carnistprivilege:

potential direct action that any volunteer-based ancom org could look into doing:

• food drives and/or grocery delivery
• secondhand or donated clothing delivery
• prescription pickup and delivery
• assistance with filling out paperwork, e.g. applications for food stamps.  the more languages your volunteers speak, the better.
• assistance with making phone calls and dealing with phone trees, e.g. when applying for food stamps, getting health insurance off the state exchange, or even making doctors’ appointments and having prescriptions refilled
• free community meals
• helping people find babysitters for their kids
• free rides to appointments; even if it’s only one way that can make a huge difference to somebody who would otherwise have to spend over an hour on public transit to get to their doctor
• free rides to the grocery store or the thrift store or whatever
• give away items such as housewares, kitchenware, handcarts for carrying groceries, etc
• a regular trip to costco or wal-mart to pick up cheap generic medications for people.  one costco membership would suffice for this
• free bus/subway tickets paid for by your org and handed out to people
• fliering and postering – not with slogans or whatever, but with simple, concise, useful information.  addresses and hours of local food pantries; addresses and hours of local community-run thrift stores; information on obtaining advocacy or other assistance for applying for food stamps, disability, unemployment, health insurance; addresses and hours of free clinics in the area; information on grassroots organizations in the area that are already providing such services but that a lot of people probably don’t even know exist.  if these signs can be printed in multiple languages, that’s even better.  yes, a lot of this info is available online, but a lot of people either don’t have access to a computer or don’t know how to find it.

a lot of this stuff is probably not feasible for every org, of course.  but if you have the time, energy, and resources to put a “SNITCHES GET STITCHES” bumper sticker on a stop sign, then you have the time, energy, and resources to put a “LOCAL FOOD PANTRY: [AREA CHURCH], FRIDAYS 10AM-12PM” sticker on a stop sign.  so why not do it tbh

Also free repair services!

(I am totally not saying you shouldn’t also put “SNITCHES GET STITCHES” stickers everywhere. Building radical communities and voicing real counter narratives in public spaces is important.
But we can totally do both.
& a lot of the things above are things that are great for activists who lack a large community or who need to be free from the stress of arrests and shit at this point in their activism.