M.A.S.S. Revolution

Or how this one got started.

It started on social media with a single post set to friends only. The post was about sharing skills and mutual aid. It was only pseudo-political since the post was well before the election. Actually Biden was still running and we were still half a year away from the election. At the time our focus was economic more than anything.

One of the focuses in the post was that you didn’t have to have a “skill” to be able to be a part of the group. That was a hang up for a lot of folks. Reassuring them that a) everyone has a skill, they may just not know it as a skill, and b) all that was required was a sense of curiosity and wanting to learn really helped them feel comfortable joining.

There was a ton of interest. It was a bit surprising. Email addresses of those interested were gathered. Three of us brainstormed, came up with date and location for our introductory meeting. A name was created, which led to an email account and then a website. And the first meeting invite was sent out to all the addresses. People who know others who were interested got them in contact with us.

The first meeting was held in August 2024. There was about 2 dozen of us. We talked about where we wanted to go with the group. What ideas we had, and we set a regular time and date for future meetings.

The group truly grew organically from there. Word of mouth has driven it almost entirely. New people contacted us to get on the email list. Now we’re at nearly 100 members. We are still getting asked by folks if it’s OK if someone they know can get added to the group.

Soon we added a Discord server to the mix and a Signal group. It was important for us to stay off of Met-ah but wanted to be able to exchange information quickly. We also chose apps which had end-to-end encryption for privacy reasons. Signal for instant messaging, Proton Mail for email, and Whereby for video conferencing.

In person meetings rotate every month. We choose topics using a survey of what people want to learn. The most popular topics get scheduled with different folks who either want to teach it and/or want to host it. Some meetings, however, are social events where we break bread and get to know each other. All meetings require an RSVP in order to get the address so we can keep track of how many people to expect and also not send out the host’s address into the ether.

This obviously may be tougher and slower to do in red areas, but if you know even one other blue dot, and they know one other blue dot, and so on, you can slowly build that community. People want to find you, they just don’t know where to look.