Survival and activism
I wrote this short blog post a while back in response to a posting on the Care2 site, www.care2.com, for cause bloggers. I didn’t hear back, but felt I had to give it a shot. I obviously didn’t give this post enough time or energy or the right direction, but even so, getting paid to blog would be a little beyond belief. I doubt it would have been much, but still….
_______________________________________________________________________________________
I first came across the Care2 community way back in early high-school. My idealism and passion for a better world immediately pulled me in, and I enthusiastically began using Care2’s leveraging of the power of advertising to save just a little bit of big cat habitat, conserve marine wetlands, and protect the rainforest. I wasn’t quite changing world events just yet, but I was making a difference, however incremental, and that’s what I cared about. It thrilled me to see an organization aggressively using online media and the power of economics to effect change. Today, I still see Care2 doing exactly that.
–Edit–: In fact, since I wrote this, I’ve learned from Care2 Founder Randy Paynter’s blog that Care2 is currently combating a DDOS attack – a malicious effort to seriously undermine Care2’s effectiveness. Randy writes: “We do not know who is behind the attack. Clearly, someone is threatened with the impact the PetitionSite is having. It’s possible the attack is being coordinated by a single unhappy hacker, or it’s possible it’s related to some of the petitions we’ve recently had related to international events. It’s pure speculation at this point as we simply do not know, however its size and characteristics suggest it’s a well coordinated attack.”
So there you have it. As some reader’s have pointed out, the fact that whoever is behind this attack feels threatened by Care2 means it’s making a positive difference. I encourage you to use or explore Care2. — End edit.–
Since that time, my activism has counter-intuitively expanded to become more local. I’ve passionately raised awareness about my watershed and its salmon populations, chipped in with the local cycling advocacy group, and participated at the civic table. But I’ve also come to realize that though we might want to change the world, there are limitations to how much we can do, and it’s important not to overextend, but to function within our capabilities.
These are tumultuous times, to say the least. Gone are the days when the only thing that mattered was “making it” in the big wide world. Fashioning a product to sell, acquiring personal property, growing your family and staying in touch with your network – it’s easy for these things to pale in comparison to the challenges that science and intuition tells us are coming, if they’re not here yet. A rapidly warming climate, proliferation of packaging and industrial waste, growing worldwide debt loads, all these things and more call on us to act differently, to do more than we ever have before, above and beyond the demands of our careers, and yet for many of us, simply staying afloat in the ever-changing sea of current events and economics is challenge enough.
Some give in to apathy, reckoning the pace and scale of the things that are happening are simply too much to effect change over. That’s not the spirit we need. If we can cultivate an attitude of passionate involvement, and value effort even when the result doesn’t materialize, we can change the course that we’re on. It’s what I’m working towards in my areas of interest, and I hope you do the same in yours.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Today I’m using Care2 more than I ever have before. I mainly use their e-mail service, figuring that if I’m going to do e-mail anyway, why not do it with an organization that spreads goodwill by raising money for habitat and endangered species preservation among other things, rather than with some anonymous, for-profit, corporation like Hotmail or Gmail?
–Second Edit– One other Care2 feature that I’ve contributed to is absolutely free, and amazingly ingenious. It involves using advertising dollars to fund preservation initiatives. Companies are given the opportunity to advertise on the Care2 site, and Care2 hosts a link that people must log onto the site in order to click. By logging onto the site, they are exposed to that company’s logo, and voila, these companies have gained exposure while contributing their advertising dollars to preservation. For example, one company that stands out as gaining profile in my eyes is Kashi - the high-fibre healthy cereal company. Now I don’t buy much cereal, but when I do I’m more likely to buy Kashi because of their contribution to the Care2 “Click-2-Donate” sites.
To do some vainglorious chest-thumping, but also demonstrate Care2’s effectiveness (something I was skeptical of for a while) since I started clicking, which I did pretty much daily in early high school and have only recently started doing again, I’ve made the following contributions out of the Care2 totals:
Offset 18 lbs. of carbon/2 549 495 lbs. total
24 THOUSAND sq. feet of Marine Wetland, American Prairie, and Rainforest habitat/ 612 MILLION total
305 ACRES of Big Cat habitat (tiger, jaguar, snow leopard)/ 27 400 SQ. MILES total
830 pcs. fruit for primates/ 18.7 MILLION total
supported Care2 kids for 505 days /18.2 MILLION total
659 pets/ 18.3 MILLION total
1218 letters protesting violence against women/ 12.5 MILLION total
As well, Care2 supports efforts to help seals, oceans, and to eliminate the environmental causes of breast cancer, albeit with less tangible ways of measuring progress.
I really see Care2 as a shining example of one of our primary options in this rigged economic climate. Until we can achieve wide-reaching reform, we have to try to create a shift in spending habits from supporting harmful practices to supporting beneficial ones, and being willing to pay a little more for it if we have to. Done en masse, this can effect change.–End second edit–
Those of you who read here regularly will have noticed a precipitous decline in the frequency of my posts of late. This is no accident, and has a definite reason, so don’t despair! For the time being, I’ll be posting infrequently, and with little mention of myself. That’s probably as it should be anyhow.
