegally seizing our government after a joke so outdated that the dog in the picture has since died of old age
he is regularly denounced by his adult and teenage children, who either block him online or are blocked by him. speaking of which, he posted weirdly sexual content while roleplaying as his own infant son.
accounts praising him are regularly discovered to be his sockpuppets. he blocks or threatens legal actions against those who expose his fake accounts. despite this, it happens every couple months.
he either paid his ex-wife to lie that he was good at videogames, or used her account himself to do so. she immediately followed up the lie with a separate tweet that just said 'sigh.'
This week, over 350 rabbis, together with some Jewish creatives and activists, took a full-page ad in the New York Times to oppose Trump's plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza.
Sources: website of this campaign (Jewish People Say No To Ethnic Cleansing), Jewish Voice For Peace, The Guardian.
somehow ive found myself in a position where folks come to chuck in times of strife for encouragement. lets get the big part of this conversation out of the way LOVE IS STILL REAL and that is the thing to remember. that north star remains. today there is more to talk about though
existence pushes towards love community and freedom, because CREATION is what we were built to do and creation thrives with these things as fuel. IT GETS BETTER. LOVE IS REAL. however this change comes in up and down waves. its not a straight line and should not be expected to be
some of these waves are short and small, and some of the slopes are years or decades long. there is no mincing words here, we are entering a massive downward wave. the implications are huge and it is okay to mourn that. FEEL THOSE FEELINGS. it is an important part of the ride
the most telling sign post on our slope is this: tromp won the popular vote (or likely will when the votes are done). we can talk POLITICAL STRATEGY all day about electoral college or who should court the center or the left and on and on but ultimately THIS is the real story
to me it signals a TRUE cultural shift. likely conservatives will have presidency, senate, house, and supreme court. WHAT A GIANT SLOPE. HOLD THE HECK ON because we will be riding it for a while, deep into the pit of the void. hold your buds tight, prove love at the local level
but heres the thing, MASSIVE waves have happened before. theyll happen again. mind numbing slopes into the abyss and great soaring leaps into the sky. in fact the inertia almost ALWAYS causes them to happen right after each other. hippies or punks back in the day, buckaroos now
politically we were trapped in a basically fifty fifty trot for a long time, but it was not always like this (just look at old election maps what the heck). to be honest, tromps map looks like one of those old maps right now. and DANG did COUNTER MOVEMENTS blooms from those times
in other words, THERE WILL BE A COUNTER CULTURE MOVEMENT THAT WE HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN OUR LIFETIMES. you are now a rebel for the resistance and the wave that will swing back towards love will awe us in ways we cannot even imagine yet.
but for now, feel those feelings, mourn, prove love, stay safe. do not let the hope i am espousing feel like a distraction from the very real, even deadly consequences of the terrible pit we are plummeting into. it is a horrible day, and FUTURE HOPE does not diminish that, BUT
get ready because that counter culture wave is coming and YOU are a part of it. if you want to shout HECK OFF DEVILS then shout it LOUD, if you want to cry then cry HARD, if you want to love then love with your WHOLE HEART. thats the start of the movement that we dont know yet
when that movement takes shape we will feel the inertia of the curve and it may make us sick from the rollercoaster turn, and that pressure will be uncomfortable and scary, but THEN buckaroo, we will soar, and ill be so dang glad to be holding on tight with you when we do
if you're feeling powerless right now—and god knows I am—here's a reminder you can donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, the Trans Law Center, Gaza Soup Kitchen, the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and hundreds of other charities that will work to mitigate the damage that has been and will continue to be inflicted
life continues. we still have the capacity to do good, important work. that matters
refraining from a lot of election joke posting and instead I just donated $55 USD to gaza soup kitchen and i encourage anyone else to consider donating even a couple of dollars to the people who will be affected the most from whatever outcome happens
I must not watch election coverage. Election coverage is the mind-killer. Election coverage is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will cast my vote. I will permit the result to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the election coverage has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Voting for Democrats is the "leaving the house, getting some exercise, and drinking more water is good for your mental health" of societal change. Everyone keeps telling you to do it, worst of all your mom keeps telling you to do it, and it's not a magical cure-all, but it actually works and rotting in your room shitposting does not help in either scenario.
Also like mental health, voting doesn't solve the whole problem! But if you aren't doing this bare minimum thing, the other tools you have aren't going to work as well as they should either. If you get medicine and continue rotting in your room shitposting, you will probably still be miserable. If you get a union at work but don't vote for politicians who support unions, the union won't be able to advocate for its members as effectively and work will still be miserable.
Voting is maintenance. It's like doing the dishes or cleaning the leaves out of the gutters. You're never going to get to a point where you are Done and Never Have To Do It Again (alas,) because time will continue to pass and you will continue to eat meals and the trees will continue to drop leaves into your gutters and right wingers will continue to submit bad bills to every session of congress.
You'll never be done with maintenance. But if you don't do that maintenance, your situation can and definitely will get Worse
If you're looking for places to donate to this November (Native American Heritage Month) my go-to is the Navajo Water Project/DigDeep. They work to bring running water to Navajo families and have a 100% rating on Charity Navigator!
answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.
plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects
