Sven Slootweg @joepie91@pixie.town

Something that frustrates me is that political discourse and action largely sorts into two buckets:
1. "Everything is fucked and we can't fix it anyway!"
2. "I'm doing my part already by being involved in <some local thing>, what more are you expecting?"

And they are both wrong but for different reasons; "everything is fucked" is a reasonable feeling to have but ultimately doesn't reflect what can *actually* be accomplished with the right organizing, and "I'm already doing my part, I can't do more" is *also* a reasonable feeling but ignores that the idea of a "first step towards progress" only works if you acknowledge that there are many more steps to follow!

And because the second category never ends up achieving large-scale change (because they consider the work done after the first step), the first category never experiences what can be achieved, and so the first category of folks doesn't get involved, and that then causes the second category of folks to keep feeling overextended, and on and on it goes in a circle.

The actual solution here is to start small, with an accessible first step, *and* treat that as a stepping stone towards larger, overarching organization, where you constantly keep pushing for that larger change (even if you personally are not the one doing the work there!).

But both categories of people will tend to reject this idea (often implicitly rather than explicitly), for a different reasons.

How on earth do we resolve this?

Are you a freelancer, especially in tech, and you want to help others in need? There's a very easy way to do that sustainably, with very little effort on your part.

Increase your standard rate by $10 (or your equivalent currency) per hour. That's it.

Some clients are going to refuse, you can keep them at the old rate if you want. For all the clients that have accepted the rate (most existing clients will, almost all new clients will), the 'extra' $10/hour is your mutual aid budget.

Every month, you divvy out the budget across the various mutual aid requests you can find at the MutualAid and MutualAidRequest hashtags.

Depending on your exact workload, you can divert hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month towards people in need, and you won't even need to do any extra work for it.

(This only works if you are a genuine freelancer, ie. you maintain your own client relations and it's B2B; it doesn't work for employment-without-benefits scenarios. Outside of western countries you may need to reduce the amount of money, but then this is primarily meant for those in western countries.)

The *reason* this works is because a lot of freelancers under-negotiate their payment terms, and there's plenty of room for rate increases. I forgot who said this, but "the correct price is the one that makes them complain but still pay".

Do I always have my emotions under perfect control? No - nobody does, we're all human, and that includes me.

Do I mean what I say when I'm direct about my disapproval of someone's words or actions? Yes, absolutely. I fully understand how it will come across, and it is *intended* to be abrasive - it is a warning shot cautioning you to reconsider what you are doing or saying, and usually a friendlier one than you will get from many others if you continue with it.

If I tell you off about something, there is an intention behind that, and I ask that you do not try to wave it off as "they must be responding impulsively", but treat it as seriously as I am conveying it.

I don't normally talk about what/when I've donated to mutual aid fundraisers, because it feels kind of like tooting my own horn.

But I'm starting to think that maybe I should, even if just to create an ambient social expectation.

You know what the first step of driving real change is? Acknowledging the hardships of the vulnerable folks in your community, and doing work to support them so that they can be included in the process.

You know what it definitely isn't? Endlessly theorizing in a vacuum about the philosophy of a hypothetical better system while not even wanting to acknowledge that not everybody started from the same point in the first place. That's just theorycrafting.

If you claim that you've given up on leftist politics because "everybody seems much more interested in being miserable together than in actually driving change", and yet you've never so much as acknowledged people's dire situations with a word of solidarity or empathy, then that tells me an awful lot about what you think "leftism" means, and it's nothing flattering.

Bonus points if you're a well-off white dude who most likely works in tech.

"Don't I get to decide for myself what I spend my money on?"

Sure, you do. But other people are going to see those choices and draw conclusions from that about your true priorities and beliefs.

Folks are not expressing their frustration with your donation choices because they believe they have any sort of authority over them - I think we're all pretty well aware that we don't.

Instead, folks are trying to tell you how they - the marginalized folks you claim to be supporting politically, to be clear - *really* feel about the way you put that into practice. Whether you are actually practicing what you're preaching.

Like with everything else, if you want to be an 'ally', you need to be listening to the people you claim to be an ally of, and follow their guidance on how to improve things for them, even if it is something you personally disagree with.

You have the choice not to do that, and to instead go by your own views of what is the best or most effective solution, but then you are not an ally - you're trying to be a *savior*, which is something very different.

That's your choice to make, but then don't call yourself an ally, and don't claim you 'support' marginalized folks, because you don't.

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