Appropriately so, but also if I were a judge I think I'd jump at the opportunity to exert my power for good. In a "hell yes, this is what I became a judge for" kind of way. I know there's been a fair amount of ICE activity near me lately and I would love nothing more than to wield my 30-something-white-mom privilege to try and get in their way. I'm craving any opportunity to feel like I'm making a positive impact, however small, since I feel so powerless in the face of *everything*. Make dinner for the staff meeting at my kid's preschool? Sounds great. Help pay for a 17 year old's abortion? Sure! Pack up our outgrown baby stuff for a young undocumented mom whose dad was just deported? Yes, please. Donate my extra breastmilk to a post-mastectomy trans dad? Of course! I feel like a junkie looking for a fix. But without enough time or money or bandwidth to make any real difference. If anyone figures out how to make change on a larger scale, please sign me up.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/trav...s-canadians-rekindle-travel-ties/86495540007/ All of you Canucks will be thrilled to learn that you’re over it now.
Don’t worry, folks. Ted Cruz is gonna run again! “There will be no natural disasters while I’m in office! No, really. I’ll be out of the office those days.”
I have done an absolute shitload of volunteering over the last 8 years. My advice, find established groups that are already doing good works, and use their resources and network to expand the good they are doing. Our community has the ruritans, they help a lot of less fortunate people in the community pay bills or provide for baby's and children's needs, give out scholarships, fundraise for many other small causes. When you see people in need, send them to these groups for help. Likewise, when you see other people that want to volunteer and donate, send them to these groups, as well. I know most of our ruritans are pretty old, long retired folk that want to help out, and could use the help of younger people to continue the good that they do, and be the next generation that provides for the community. Donations are always needed and appreciated. Our neighborhood does the lake day with the local children's home. The kids get to come up and do out and do watersports. Many of the kids that are longterm residents of the facility, the ones we see year after year, tell us it's greatest day of the year for them. The children's home also has a list items that they need donated and other volunteer opportunities. Us, and other families that also participate in the lake day, donate throughout the year. There are groups and resources out there, volunteer for them. Get connected to them and help the groups grow and be more impactful. Connect the people in need, and the people that want to help, with the groups that are actively trying to help others.
Are we, now? Is that why they’re straight-up cancelling entire seasonal connections to Florida up here now? Is that why I’m going to Mexico after canceling three trips that were planned to USA this year? America has a travel advisory branded on it. Even if you don’t have beef— which most of us have— you’d have to be a stupid idiot to travel there for basically any reason now. Why take that risk? Last time I crossed was held at the border in that shithole holding centre with my terrified daughter for three fucking hours because we wanted to see a Sabres game. That’s how they welcome tourists, that’s how they treat anybody who isn’t them now at the border. So fuck them.
@sisterkathlouise what Fiveslide said. You can just google various volunteer groups in your area for what you would like to help with and just reach out to them and offer to provide your services any way they can use you. The best ability is availability in 95% of the times. Once you're into a group(s) then you might be able to figure out some specific activities you can help out with based on individual skills you have. There's a men's halfway house that some friends of ours help manage via their church, and while I have absolutely zero interest in the religious aspects of it, during Covid they were hit especially hard with people not wanting to help out because of the whole unknown aspect of being around people so we asked what we could do to help and they just asked for some assistance with being at the office to help with the day to day stuff around paperwork, sorting through donations, and the occasional transportation request for people that had doctor's appointments, job interviews, etc. After doing that for a bit, some of the 'regular' volunteers finally started coming back around, so one weekend I was doing some catering event and since I had the big smoker rolling I offered to throw a couple of extra things on so people could have a bit of a "fancy" meal outside of the regular food pantry stuff that's typically donated. From that, I now cook and donate 3 or 4 turkeys every year for Thanksgiving dinner and some of the people that have been there for a previous year tell us it's the meal they look forward to the most.
Oh I've done a fair amount of volunteering, especially door knocking and signature gathering for ballot initiatives that I think are important. It just often feels fruitless. And right now I have a 7 month old and a 4 year old and more work to do than I have childcare for. I meant if there was any way to, like, magically stop fascist feature creep.
I mean, there is, however, if I write it out and post it here, I'll end up on multiple federal databases. And I've already been classified as a 'terrorist' by the current administration on multiple occasions.
Don't be surprised, once you move away from the political volunteering, that you're working alongside Republicans. They may not be the people on the far right that you most despise, but helping the community isn't locked down by either party, and there will be people who didn't vote like you there also helping the community. At least that is my experience here, with the groups that I'm a part of. They try their utmost to help anybody in need, and I've never, ever seen discrimination, even in the deep red district in which I live and volunteer.
I live in a very blue area, so the vast majority of folks I’ve volunteered with have had similar politics to my own, but I do understand that people can be republicans and do kind things for other people. But also it’s absurd to vote against things like free lunch in schools and food stamps and then volunteer at a food bank.
It's all about the performance. If lunches were free and food stamps available, they wouldn't be able to publicly display just how good they are by donating scraps and then advertising it aloud to everyone within eye and earshot.
We have free lunches in this state for all K-12. The quality and nutrition is terrible, but if the point is to give poor kids a full stomach and some calories, it does that.
Just the Attorney General of the United States being so brain-addled by hatred of trans people that she testifies to the US Senate that there's such a thing as a "biological name." No mention of how Ted "Assigned Edward Rafael at Birth" Cruz took the news.
An overweight Asian man getting into a dick-size spat with a woman is a level of overconfidence that could topple nations.
Alright, so what do we think of this: https://www.reddit.com/r/law/s/cHLqhVANyX -were there actually technical difficulties? -did Miller actually freak out and shut down because he didn’t mean to say Trump has plenary authority under US Title 10? -is whatever is happening to Mitch McConnell actually contagious?
But did he lose sound and get white noise in his ear? I dunno. I just know if this happened during a previous administration, say in 2010 or so, gun sales would be astronomical.