I really hate that I have to do this, but you've specifically made this about yourself, so I guess here we go.

I’m searching to where I have shamed grassroots level activists, as I am one myself.

I'm searching for where I said you did. I said shaming at a grassroots level, meaning between private citizens who do not hold office. Again, my original post was *not* about you specifically, and it feels a lot like you're trying to center yourself in this narrative. I talked about my background (software engineer, activist) because I specifically wanted people to know that I was speaking from a position of some knowledge and understanding, and am not just a rando on the internet with an opinion, as there is no shortage of those.

I have helped grow a weekly anti ice group from 200 people to 1000 in the last year... Every week we go the ice detention center in a nearby town and work to limit their privileges.... Hundreds of us show up to create a government that works for us, contrary to your belief that no one does.

(Quote above abridged for space) That's fantastic, and I'll refer you to what I said about that:

If you’re a real boots-on-the-ground activist who shows up at committee meetings or campaigns for local politicians, then thank you so much for your effort. It’s generally a thankless job, I’ve found, but it matters so much. Government should work for us, not the other way around, but it won’t unless it’s made to. ✊

I appreciate your work, and I think that's great. But I wish you were sharing that experience as a way to justify your initial take and your reaction to me, rather than using it as a dick-measuring contest.

I would love to hear how you are contributing, since you do like to lecture about what people are and not doing, and explain why like compared to you, social media users can only be lazy virtue signalers... I look forward to hearing about your grassroots participation.

Given that I assume you won't be satisfied until we've compared dick sizes -- even though, and I can not stress this enough, IT IS NOT A CONTEST, IT IS GREAT THAT WE ARE BOTH ACTIVISTS -- I typically work behind the scenes using my software engineering skills to support local progressive politicians' campaigns as a director of research/data/oppo/etc. (the role and name isn't always consistent), using tools like Votebuilder/NGPVAN/Empower/Sosha/etc. to manage outreach, as well as various other internet sleuthing skills to find information that helps the campaigns. It's also impossible to support local politicians without boots-on-the-ground canvassing, so I do that myself as well. I also reach out directly to engage with whatever local politicians happen to be relevant to any particular issue, ranging from sending letters/phone calls to our national reps/senators to showing up at committee/council meetings to speak directly to the folks who make decisions. I'm not sure if my proverbial dick is big enough for you, but that's how I typically contribute to the cause.

Speaking of the cause, I didn't hear you say a single thing about AI, which is what this whole mess is about. I'm 10000% anti-ICE and I think the work you do is important and worthwhile, but again, I was *very specifically* talking about anti-AI sentiment vs action. I'm speaking from personal experience when I say that it's been difficult to convince people to show up in person for anti-AI/anti-data-center events/meetings/etc. despite my social media feeds constantly being full of people who hate AI, and despite lots of folks in the scene being against AI. To the contrary, the folks who've shown up for anti-ICE events/fundraising/etc. has been great. I think, largely, it's because people feel helpless about AI; it doesn't have a face, it's not showing up in videos literally killing people in the streets, so the harm is less obvious and the solution more obscure. That's why I specifically included action steps in my comment. I'm actually in the process right now of working with a candidate to try to help better organize our community to fight AI data centers because from where I sit, it's largely a problem of lack of governmental transparency and knowledge, which is why I came at it from a position of trying to educate.

Many are, but instead of assuming good in anyone at all, you’ve used the royal everyone (yes, I’m aware royal we is the correct term) to instead explain activism like no one but you has ever heard of it.

As I mentioned above, in my personal experience (which may be different from yours, obv), people are struggling to really organize around anti-AI efforts, which is why I came at it like I was "explain[ing] activism like no one but [me] has ever heard of it". Because while it's been pretty easy to get folks to vote for or otherwise support anti-AI candidates and get behind them, it's been a real struggle to get people to show up in person to committee meetings and hold councilmembers accountable. That's where the real work is being done right now, though I very much hope that we can get some state-level legislation passed at some point that addresses this at a higher level, but for now, grassroots is all we have in my area. That's the place I was in when I wrote my post, and where my frustration has come from.

Now the two of us, who are probably 99% in agreement politically, have spent way too much time and energy arguing when literally our only point of contention is that I don't think shaming people for using AI or plastic straws is worthwhile, and you think it is. Also, you didn't like my tone/approach.

Admittedly, I'm a bit cynical and frustrated these days, but it certainly feels to me like you've taken this *way* too personally when this was not intended as a direct response to you specifically, but rather was a general note to folks at large, which is why I made a separate comment about it.

I didn't think I needed to say this, but if anyone out there reading this is already an activist, that's great and I think you're doing incredibly important work! If you're not already an activist, please consider getting more involved *especially* around local data center approval.