Don’t Despair, turn it into Care.

Laurie Penny wrote a brilliant piece in New Statesman recently as a call to arms after the general election ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down – choose action over despondency when coming to terms with the general election result.’

She makes a very compelling case for doing the absolute opposite of how a lot of people felt on Friday, which frankly was utter despair and disbelief. She advocates turning this all on its head, changing the emotion to action.

‘There’s a reason depression and its precarious cousin, anxiety, are the dominant political modes of late capitalism. This is how you’re supposed to feel….

Right now, the important thing is to take care of ourselves and one another, and to be as kind as possible. Because there’s a big fight ahead, and kindness is more important now than ever.

Giving back to society can make your life much more fulfilling and happy, particularly in times of crisis or anxiety. What passion do you have, what would you start?

A few years ago we started The Clothes Club to do our little bit; little bits can add up to bigger bits! We started a clothes swapping community in 2012 and have run 4 pop up fundraising events, giving away over £3,500 to social enterprise and charities like Hackney Pirates, Foodcycle, and Bootstrap Campus. We have over 450 people in our community now and launched in Sydney and have had interest from ex-pats in Nairobi and Barcelona too.

We all volunteer our time doing it to help good causes. We have an element of control over it as we run it how we want and the best bit is meeting such great people.

Our next clothes swapping pop up is on Dalston Roofpark on May 21st. We’re supporting Childhope and Art Against Knives if you’d like to join us

@clothes_club_uk

https://www.facebook.com/events/377366149122342/