Butterflies
Join Something
There’s strength in etc.
We’re already meddling at an Olympic level and Butterflying anything that comes our way, giving the world what for with our plucky attitudes and Individual-Actions-Add-Up excessively-hyphened mottos. But we can meddle on an ever grander scale by joining something, levelling up from individual action to collective action.
If you’re a friend of the earth you could join Greenpeace, helping fund their campaigns, signing and sharing their petitions, and getting stuck in with one of their local groups. If you’re veggie you could join the Vegetarian Society or Vegan Society or even – no sniggering, please – the Pescetarian Society, and find out a bunch of useful stuff for yourself and for converting others to your extreme lifestyle choice. If you like paint-flinging and gender-imbalanced partial nudity to raise awareness of and completely distract from animal welfare issues you could join PETA. If you like human rights as much as you dislike abuses of human rights you could join Amnesty International. You could join Black Lives Matter efforts in your area on account of how black lives matter. You could join a union.
You can join things locally. You could join a local litter picking group to help clean the spots people have covered in crisp packets, or a local guerrilla gardening group to pretty up and de-carbonise your neighbourhood. You could join a mutual aid group like in that pandemic we had, or join Next Door to share gripes with neighbouring busybodies.
You can join things online, posting on forums for whichever issue gets your goat, grinds your gears or pisses you off, and call others to action. You can network for the forces of good and join groups on social networking sites to show your friends, former friends and people you barely remember what meddling you’re up to. If it works for white supremacists, Nazis and Russian trollbots it can work for us.
Of course we have to be sure we’re joining the right thing; things that make a difference to the world. Joining the Burt Ward fan club will get you friends and respect in the community but will it help change the world? It will, yes. Bad example. But we have to remember joining a group is like signing a petition: It could be just the appearance of doing good rather than something actually happening. We have to make sure our groups are productive, useful and accountable and not just talking cheaply. They have to say the right things to the right people and bring results.
As individuals acting together we can effect bigger change. If nothing else we’ll help support the struggling bumper sticker industry which has made heavy losses this year against the global upswing in actual humour. Go join something!
Join something
Multiply your power
Change the Goddamn world!
Photo credit: The Zero
Zeroism
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