Who are these Riseup birds?

Dear Riseup Users,

Hello, hello, we're bugging you again to donate to Riseup. We are 20% of our way there. Thanks to all who have donated so far. Come join the dance, if you can. (https://help.riseup.net/donate)

We're often told, when we meet people here and there, that we are a tech collective shrouded in mystery. We provide services worldwide and are only about a dozen people, so most of you all don't personally know us. Add to that the fact that we work with computers, encryption algorithms, TOR nodes, and whizzywigs all day and night, and who are these people anyway? Here's some things you might not know about the Riseup collective.

First, Riseup is full of radical activists who think a whole bunch needs to change in the world, and have decided strategically to work on creating alternative tech infrastructure for the social movements we love. We don't have any sense that what we are doing is more important than anyone else's work, but we do think that what we are doing is important and someone should be doing it. All of us are engaged in other struggles, actions, and groups.

Second, Riseup made the strategic decision early on to be a big tent when it comes to supporting other activists. Well, a big tent within the left (and yeah, we know even that term is really contentious.) We've all seen a lot of infighting among people who want to get to the same place we do but have different theories about how to get here. So while we're generally horizontalist/direct democracy types, we support a much broader range of tactics, strategies, and worldviews than that, because we want big, strong, healthy, and diverse social movements to thrive worldwide. We want there to be hundreds of ideas and actions on fixing the climate, ousting horrific governments, and stopping the rich from eating everything (to name a few things we want.)

And third, Riseup probably shouldn't exist right now. What we mean is, we're twelve years old so it may seem like these cats have it all figured out, but there have been so many times when we've been on the brink of folding, and so many times when our collective members have really put themselves in a bad place (financially, health wise) in order to keep Riseup going that it's a bit miraculous that we're still around.

All of this is to say, that when you donate to us, it's really not going to some faceless room full of robotic sentient computers, but some really nice activists who want to keep supporting you in the work that you do.

Thanks and love,
The Riseup Birds