Well meaning citizen joins and gets slammed by junk mail.

The reason why I don't join anything.



Nettle: Nettle vs ACLU





Not even a week had gone by before the deluge began. Big, thick colorful envelopes arrived, not from ACLU, but from Sierra Club, Americans United for the Separation of Church & State, the Nature Conservancy, Americans For This, Americans for That, Yadda Yadda Yadda. Organization after Organization after Organization. Most of them I had never heard of.



I was astounded. Not only by the sheer volume of the material, but by the considerable weight of the material. Typical envelope: glossy 4-color with big bold lettering urging me to join the organization. Inside, paper after paper, each a different size, often a different color -- as if maybe I might read JUST ONE of these, and be convinced to give money. Then there were the customized pens. Calendars. Posters. Personalized address labels. Colorful stamps. Bumperstickers. Flyers. Brochures. Booklets. Pamplets. Beg Letters. On and on. The number of trees that must have been cut down in order to manufacture these solicitation packages -- think about it. And to think that one of the worst offenders in this regard was none other than . . . Sierra Club! You think they'd notice the irony of their wasted mailings.



Well, it didn't take but a moment to put two and two together and assume that there was a direct correlation between my joining ACLU and my receiving daily inundations of junk mail from nonprofit organizations.



And, by the way, the junk mail was so fast in arriving, it beat the arrival of the ACLU membership card (a real card-carrying ACLU member!). But I simply had to assume ACLU had given out my personal information against my wishes.