Light in the darkness

[swan_tower]

I'm a solar-powered creature and don't much like the darkness of winter, but I love the symbolism of this season: the rekindling of light in the darkness. It is, in a sense, our yearly miracle, and the fact that it's caused by the elliptical orbit of the earth around the sun doesn't make it any less magical to me.

We are now one year into my monthly series of tikkun olam posts. (Linked to the DW mirror because that's where the most responses have been happening.) The darkness, as always, seems like it will go on forever. But if we're to turn the corner and head back toward a brighter world, it won't happen automatically; it takes effort, and the more of us who try, the faster it will go.

Tikkun olam: repairing the world. Volunteering, donating, performing acts of kindness. Whatever you have done in the last month to make the world a better place, whatever you have planned for upcoming days, share it here. You don't have to apologize for not doing more or deprecate what you've done. Sometimes we've got more in us; sometimes we've got less. But anything is greater than nothing, and so anything, however small, is worth counting.

Comments

[wshaffer]

I made a small campaign donation to Doug Jones, who's running against Roy Moore in Alabama.

I signed up for training to work with an organization that monitors and documents ICE enforcement activities in Santa Clara county: https://www.pactsj.org/santa-clara-county-rapid-response-network/. I've been wanting to do more related to immigration rights - this seems like a good way to dip my toe in the water.

And, I actually started this back in October, but I've been learning Spanish. Because as I've looked into opportunities to get more involved in immigration rights, it's become clear that I can be a great deal more useful with some basic fluency in the languages most commonly spoken by local immigrant communities. And I have a bit of a head start of Spanish compared to Vietnamese.

[marycatelli]

Donated food to the monthly church collection and to a special Thanksgiving one.

donated toys to a Christmas collection for a children's hospital

[swan_tower]

My own contributions: apart from the usual petition-signing and office-calling, I've been continuing my efforts to personalize the emails I send to my elected officials, so it won't just be another copy of something they've read already.

A couple of weeks ago I volunteered to assist with re-mulching the rose garden in a local park.

I've donated again to the Native American Rights Fund, as I did around this time last year.

I'm trying to be extra-thrifty about re-using things, repairing them instead of replacing them, etc.

And I intend to donate to either a food drive, a toy drive, or both this month.

[juliet]

Replied to a consultation about improving cycling/pedestrian provision in my area. Helped a friend move house (driving a van and humping boxes around for 8 hrs). Complained about a particularly shitty piece of transphobic reporting. My kid and I planted broad beans to come up next spring. Took the kid to an Amnesty Family Action Day where he made solidarity art stuff and helped me write a couple of letters.

[green_knight]

This has been a month of potentially large changes and small acts for me: building better foundations. I've kept up my Patreon pledges, supported GoFundMes when I could and signalboosted when I couldn't. I've made an effort to listen and boost #ownvoices which I think is more important than ever: in a world where 'talent' is still equated with 'white males', we need to work on our own bias and boost the voices of awesome people who all too often get shouted over.

[cgbookcat1]

I voted in my local elections, and made a donation to Worldbuilders/Heifer.