Small Stands Tall

Small Voices Are Stronger Together to Make a Difference

Dear Substack Community -

When you came to Substack to write or create or read, you probably thought this would be a cool place to grow and explore. And it is. But Substack leadership has put a lot of mechanisms in place to promote and platform voices that are large, hateful, and intent on harming others through disinformation.

We—the collective, small voices of creators and community members on Substack—believe that this is wrong, it is hurtful, and it has the potential to stifle growth for many of us. Worse, it further marginalizes many of us who are actively targeted by the increasing wave of local and global laws, policies, and social stigmas being promoted around us.

Small voices have big power when we stand together in solidarity, and most of the publications on Substack are small, just like us. This means we get to decide how and where we spend our time, money, and attention.

Signers of this letter believe in the following:

• We help our neighbors by calling out hate-speech, racism, misogyny, intolerance, bigotry, xenomisia, homomisia, transmisia, ableism, genocide, and violence when and where we see it by reporting and blocking such content and sharing the collective knowledge about harmful accounts.

• We endeavor to build community by caring for one another. Caring means showing up for one another even (especially) when it is hard or scary to do.

• We reject the intentional platforming of voices that spread hatred and disinformation.

We stand proudly for kindness and inclusivity, and we invite you to stand with us. Small voices can achieve huge change when we unite.

I Laura Durnell hereby sign this open letter in solidarity with other small publications seeking to build community and embody our shared values. We are all publishing this letter on our individual Substacks for visibility. Thank you for reading.

Signed,

Small Voices against Big Hatred

Laura Durnell (she/her/hers)