Seriously

So, I was thinking that I would go in a different direction with this blog. Something outside of the realm of citizen action. At the time I made this decision, I believed that we were going to elect our first female POTUS and continue with another 8 years of change for the better. At that time, I did not realize that we would be left with the most horrible man in that position. A man that is the antithesis of positive change. A man that would rather build a wall than build bridges.

With that – I feel that the original focus of rise up buffalo needs to remain. This space needs to be a place that residents can come to see what is happening in the city of Buffalo and the surrounding area. A listing of current and future events. Posts that discuss topics of interest to the activist community. Moving forward I will try to be more prolific in keeping rise up buffalo updated. I will also be looking for assistance in this effort.

Rise up buffalo has been around for quite a while (10 years as of 18 May 2016!), but has not been active for a while now. This is mainly due to my inability to keep things moving on my own. I have been busy with other things, but there are really no excuses. Going forward I promise to be more on top of the goings on in Western New York activism. As I said above, I could really use some help with this. I am always looking for guest posters, so please let me know if you would like to volunteer some of your words to the cause.

We must stay vigilant and continue to be allies to one another. Now, more than ever, it is important to keep our marginalized friends and family members safe. Continuing to be up to date with the activist community is a good step in that direction. Thank you for joining me on this renewed journey. Our new POTUS may end up being a devastating force, but together we can keep ALL of our leaders in check. We can write letters and make phone calls and assemble in the streets to peacefully resist the future direction of the this most wonderful country. At the root of it all, we are a great country, we just need to be sure that every single citizen has an equal voice and equal rights as we move into the future and away from our disgusting past.

Peace and happy organizing!

Chantale (aka hippiegrrl)

Changing Things Up

As you can see, it has been quite a while since the last official post here at Rise Up Buffalo. We have been busy working on other projects and getting locked out of our accounts, but we are ready to pick up where we left off, with a few tweaks to the original theme. Rise Up Buffalo was originally created to be a resource for the Buffalo, NY activist community. Our main goal was to inform the activist community on matters of importance. To spur actions and continue the growth of community building in the city. In the past 5 years, we feel that Twitter has become a major source of this type of community building. The opportunities for activist outreach through Twitter are endless. Coupled with other social media outlets, Twitter has been an excellent resource and continues to move change in Buffalo and across the planet. Humans writing pieces on blogs cannot keep up with the minute to minute nature of actions and Twitter was really made for that type of interaction.

Having said this, it seems that Rise Up Buffalo needs a change of focus. Instead of maintaining a standard of information gathering and dissemination for current actions, we feel that it can be a repository for nostalgia in the Buffalo community. So, as we stated back in March, we want to move forward with the writing series listed on the Series Up pages. This will become the main focus of Rise Up and we hope that you will join us on this new leg of our journey. All submissions are welcome! Please read more about this series and contact us with questions. In the meantime, be on the lookout for the first installment of Buffalo, Then, coming in November.

Peace, love, and activism,
Chantale