I grew up financially privileged. I was involved in advocacy for years. Then, I fell into poverty. I began to experience the things I had heard about. I began to understand, on a personal level, why the world was the way it was. We needed to change how we do things.
In early fall of 2021, I had a vision on how to solve the world's problems. Here’s what it was.
Make a platform. It would be the 1-stop-shop for people to gain years of education on issues in a short amount of time, discuss solutions, and organize to tangibly make it happen. It was going to be radical, social-justice oriented, and soley focused on realistic, tangible solutions- even if (and especially so) it pissed off fascist/imperialist governments.
The platform was going to be on the topic of the Sustainable Development Goals. It’s a global initiative supported by the UN. Most of the 200+ goals are on human rights and environmental rights. Every time I’ve spoken about it, someone has said they don’t like the language- I believe language isn’t relevant because human rights and sustainability take priority over wording, and the point isn’t to be lawful evil in some political DnD game.
It was going to be advertised on social media, with the primary audience being wikipedia-editor type people, and disabled people and others who enjoy volunteering. There would also be a Twitch channel, with co-working sessions and a class on the goals. Every organization associated with each goal would be contacted to collaborate.
After a strong plan to achieve the goals was developed on the website through collaboration, tangible implementation would start. Organizing fundraisers, resource distribution, volunteers, community action, strikes, and protest demands.
In the beginning of this year I discovered systems thinking. The site would be organized using that model in order to develop the best solutions possible.
Here’s what I wanted to work on, after the platform was launched: (I’d primarily work on US issues)
I wrote a blog, and I was going to add posts describing solutions to the platform.
Start an intentional community, as a fellowship. The sustainable development corps program. Free housing for people to work on whatever project they wanted to help their community. Possibly start in Japan due to cheap housing. I found an organization that helps people create these types of non-profits.
An international resource website- with every resource available to the public. The organization One Free Community is currently working on this, I'd have helped them.
Organize people to run for office, so we don’t have any counties where people have to choose between two Republican candidates. There were also going to be progressive people running as a Republican and switching sides after getting into office. People would volunteer to help candidates as well as voter guides so people could make informed choices on candidates and issues. The sustainable development platform would have legislation personalized for each area and political position, and this would be sent to every person in office. Candidates would be asked if they would pass it if they were in office. There are already organizations doing this work, so I'd help with advertising.
With fundraising, there’d be a text line where people could access censored news stories, information on voting, petitions, strikes, and protests. There are currently some organizations that do some of these things, so part of it would be advertising.
To break down propaganda, there would be a Hetalia- structured comic about US history till now so people could learn in a fun way. On Twitch I’d have a trivia game show about US politics. With fundraising, we’d buy billboards in rural areas that would have information and websites people wouldn’t have access to because of the algorithm.
On a somewhat unrelated note- in 2021, and a few weeks ago in 2023, I tried creating a business surrounding disability services I needed.
I couldn’t work on this because I didn't have what I needed, on so many levels, for years. And maybe this book makes it look like I did, but I spent the overwhelming majority of my time hoping for things to get better, and it breaks my heart thinking of the tangible progress that could have happened if things had been good from the start- not just for me, but for everyone.
The US is falling apart, and there's not a lot of people left that have their needs met and can work on things. I wish that the people who could, did. Right now we live in a culture of neglect.
I had a back up plan to do a fundraiser to hire others to do the work I wasn't able to do, but I couldn’t do that either. Life sucks ass. I don’t know what else to say.
When I originally wrote this blog draft months ago, I said:
"I will absolutely still be working on some of these things, and if you’d like to help let me know, I just planned to start these in 2022."
If you're reading this, I hope I still am. Feel free to see if I can be reached. I'll work on this until I can't- things aren't looking so good in society where I'm at, so I don't know how much longer that will be.
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