I come in peace; please hear me out.

Hey folks. I'm seeing a lot of hostility toward the (admittedly surprising) success of the #MastodonForHarris campaign, particularly in light of some pretty awful things said to those pointing out things like how the money would have fully funded most current #MutualAid requests with lots of money left over. There's been some downright hostile and antagonistic takes taken, too, which is really unfortunate.

The MutualAid tag is, frankly, a wonderful thing that lets folks in need hitch their wagon to a pretty visible star when they need some help. I love that it exists, hope that it continues to connect folks who are lucky enough to be in a position where they can help to those who are unlucky enough to need help.

Personally, I feel the MastodonForHarris tag is also doing a positive thing, for reasons I'm sure a lot of you are tired of hearing about by now so I won't get into it.

It saddens me to see dissonance between these two forces for positive change in the world when they could be combined to do even more good.

If you're reading this and have been considering or have already donated to the Harris campaign, I have a humble request for you:

Search (or, better, follow!) the MutualAid tag. Look for one toot that you'd be willing do donate $5, or £5, or €5 to. Don't ask things like "but what will they spend the money on"; just send the five currency-units. It's a cup of coffee or half a sandwich to you, but it might mean the difference to being housed or not; medicated or not; fed or not, to the person you're helping out.

And if you're donating to any political fundraiser, do it again. Take $/£/€ 5 from your political charity and give it directly to one person in need. Every time.

That way, you can still help the cause you want to help in your small way, but at the same time, directly help one person or family in a proportionally vastly more meaningful way.

And if you are not and are not considering donating to Harris or any other politician, that's cool too! But if you have five bucks you can live without, maybe earmark it for MutualAid if you can. But also- maybe try, if you've been poking political campaigns with a stick, just not? If you're tired of seeing the toots, that's what filters are for after all, which is one of the things that makes the Fediverse great- we all are our own algorithms and we don't need to see things that annoy us if we don't want to be annoyed.