Peter Hosey

The most helpful thing you can do is take the first step, whatever that is.

If that turns out to be the wrong thing for you, that's fine. Back out, then find something else. It's OK if you don't find the right work or the right group first try. Keep trying.

There is something you can do that will help. I promise you that. It could be meeting facilitation; keeping notes; maintaining a website; investigating an issue and doing a write-up. Activism doesn't always look like activism.

Find your piece of the work and do that.

It may take you a few tries, but you can find the things you're needed for and the people you'll work best with.

And don't forget to rest. You can't help if you're exhausted and burned out. Take your rest when you need it so you can get back in it when you're ready.

There are no saviors. Nobody is in charge. Fortunately, a little knowledge and a little effort go much farther than you might think.

As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg says, “we need all hands on deck and there's a lot of deck”. So find your piece of the work and do that.

If this looks familiar, it's because I posted it last year as part of a discussion thread. I decided today to make a copy of it as a stand-alone chost.

Over on my self-hosted blog, I posted something from my Twitter archives, where I explored how “radical” is not necessarily bad (or necessarily good), is a spectrum, and is relative to a frame of reference.

Is this thing bad because every version of it so far sucks, or is it bad because it is inherently wrong?

(Or both. Both is quite possible.)

Consider surveillance systems: You can point to racial disparities and other biases, false positives, false negatives, etc.

All these defects may be true, but the people advocating for such systems will simply say “don't worry, we'll have better versions in time”. “The technology will get better.” “They're working on it.” All manner of hand-waves and rule-making attempts that either gloss over or attempt to deal with defects and misuses but do nothing about fundamental wrongness.

Some things are just fundamentally wrong. Mass surveillance is an example of that—mass surveillance is fundamentally wrong because it infringes on our fundamental human right to privacy.

If you can lay out a convincing case for why something is inherently wrong, and show how the latest shitshow being produced is an example, then there's no technological advancement or procedural enforcement that can stand against that. The thing is wrong, and it should be put in the bin and the bin thrown in the sea—there is nothing else for it.

Another way of looking at this is that “every version of this so far has sucked” is, at best, a “not now” argument, whereas “this thing is inherently wrong and making it more effective makes it worse, not better” is a “not ever” argument.

Being able to clearly argue on both fronts is an asset for convincing people to help you defeat bad things.

There's a common pattern in a lot of writing against various bad things (I am deliberately not citing specimens; look for them yourself) that focuses on material harms.

Disparate treatment is a common one. Discrimination. People wrongly treated by cops or other government officials. Lost revenues or added expenses. Lost time. Lost jobs. Criminalization. Eviction.

Material harms can be worth pointing out, but they can also be an entryway into the weeds. You can end up in debates weighing these harms to these people against those harms to those people. Relative comparisons of the numbers of people or the magnitudes of the injuries (real or hypothetical) done them. Even if you don't end up debating, you can end up up spending a thousand words on evidence for a conclusion better supported by ten words of principle.

As I said above, some things are just fundamentally wrong. By all means, cite material harms insofar as they help support your case, but some things are just fundamentally wrong and you should be willing to stand on that.

Is this thing bad because every version of it so far sucks, or is it bad because it is inherently wrong?

(Or both. Both is quite possible.)

Consider surveillance systems: You can point to racial disparities and other biases, false positives, false negatives, etc.

All these defects may be true, but the people advocating for such systems will simply say “don't worry, we'll have better versions in time”. “The technology will get better.” “They're working on it.” All manner of hand-waves and rule-making attempts that either gloss over or attempt to deal with defects and misuses but do nothing about fundamental wrongness.

Some things are just fundamentally wrong. Mass surveillance is an example of that—mass surveillance is fundamentally wrong because it infringes on our fundamental human right to privacy.

If you can lay out a convincing case for why something is inherently wrong, and show how the latest shitshow being produced is an example, then there's no technological advancement or procedural enforcement that can stand against that. The thing is wrong, and it should be put in the bin and the bin thrown in the sea—there is nothing else for it.

Another way of looking at this is that “every version of this so far has sucked” is, at best, a “not now” argument, whereas “this thing is inherently wrong and making it more effective makes it worse, not better” is a “not ever” argument.

Being able to clearly argue on both fronts is an asset for convincing people to help you defeat bad things.