Notices by Kit Malone (thekitmalone@hoosier.social), page 6

I've been a professional issue advocate for a long time but I've learned only a few hard rules.

One goes something like this:

"Insulting real people whose support you want to get or keep is a losing strategy, employed by desperate losers."

Listening to fears, offering hope and help, and building common ground always works better.

Some Dem partisans are really great at that. Legendary even. Like Joe Biden, for instance.

But many are far less good. They do untold damage.

/3

If anyone is to blame for where we are - it's the condescending crowd of finger-waggers out there telling ordinary, scared *people* that their fears are imaginary, their feelings aren't welcome, and they should shut up and fall in line or this is all their fault.

/4

If you are afraid right now, I get it. I am too.

I still think it's necessary to get out that vote, and I'm gonna keep working because I have family to save.

I don't think you are stupid and I think you have a point. Let's talk about it.

If you are feeling helpless, I have some easy things that you could do -- and sometimes taking action really does make you feel better.

You are not alone.

/5

America had its first black president and then went through a pandemic where citizens were asked to make some sacrifices to save their neighbors' lives and that was enough to make a significant number of Americans give up on this whole democracy thing and turn fascist.

Like, in retrospect it's not surprising at all but it's still a shocker.

Never in the history of ever has the phrase "quell student protests" indicated a growing societal reverence for democracy and civil rights.

I just fielded a call from a county clerk who received my mailing on trans voter rights and wanted to know what to do if a trans voter looks like a cat.

This is the completely credulous bullshit we are up against right now.

It's awfully fun to see the pro-life litmus test being reversed on itself, isn't it?

I hope SO many campaign ads in 2024 put abortion front and center.

I think it's weird that the Dem establishment finds a way to bitch about black voter turnout every single election year when it is demonstrably true that their most fickle voters are white people.

This holiday is fucked up in a lot of ways, but I fought hard to win back my family after spending years isolated from them. None of us are rich and we work all the time. I'm not ashamed of spending one of our few precious collective days off work together celebrating and feeding each other.

If you need family time today, I hope you get it. If you make an ethical choice to skip it, I respect you. If you are in a place where a family isn't available to you, I hope you find one.

I want those things too but there is just a certain kinda person I've met way too many times who really uses those old saws as excuses/justifications for apathy.

Hey I don't know if there are any other trans girls who need to hear this but it's ok to want to be seen and known for the things you are good at. And to take up space.

I know the culture wants you to be Highly Visible and Beloved but only within a certain set of prescribed norms and otherwise kinda wants you to sit down and get outta the way.

Fuck that.

New year, new #Introduction post!

I'm Kit!

I'm on the admin team here at #HoosierSocial

I'm a political strategist, a retired semi-pro musician, a former teacher and a passionate community organizer.

My favorite things are civic involvement, coffee, #Indiana, camping, guitars, gardens, cooking, sushi, babies, beaches, kindness.

I live in #Indianapolis with my husband (@dragondaddy), two grouchy cats (Cosmo and Tiva), one hyper border collie (Deetz), and a lizard (Rosco).

#HoosierMast

#HappyBirthday #HoosierSocial !

Our little-instance-that-could turns 1 today!

We couldn't have done it without the #HoosierMast community -- @brian and I hope be good stewards as we grow this space in 2024.

If you are from #Indiana and are looking for a forever home on the Fediverse, you could do worse than joining us at @hoosiersocial.

PLUS! Don't miss our Virtual #BirthdayParty - today at at 4:30pm. It's an open house, so join this evening when you have time and say hi! Details below!

It's really annoying that, when I see an obscure but suspicious looking piece of possible misinformation being posted to social media often the only critical sources I can find are behind paywalls. The misinformation pieces are themselves inevitably free.

My dad got an Insta account like 10yrs ago because he wanted to see pics of his grandkids.

Strangers calling him a Nazi-sympathizer for not moving to a new platform where there are no pictures of his grandkids isn't gonna make him change.

My dad isn't at all a Nazi sympathizer. He's an old dude who isn't super-plugged-in who installed an app on his phone that gives him some joy.

If I want my dad here - and pictures of his grandkids for him - I gotta make here a place that they all wanna be.

I have no judgement at all for drinkers but god I'm so proud of my recovery from alcohol abuse (almost seven years!)

It may be the single thing I've done in my life that I'm most proud of.

Are you a grassroots activist group in #Indiana that is doing work that is antifascist and/or promotes racial justice, trans liberation, reproductive justice, women's rights, immigrants rights, voting rights, disability rights, or any other work that is justice oriented ... I will help you set up IT services *pro bono*.

Think email, comms, document services, web hosting, etc. I'll also provide you with tech support for those services for free.

/1

#HoosierMast

@vfrmedia yup. Which is why I tend to advise movement leaders to be incredibly careful with anyone who they bring into their leadership team or into their planning circle. It's everywhere in the movement - these days I only work on real stuff with people I've personally met and have a long-standing trust relationship with. It's also why I think this stuff is way better if it's ultra local.

I think it's really interesting to see how many comments sorta make the assumption that the purpose of such an effort would be to ask grassroots activists to switch wholesale to Mastodon, install some specific toolset, switch to free software, whatever.

Nah, but I do think that if we tell people "you should be self hosting your website and email" we have a duty to also help provide that labor, just as we might volunteer to pass out flyers at a rally or set up the chairs at an event.

It's a problem I see in non-tech activist spaces too. Folks would rather do something glamorous like start a new org or host a rally with themselves as the speaker ... or (on the tech side) start a whole new software project, create a Mastodon instance. But nobody wants to pass out bottled water, clean up trash, apportion email accounts, manage the backups.