Notices by JJ (snoozyrests@cyberpunk.lol)

A follow up to this since I've been seeing a trend that annoys me from #mastodonforharris

"What if the #mutualaid request is a fake / a scam?" Well, what if its not? There's equal evidence to suggest either way. If you immediately assume someone asking for help is a scammer, I think you have some internalised hate that you might need to have a good think about.

Numerically, based off my previous posts numbers for consistency. If all 3756 donors wanted to put funds towards mutual aid posts until all $21,630 was raised, it would take only each donor putting forward $6.

Now I dont know what that would get you in the USA (I am a Brit, I am so sorry) but here it would equate to £4.66, which is about the same amount as a cheap bit of lunch from a store or a coffee and some biscuits from a mainstream coffee shop.

You have to think about it like this, would you miss that $6? Even if the person you donated it to pissed it up the wall, would you personally need that $6? Because theres a good chance it actually gets used productively, and multiple peoples six dollars can help a person put food on the table, buy medications, help pay the invisible taxes incurred by being disabled, or just plain give someone who was previously stressed to the core a moments solace.

I, personally, would rather take that 'risk'. The potential for good greatly outweighs any other outcome.

be the reason your instance ends up on the threads blocklist

Its always interesting how people conflate mutual aid with some form of benefits system, or hand wave it away by saying "What am I supposed to do, help everyone?".

When I was first getting into helping out in local mutual aid drives, this other volunteer told me: "You don't have to help everyone all of the time. Everyone just has to help some people, some of the time." and honestly its how I still go about it today.

Am I exceptionally wealthy? Nope, far from it. Am I terribly poor? Also no. I usually have some spare change at the end of the month that would do more in someone elses pocket. I can only hope that it makes a difference.

So I've spent a bit of my lunch running the numbers. There are a lot of different sources so I've largely had to enter the numbers myself. Fortunately I'm used to this sort of work.

From what I can tell, #Mastodonforharris started around about three days ago:
https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman/112831902073897712

According to the latest update, it has raised $312,983 across 3756 contributions, 183 of which are recurring.
https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman/112850986898066954

This makes the average donation $83.33.

Now, I've spent the last hour combing through #mutualaid and aggregating totals for each requested donation specifically from the last 3 days.

This hashtag is used for both personal finances and social movements. The distinction doesnt matter to me, but I know it will to some so I'll talk about totals in two sections.

In total I aggregated 66 unique posts. Of these, only 21/66 were signal boosters or social movements, making for 45 people seeking personal financial aid, seeking a total amount across all users of **$21,630**.

Here are some quick stats about these posts:
- The smallest, specified ask was $15.
- 7 people were asking merely for whatever you could spare.
- 3 people were still willing to exchange art for donations.

The total for social movements and external fund-raisers was $307,801. Which is obviously substantially more.

I'm not gonna shame you for wanting to raise money for the person you want to vote for. You might be right, they may address a lot of the poverty we witness. But rather, all I am asking is that you also consider the folks in #mutualaid when you make donations. You don't have to donate to social movements or even issues abroad, but when you donate to #mastodonforharris, perhaps instead split it in half and help some folks put food on the table.

EDIT: fixing links

@0xabad1dea evergreen