Given how horribly my society is behaving I have decided to give at least as much money as I spend on myself to charity each of the next 3 years. My guess is that I will continue this past 3 years, but I will see how it goes and then re-access my long term plans.
I don't spend much, compared to my middle class USA peers (for housing, health insurance, food, car, technology, travel …). I have been spending more over the last couple of years and I expect spending will continue to go higher, in the next 3 years (as I reduce my long time frugality).
I think it is important for us to take action to protect the USA and the world from the horrible behavior by those in charge of the USA government now. Like most of those in the USA, that have prospered, most of my wealth is due to living in the USA. I feel I must use some of that wealth to fight the incredible damage being done to the people of the USA and world by the Republican party.
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| The USA Capital (photo by John Hunter) |
We need many others to take meaningful steps to protect the world from the USA's actions. Direct action (volunteering in a food bank, for get out the vote efforts, to provide legal help for those being harmed by the USA government's violating the constitution and the rule of law…) is great; money need not be the way you participate. For me, giving money to charity is way I can make a difference. For others, different actions may be sensible.
My charity donation posts on Mastodon - https://fosstodon.org/@curiouscat/tagged/charity
Some of my 2025 donations
Trickle Up
Southern Poverty Law Center
Navajo Hopi Health Foundation
https://navajohopihealthfoundation.org
Develop Africa
https://www.developafrica.org/
Marketplace
https://www.marketplace.org/about-us/
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School
https://www.brennancenter.org/
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Texas Civil Rights Project
Partners for Health
I hope you will take time to consider how much you have benefited from the rule of law, common decency, civil rights, the previous commitment to science and engineering in the USA, relatively minor corruption (certainly compared to the current kleptocracy level of Republican corruption we now are in the midst of), health care policy that wasn’t ignoring science…
And then consider making serious sacrifices to make sure the USA reverses course and makes meaningful changes to the disastrous policies and behavior they have engaged in and encouraged recently.
I fear for our future if those of us who can do much more chose not do so and just pretend their actions don’t matter. We must take action to stand up to the incredible abuses of our government today, if not, the harm to all of us, and even more so to future generations, will be heartbreaking.
Certainly the USA has long had many problems. I thought for most of my life that even if our progress toward fairness, decency, improved economic opportunity (for those that are not trust-fund babies)… was too slow, in significant ways we were getting better decade after decade. The last decade has seen us destroy decades of progress. I also now think, my estimation of how much progress we were making was far too optimistic.
I hope a decade from now the USA has fundamentally changed and realizes how close we came to critically damaging the future of hundreds of millions of USA citizens and billions of people around the world. I am old enough and wealthy enough that the harm my society is inflicting on ourselves, future generations and the world are likely to be very minor compared to most of the billions of people that will be harmed.
What I am concerned about is the damage my society is doing. I need to do something substantial to try and help halt the damage that is increasing every week and hopefully start to recover from this catastrophe. So this is my attempt to help do what I can to protect the world from the catastrophic damage my government and the Republican Party are doing to the USA and the world.
Related: I Fear for the Future of the USA if We Do Not Vote in Favor of the Rule of Law this Year (2024) - Society is being shaped for us while we are busy making other plans (2011) - Disregard for the Rule of Law by Government (post from 2013, things are so much worse now that it is shameful how badly we have chosen to behave recently) - Freedom Increasingly at Risk (2008)
