I absolutely love Care2.com. It’s the place where I really started to become an activist outside my own head and ideas—where I started actually taking action and learning about issues rather than just being mad about what goes on in the world. A friend’s mom told me about the website and I was immediately hooked. It’s grown into something enormous since then (that was nearly ten years ago—wow! Has it really been so long?), with lots of actions, petitions, and functionalities. It even has a place where you can “earn” credits to donate toward things like planting trees or providing clean drinking water to people in lesser developed nations. In a word, it’s sweet—at least, to me it is.

But lately, I’ve been getting some weird emails from Care2. I like to take part in the daily actions. Sometimes they are just reading about an issue and learning more about it; often times, they are asking you to sign a petition. Either is okay, though I’d much rather take a direct action (petition) than anything else—or something even stronger, like a call to a direct physical action. However, lately the actions have included things like… cooking tips.

I’m serious. One of the biggest activist hubs on the Internet—possibly the biggest one—is asking me to make a difference these days by making homemade pancakes or grilling something? I don’t get it!

Care2, I want to make a difference, not learn to cook, at your site. I can do that at so many other sites. How about you give us some really great, concrete ways to take action for once—like “Join in the phonebanking for XX cause!” and provide a phone number or online training session? How cool would that be, actually taking real, direct action with other activists across the country instead of just clicking something?

Maybe you could even generate actions for people based on their interests. Animal rights activists could print out some stickers to give out against whaling, for example, while people who support gay marriage could be given a list of contacts to call—or better yet, events to attend or protest. I know it can be done; I do volunteering for candidates and for events from home all the time for several groups. Give us something to really make us activists instead of people comfortably sipping cappuccinos clicking through petitions throughout the day! That would be amazingly empowering, methinks.