this is your vanishingly rare politics post

[melannen]

Today I:

• Went through my spam-and-mailing-lists email inbox and unsubscribed to a bunch of things that had been sending me excessive and annoying fund-raising emails.


• set up a recurring donation to Wonkette because their continued existence has been a major comfort to me these past few years. And because I sent them a one-time donation last week, and got a heartfelt and profane personal 3 AM thank-you from the editrix, even though she is still on maternity leave, which works 100x better at convincing me to give again than any carefully-focus-grouped form letter ever will.


• spent the afternoon writing Postcards to Voters with friends, on the basis that a personal and heartfelt (although not profane, as tempting as it is) note is also more likely to get through to other people.


• joined the Industrial Workers of the World, because my work is forbidden by law from unionizing, my work needs a union, and I want to be a person with a membership card for the Wobblies.


• pledged to the Fuck Susan Collins fund, because fuck Susan Collins


• donated to Planned Parenthood with an 'in your honor' card sent to Susan Collins, because I know they'll use it for real stuff and they were one of the only ones whose mailing list wasn't super-annoying (Their post-confirmation email appeal included links to self-care tips for survivors right next to the donate button!)


• joined the ACLU because I've been meaning to finally do that since W was in office.


• donated to the OTW, because I've been lazy about keeping up my membership, and reading through a new juggernaut slash pairing has also helped me a lot this week


• donated to the National MS Society, in memory of an old family friend whose funeral I attended on Friday


• signed up for the volunteer opportunities/mailing lists of the hyperlocal democratic club, the local League of Women Voters chapter, Swing Left, and a couple of County Council candidates


• joined the local a-spec meetup.com groups, because neotoma reminded me they existed, and local in-person community matters


• checked my voter registration status


• did a first read of the LWV voter guide for my district


• also attempted to give people some DW points, but I'm still not sure it worked. If you're one of the people I owe DW points to, can you let me know if you got them?

This was several years worth of arrears.

I should have done all of those a long time ago, but one of the insidious things about all this is that it just makes one tired.

And there may be better places to give/join, or more effective ones, but those are the ones I did. And that is better than doing nothing because I can't decide.

I guess I finally got to the level of fuck-its where I just do it, because fuck it.

(I probably should have kept better track of who I signed up for recurring with and how much I gave total, but fuck it.)

....my mailing-lists-and-spam email address is not going to have a chance to recover before it fills up again. (I wonder if charities ever actually factor in how many people don't give because they don't want to be hassled for life because of a one-time donation? Because based on a quick poll of my friends, it's a LOT of people.)