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vanta rainbow black thinking about the "mastodon for harris" bullshit makes me fucking angry
but at least we managed to capture their hashtags lmao. if you look in either of them now you'll mostly see mutual aid requests
@vantablack
To be clear, glancing over the hashtag just now, I'm not sure you've actually "captured" it: what seems more likely is you've managed to get blocked by a bunch of instances for purposefully attempting to disrupt part of the network.
What I still don't understand though is why you're so angry about this in the first place. I'm sure there were a few people who were rude, that's totally going to happen, but I personally never saw any incidents getting reported: if they had been, I would have gone after them, so clearly it's not a majority. It's not like many of us were saying to donate to Harris and ignore all Mutual Aid from now on, and it's definitely not like support for Kamala Harris itself was going to harm the people who are on the hashtag, unless it's popular with Republican party leaders and I don't realize it.
So what's this about? What about us wanting to support a presidential candidate makes you angry enough to spend this much energy disrupting the network?
> It's not like many of us were saying to donate to Harris and ignore all Mutual Aid from now on, and it's definitely not like support for Kamala Harris itself was going to harm the people who are on the hashtag
im going to answer this a bit too but i only have small character length so
So first let's establish ball parks for campaign funding. A typical, offhand campaign donation is in the range of millions of dollars. The smallest you will typically see in american politics is a couple of million dollars from an org or a society to a political campaign.
I think, we can both agree that it is extremely unlikely, if not impossible, for mastodon for harris to raise that amount of funding.
(cont)
So, now that's been established, a direct response -
Ok, you are right you never said to ignore mutual aid. But what we (queer/poor people) are seeing is hundreds of thousands of dollars being given to an effort that is ultimately, a drop in the pond in terms of campaign funding, to a donor that is swimming in funds. And this is the case while many, many people who are on fedi, right now, are struggling to feed and house themselves.
@Raccoon @vantablack And on top of that, those funds are raised by predominantly white, predominantly cishet people on the fediverse. People, and people from fedi nodes who, for the most part never boost or otherwise interact with mutual aid posts. Some people on instances that restrict or otherwise ban posts for aid.
@Raccoon @vantablack What this makes clear, when you are looking at this as someone who personally sees about two dozen mutual aid posts a day, in regards to health, in regards to housing, etc. is that mastodon has a very clear class stratification.
There are apparently people who can afford to throw away hundreds, thousands of dollars towards what is essentially the most insufficient, meaningless gesture in the entire world of campaign politics, rather than *actually help & save other people*.
@Raccoon @vantablack
If everyone who donated the money to mastodon for harris, instead donated that money to people on the fediverse, it would mean a tangible, *measurable* reduction of predominantly queer people, predominantly bipoc people, suffering on the fediverse.
That is why there is anger involved. That is why activism takes the form of "showing those people the mutual aid posts they are neglecting and ignoring, that each represent real personal suffering endured by minorities"
You're looking at this from an abstract perspective of "there are people shitting up the tag!"
We're looking at this from a personal perspective of — most of the aid posts I've seen went untended, and as a result some of those fediverse posters were placed in emotional, physical, tangible harm, some of them possibly died or were killed.
That is why there is anger and frustration here. You can all afford to spend a LOT of money on a gesture while people suffer and die.
Because that's the result here.
Maybe a third of the mutual aid posts I've seen were, often bipoc, queer people trying to escape their abusive home environment.
Almost all of the mutual aid posts I've seen are people struggling to feed and house themselves, and the ones that aren't are asking for necessary funds towards their mental health, towards resources to help them actually fucking survive in the world.
And finally, what use is inviting kamala to the fediverse if we're not going to take care of people on the fediverse? What does making a better social network even mean if everyone is going to throw away the people who actually kickstarted the culture and community here in the first place.
If you want a better world why not actually put money towards people who are suffering right in front of you rather than throwing it on what is effectively a giant money bonfire?
@alexandria @vantablack
(Just got out of the shower and about to go somewhere, but I wanted to say, thanks for writing what looks like a really detailed explanation. I will try to read it when I have time.)
@alexandria @Raccoon @vantablack I probably shouldn't say anything, especially since I get where you're coming from and didn't donate to Harris myself.
I'd rather there be a single-payer system, than have to help you pay a massively overinflated "value to investors" we're both getting ripped off and I'm helping ether way.
I'd rather housing be affordable or free depending on the situation, rather than helping you pay what a landlord decrees is "competitive market" after using software to drive that cost up. I'm still helping, but fuck landlords.
I would rather systems like SNAP or utility assistance be easier and quicker to get, that emergency relief service is brought back to those systems, and that food and utility costs aren't allowed to be arbitrarily raised or restricted. I'm still helping, but a lot quicker.
If the government is set up correctly and doing it's job, 99.999% of all mutual aid is covered by tax supported programs or prevented by laws that prevent late-stage capitalist behavior from putting people into need. Mutual aid doesn't come from a few dozen sceptical people, but the taxes of everyone in the country. Best of all, you don't have to beg for it. If it's set up correctly, help should be accessible.
Republicans want to destroy the existing flawed system, they want you to beg to a church for a chance at indoctrination. They want you to die on the streets of hunger or a police baton.
So, it feels a lot more useful to try and support the party that at least claims they will try to make your situation better, but also the other interconnected issues that are important to pretty much everyone on this platform.
@MontgomeryGator @Raccoon @vantablack
Everyone would rather this is true. There is no evidence that Harris is going to do anything different to the previous democratic candidates, however. Meanwhile the many, many white (and apparently) rich people on fedi can do something right now to effect change in their online communities.
I'm not going to argue about measures that *could* happen, after a long and drawn out diplomatic process, when change could be effected right now.
@MontgomeryGator @Raccoon @vantablack
(Also, in terms of tangible support, one of the reasons I wrote the first post in this chain was explicitly to not get a response that's roughly what yours is. There is no reasonable argument to be made that a donation of a couple of hundred K matters in the face of hundreds of millions of dollars. That's small change, worth maybe half or a quarter of someone's salary at a PR firm, that money could be helping people "not die")
@alexandria @Raccoon @vantablack I understand how that is shitty, there are two other considerations to think about as well.
Having the device, literacy, tech literacy, the necessary credentials to open a bank/PayPal/Venmo account are all privileges. That's not to say that the problems of people asking for help on Fedi aren't important, but there always be someone worse off. A government solution would address all of it.
This isn't just about those in need, the need for Republicans not to win is a problem that affects just about anyone who isn't a cis white hetro male in a position of power. To a degree, not just Americans either, as an American win for the Republican fascists will embolden fascists around the world.
Don't think this means we shouldn't stop helping one another, in the real world or Fedi, just that for a lot of people, we'd rather a solution for the root cause rather than just pushing the issue forward another 30 days for a few people.
@MontgomeryGator@fouroclockfarms.club @Raccoon @vantablack
I'm not sure why your response here was to:
- call a good chunk of often homeless people on fedi asking for aid, "privileged"
- state that american politics influences international geopolitics
I'm not sure why you think the first point is a good one to make — at no point did i disagree that we need a systemic solution, but people will suffer even *before* the elections. I'm also not sure how 100k to kamala is going to tangibly help her campaign.
@MontgomeryGator @Raccoon @vantablack
Like at this point you're very willfully ignoring all the points I have made that are inconvenient to you and arguing tangentials, so I'm just going to block you and move on.
@alexandria @vantablack
> call a good chunk of often homeless people on fedi asking for aid, "privileged"
While I don't like the way they phrased it, I don't think that's what they were trying to say. I think they were trying to say, most people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless don't have the knowledge or devices to ask for Mutual Aid on Fedi, so we are actually seeing more of a subgroup here, and the true scale of the problem is so big that if the average person who needed it had the knowledge and ability to post, the entire network would be flooded and there wouldn't be enough aid to go around.
The fact that this is such a massive widespread problem is part of why we are supporting Kamala Harris though: her policies will not only help people in the short run, but pave the way for better policy in the future, while Trump actively made the situation worse in ways we haven't fully recovered from.