#information sorting

In the modern age, you can't do anything without a screen, the amount of information you have access to at any given moment is astronomical, and that is often completely overwhelming to people; especially those who (despite all this modern technology) are pretty low on time once their workday is done, and they've taken care of things like grocery shopping, household chores, dependents, and more.

I think the idea of information sorting as activism should get more glory 1) because it's important and meaningful, and 2) because it has a much lower barrier to entry for people who are themselves short on time or disabled and unable to participate in forms of activism (like protests) that require the ability to reliably show up in person.

I'm thinking about the people who write unbiased summaries of political candidates so that voters can get informed all in one place instead of having to scour the internet for stories and background on each candidate (which the average person definitely won't do btw). I'm thinking about whoever designed Resistbot, which lets you send canned (but personalizable) emails to your representatives about different issues and even gives you text alerts when a new issue comes up. I'm thinking about whoever made the Google Doc of resources for the United States Campaign for Palestinian Rights that they update with current activist activities and which thousands of people have used to join phone jams, protests, and email campaigns.

There are a lot of things that I personally consider activism that can be done almost completely from a laptop and a couch. Even with my fliers, I wrote all of those in my off-hours from university classes on my laptop, and then had them printed for distribution. The actual time I spent distributing the literature pales in comparison to the time I spent writing it and the planning I did before distributing it. Had I been unable to distribute it myself, I could have easily found a partner to take over that part for me. When I made the group chat for exchanging free/cheap furniture and home goods within my college town (to reduce furniture waste and give people in poverty a leg up), the creation of that space happened from my phone while I was like, waiting in line somewhere, and the poster I made to advertise it with the join QR code was made from my laptop. I certainly walked a good few miles putting those posters up, but once again, I could have gotten someone else to help me with that part had I been unable - someone did actually volunteer to get the posters printed for me and did. :)

Now I'm working on a project that I think does fall under "information sorting," and if you'd be interested in entering activism that way - with effort that can be carried out completely from within your home (as long as you're in the U.S. and have some kind of internet access), I'd invite you to check it out. I'm working on compiling Linktrees of resources by U.S. city that can help with homelessness to addiction recovery, and everything in between. Basically any social programs that operate within your city can go on the list - shelters, food banks, free clothing closets, gun violence intervention programs, programs to combat adult loneliness, etc. They don't all have to be non-profits either. For example, I included my city's homepage on MeetUp, which shows all the local adult clubs for things like poetry, meditation, cycling, and gaming. If you're unfamiliar with Linktree, it's a link-in-bio service that allows you to nest multiple links under a single link. It's most often used by creators on social media who only get one bio link but have a store, social media, a Patreon, etc. The idea is that a bunch of people will create Linktrees for resources in their cities, and then I will nest those Linktrees into a master-Linktree where you can choose to view resources by city. Here are the instructions to add a city if you're interested!

Interested in adding a city to the list? See the steps below!

Create a Linktr.ee account. You will need an email that is not already associated with Linktr.ee.

Name your Linktr.ee as “[city name]resources.” If that name is already taken, add numbers to the end (1,2,3, etc.). Do whatever you like with the style of your Linktr.ee (background, button style, etc.). If you choose a profile picture for your Linktr.ee, it must be SFW. 

Add resources for your city as individual links.

Do not add links to NSFW or any other inappropriate content. Your links will all be checked before your list is added to the master list, and inappropriate content may delay or prevent addition of your list.

It is also recommended that your first link be one that gives contact information for your list in case someone wants to contact you to add a resource. This could be in the form of a Google Doc, a link to an email, a Google Form, or something else.

Copy the link to your Linktr.ee and send it to [email protected] with the city and state in the email title to have your resource list added to the main list.

Once you complete the steps above, I'll email you back the link and QR code for the master list, and you can use that to make posters/fliers or share on social media to get the word out. That part can be done by someone else if you're unable to! Just having more cities on the list helps a lot.

The idea here is that people facing desperate situations in which they might need resources like housing assistance, supplemental food, shelter, protection from domestic violence, or something else probably don't have a huge amount of time to sit down and search the internet for hours looking to see if the resources they need are available in their city. In some cases, they might not even know certain services exist. Ex: My city has a completely citizen-run gun violence intervention program where you can call out a trained mediator to respond to a domestic dispute instead of the police. If these resources are all compiled in a list that they can get off a poster they see at the bus stop and then scroll through in a few minutes on their phone, that helps bring the information to them (Linktree is super mobile-friendly).

I hate that I feel compelled to censor tf out of this, but I want to show you all more of this project without hundreds of strangers knowing approximately where I live.

A bunch of you might already know this, but I've been working on resources lists hosted through Linktree for different cities in the U.S. My hope is to expand the project to a bunch of different cities, but you can only have one Linktree account per email, so I'd need other people to sign up and make resource lists for their cities then send me the links to be added to the master list in order to make this big. If you'd be interested in creating a resource list for the main list, you can use the instructions at the end of the post.

While this started off as me just wanting to create a portable index of local resources that people can easily access on desktop or mobile anywhere they can get a data or internet connection, it's also had the interesting side effect of showing me where the gaps in resources are for different nearby cities.

Like the first one I did was for the city I currently live in, which is mid-sized and has moderate issues with crime and poverty. Pretty much every section of the list I could think of was filled out except "gang violence prevention" because it's a relatively new issue in the region. There are double digits of shelters and food pantries, sliding-scale mental health resources, ADA compliant transportation options, substance abuse programs, etc. So even though the city is of decent size and has its issues, it's pretty well-served by the different organizations in the region.

Then I went to do the city where I'm currently helping out on housing rights action, which is slightly smaller but still has moderate issues with crime and poverty. There is only one shelter in the entire city, and it's only a cold-weather shelter, so it doesn't have the capacity to keep people past 7AM. The next nearest ones are 11 miles away in a neighboring city. There are no non-denominational shelters or food banks - everything is church-run, and most food banks are usually open once every two weeks, sometimes only during the hours that a normal person would be working a 9-5.

It may not currently be within my power to create shelters, food banks, assistance programs, etc. but these lists are shaping up to be a pretty neat way to point out to local people, particularly local politicians, in which ways the local community is underserved.

Just want to keep propping the project as it progresses since it's A) low commitment, and B) something pretty much anyone can get involved in. If you have questions about it, feel free to message me!

[Instruction text:

Interested in adding a city to the list? See the steps below!

Create a Linktr.ee account. You will need an email that is not already associated with Linktr.ee.

Name your Linktr.ee as “[city name]resources.” If that name is already taken, add numbers to the end (1,2,3, etc.). Do whatever you like with the style of your Linktr.ee (background, button style, etc.). If you choose a profile picture for your Linktr.ee, it must be SFW. 

Add resources for your city as individual links.

Do not add links to NSFW or any other inappropriate content. Your links will all be checked before your list is added to the master list, and inappropriate content may delay or prevent addition of your list. 

It is also recommended that you add a link that gives contact information for your list in case someone wants to contact you to add a resource. This could be in the form of a Google Doc like this, a link to an email, a Google Form, or something else.

But it's my little information sorting project where I use Linktree (which is free and lets you add unlimited links) to create resource lists by U.S. city. I then have a master Linktree that I add those lists to as links so that you can search by state and city from the master list, then see resources by individual city via the sublists.

Linktree also lets you add headings so that you can sort the resources into sections like "Food Assistance," "Mental Health," "LGBTQ+," etc.

The idea is that having a single link that can then link you out to all the relevant resources for a given city cuts down on the time a struggling person has to spend finding the help they need, no matter what category that falls into. Because it's also a single link that easily leads to more, it's super portable: It can be attached to a QR code, posted on social media, scanned from a QR code then copied to your phone notes, etc. And that makes this massive collection of resources shareable by flyers, magnets, stickers, social media, and more.

I've talked about information sorting as a form of activism before, but I think I have more to articulate about it now: People always call this "The Age of Information" and complain that with so much access to information, it's incredible that people can be so stupid, so uninformed, blah, blah, blah. I think what people are failing to see is that we are only just entering an age where we can actually efficiently sort through all that information to get to what we need quickly, i.e. the age of AI. I do not like how AI infringes on artists' rights, but it's really the first tool we've ever had that can substitute for hours spent on the internet sifting through sources to find what you need, and it's still in its infancy (sometimes it returns garbage results, doesn't understand the nuance of things, pulls from old incorrect sources...).

However, I would say a lot of people who are struggling in life do not have the time to do hours of research into finding resources to help them, which is why I do it and consider that a form of activism. People working paycheck to paycheck really only have time to work, and if they have to go all the way to the local library to get decent internet access, finding stuff like food pantries, community closets, and rental assistance programs can suddenly take hours worth of time, effort, planning, and coordination. My lists are meant to address that because they shorten the process to scanning a QR code and scrolling until you find "Food Assistance" then looking at all the ones available in your area. I even label the buttons with their days and hours so that you don't have to click the button to know when they're open. You can scan, scroll, and go "Oh that one is near me and it's open tomorrow 5-7pm. Great." I realize that some people don't have cell phones, but a lot of people do, so even if this isn't completely accessible to everyone, it's a start that could still help a lot of people'.