Everyday hundreds of pieces of information hit my inboxes from email and throughout social media platforms and I’m pretty sure that at this point, this isn’t exclusive to me. I honestly don’t have the time nor energy to sift through it all and again, pretty sure that a lot of those who’ve tended towards my platform don’t either.
I get it.
The world right now is filled with turmoil and frenzied half truths, it’s coming at you pretty fast and no matter what side of an issue you are on, trying to sort through all of this just simply cannot be done.
Earlier this week I hosted a Town-Hall(esque) Zoom meeting with some like-minded folk and it was actually pretty amazing. I admittedly fucked up on my efforts with this in only hosting a single meeting instead of the 2 that I had talked about so apologize if the only time selected was not conducive to your schedule. I promise to hold more of these and give more notice and work to allow more into the meetings.
The event was not recorded for anonymity reasons, something that’s actually pretty important at this given time - where you can easily become a part of Cancel Culture on the side of being Cancelled.
Predominantly, my efforts outside of Substack are focused inside of the LinkedIn community and from this platform alone, you can get a sense of what I’m saying. Where the intent of LinkedIn is business networking, wrong-think can lead to some having their livelihoods impacted by saying or agreeing with the wrong messages or messengers. Visit the platform and go through some of the postings. What you will notice is that a lot of people who are active have a message attached to their profiles that reads along the lines of “My opinions are my own and not those off my employer or company”.
While some companies may have requested this of their employees, others have been victim of targeted harassment by those with a differing opinion attempting to get them individuals fired or their business cancelled in their professional community.
It’s ridiculous.
There were around 30 people in attendance to my town-hall and I was floored by the flow of information. The meeting lasted around 2 hours, but I could have easily sat through an entire evening of the conversations.
What a lot of us that realize is that what is going on right now, isn’t quite right and in this, a lot of efforts that are working through trying to fix things but with seemingly limited results. This is not for the lack of trying and certainly not by those who give up easily.
However, my biggest takeaway from the meeting was not one of futility, it was one where more people need to be taking part. We need larger audiences and more people paying attention…but due to internet censorship and selected media narratives, along with sheer volume doesn’t really allow this to happen.
Along with this, who has the time?
15 Minutes to Freedom.
One of the speakers at the meeting this week, Tom, has decided to drop his name into the political arena…not because he ever had political aspirations but to more so because he never had political aspirations saying - “things have gotten so bad that I had to run for office”.
Tom is a good guy and I actually hope to interview him for my substack. It’s not because of his specific political beliefs but more so because of his messaging. The essence of his message is that our current failures in democracy is not just because of those who are in elected positions but also because of those who voted to put them there.
We’re all to blame.
And to a certain extent, he’s not wrong.
I’ve said before and will say again, our democracy doesn’t end at a ballot box, this is only where it begins.
We, all of us, are the majority. We have the ability to voice our concerns…and instead of bitching to our friends, families, neighbors when things go wrong, we need to unite and start changing the conversations to the ones we want to have.
CTV: Feds spent more than $600K hiring influencers in 2021
Our tax dollars are being spent by the feds to push single-sided narratives by people who have large amounts of followers on social media platforms - influencers - because it works.
My thought is…why aren’t we doing the same?
Not in spending another $600k out of pocket to pay others…but more so by taking a little time each day or week as the time affords to spreading and supporting our own messages.
15 Minutes to Freedom, isn’t that we will be able to change the world in 15 Minutes…it’s that if all you have are 15 Minutes per week outside of your current commitments, we need to maximize what we all get from your 15 Minutes.
Let’s start sending more emails…let’s take to the social media platforms…let’s have more town-halls to discuss what is important to us…let’s take back our voices and let’s do this together.
It’s time.
Time to not feel alone anymore:
Time to stop being afraid:
Time to take back the platforms:
And time to do this in whatever your time affords.
United!
If you’d like to be included in the 15 Minutes to Freedom initiative or would like to take part in the town halls, please complete the registration form →Registration.
In appreciation of your time, my substack will remain committed content specific, not be used as an activist platform but as we grow, my intent is to try and remain relevant. All town-halls will be announced through here but I will also be using a separate email based outreach for communication as per those who have signed up specifically through the registration.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reply to this email or add them to the comments section below.
Just look at how the Trucker movement resonated all across Canada. There's a growing realization that this country is in deep trouble but dont know what to do about it.
there is a path to more anonymity from a end to end encrypted email service from a small canadian company 01 communique. The basic service is free and users emails cannot be hacked even by quantum computers. It is called IRONCAP. I understand that the emails do not reside on their servers so you can communicate any message to wish to intended parties. ironcap.ca