Friendship is magic and rebelling against the state is punk! There's a lot of issues in this world but I know we can fix them, since a massive amount of them are due to policies and rules we put around us. I have hope for our future, but that hope doesn't mean much if we don't do anything to repair and heal the world and ourselves as best as we can.

It can be so easy to feel like there's nothing we can do in this world with ever-increasing policies that harm us, but there's plenty we can still do to make our communities better.

So, I'm making a new series of Punk Tactics, in which we talk about resources to help your community, how to safely and actively protest, learn more and how to better deconstruct the world we live in, and how to communicate these ideas and practice these while being safe.

For this part 1, it will be mainly focused on finding communities and causes you can help participate and aid in! we are nothing without each other, and helping to build a strong community and knowing activities you can participate in will help a lot in that feeling of helplessness -- when you can see and make change in the world, it makes holding on to the hope of a better future so much easier to hold onto.

No city, neighborhood, or community is perfect, everyone has an issue they're dealing with, but we don't have to take the burden of it alone. Mutual aid is just like that one song, 'Lean on me'. Being for one another helps lessen any burden, and boy oh boy are there a lot of burdens hitting us right now.

There's plenty official and unofficial organizations of mutual aid, from official 501c non profits in your area to maybe your neighborhood just starting a food drive or shared tool area. Anything to help out your friends and your community with whatever is in need, such as if they just need help moving furniture and you have a truck or car with space.

It's all about being there for each other, especially to ease economic burden. Being able to drive a friend sometimes so they don't have to rely on ride sharing services all the time, volunteering at a local event center to help things go smoothly, sharing resources, all of these can help us better be there for each other.

I especially wanna shout out soup kitchens and food kitchens. Around 14% of households were food insecure in 2024 here in the USA, which equates to around 18.3 million households here according to the site. Someone around you is food insecure.

It's 2026 and we could solve world hunger and a myriad of other issues that are killing people such as access to safe water, but we don't spend money or create policies that focus on that -- hell our current administration have affected the health of millions and directly wrote in the deaths of tens of thousands by eliminating over 90% of foreign aid contracts

So with that being said, if you have food to spare, or you're looking for some food yourself here in the USA, foodpantries.org can help connect you to local resources. homelessshelterdirectory.org both has resources for rent assistance, where shelters are, as well as soup kitchens and food banks.

Once again too, mutual aid doesn't have to be specifically at an official organization too. Talk to your neighbors, help out in need, especially with stuff like cleaning if you can do it. Helping a friend with a 'depression room' to bring it back to baseline can make such a big change since our environment affects us so much. Be there for people in your community. And if you don't have a community?

I'm gonna keep this one a bit more tailored my stars here (Likely you! You're one of my stars if you keep an eye on this site of mine, I appreciate you a lot for taking the time to look around and read! ), and assume you're queer, and either into Tech or making stuff, anything creative really. At the very least, you really like reading since you take the time to read this blog !

If that's the case, you should look into hackerspaces / makerspaces! While both are listed on hackerspaces.org, you really can't go wrong with either even if you don't consider yourself a hacker! Hacker is admittedly a pretty broad definition anyway, and it doesn't have to be about hacking technology! It's mainly just someone who is willing to solve problems or goals by thinking out of the box.

A lot of these hacker and makerspaces are physical areas that have lots of tools like 3d Printers, sewing kits, computers, and more that might be suited to the makerspace or hackerspace.

Additionally, there's a lot of just general lgbtq centers around the USA, and a bunch of them have ways to hang out, talk, chat, and find your community that way!

While this isn't every lgbtq center in the USA, it is a good chunk of them and there's sure to be one in your state, and typically some of these are online and some are in person. It may be a good way to find those around you and share and talk about the queer experience !

You also gotta check out your local cafe, they're always a hub for more information! I don't just mean your starbucks and dunkin, but an actual local cafe.

A decent amount of them usually have cork-boards where people pin information and events in your cities, whether it be local indie bands, markets, or just community events. If you can find one that also tends to have board games, that's usually my litmus test of a good cafe that also has events going on, and if they have events going on and they're local to you, you're bound to meet some cool peeps.

There's also the library, and I promise you unless you're a librarian, you're probably not using your local library enough. So many resources and classes are there, if you're anywhere in the US you can also use Libby and gain access to the ebook and even audiobook versions of books, which has helped me a lot with wanting to get more information in and not just watching breadtube on my work commute.

Your library knows of events going on, and may even be able to get you a discount or even free tickets to cool stuff in your city like art museums, theatre shows, and more! Plus they have a lot more than books! Dvds, textbooks, classes, appliances like 3D printers in some of the fancier ones, and more! Depending on the library it can fulfill that 'makerspace' role, especially if you don't have a makerspace near you!

Even if you aren't at YOUR local library, you're always welcome to come and relax inside and read (though you won't be able to take a book home without a library card). Don't sleep on your local library, and if you haven't already, get a library card!!!!!

This one will be the hardest to give direct information for, but its too important to not try. Unlike the previous chapters, political organizations are typically local to your city, state / province, and country, so its not like a one-size-fits-most website where I can give ya.

What I can tell you is that you should search up what political organizations are in your country, maybe even searchin for kinds of organizations such as a green party or socialist party like DSA or whatever matters to you, and then seeing if there's a local chapter in your area or if you can help online.

Labor Organizations are going to be very similar, in which you'll have to search up for them in an area central to you, as well as your field of work or maybe even workplace if its a big enough corporation.

Additionally when it comes to causes, protests, and rallies, those too tend to be local. If there's a pressing issue you feel strong about, such as the genocide and colonialism happening in Palestine, chances are if you search up something like your area + Palestine, you'll find resources and groups to both learn more about the conflict and what you can do such as planned protests for it.

Surprisingly, at least here in the US, instagram is surprisingly very useful for both finding these organizations and rallies near you. But i do wanna stress this is just the first step. While insta is good at getting information out, it's also a platform owned and controlled by Meta.

Thus, while its a good introduction to see perhaps where events may be for this, if you ever wanna get more active and closer to these orgs, you're going to need to consistently show up in person and talk to the other organizers -- there tends to be more than just an instagram page if you truly wanna be really involved.

If you do protest though, there's guidelines you're gonna wanna follow to stay safe and stay covered, especially in this surveillance age. We'll be going over that in Part two of Punk Tactics coming out later in June! I hope I can meet you there!

quick note, most of the linked resources here are either USA-centric unfortunately, but if you just search up stuff like 'food bank near me' or 'library near me' i'm sure you can find stuff specific to your country.