Hey, folks. This following post is meant for adults in the United States who are seeking concrete actions they can take regarding current events. If these things do not apply to you - including if you cannot engage with current events without entering psychological crisis - then you are under no obligation to interact with this post. Please take care of yourselves.
The following list includes political actions, immediate care actions, and reading that I've found helpful. It is not a comprehensive list, and it is okay if you cannot do all of these. Everyone's capacity is different; choose something that you can do, and know you are not the only one taking action.
I'd like to start by linking some articles that have been helpful to me as a disabled and currently unemployed person who has been struggling with paralyzing despair and suicidality, both before recent years and now. If you're just looking for the actions, you can skip past them; but I wanted to put these at the top for the folks like me.
How To Do Enough (Especially When You Feel Like You Can't) (this appears to be locked behind having a Substack account, so I'll quote the most relevant excerpts)
Every culture has a mythology: larger-than-life stories that tell us how the world works and what characteristics make a hero. Ours is a very young culture and our primary mythology is younger still: superhero stories.
There are some great things about our superhero mythology. The idea of powerful defenders making the world better through talent, determination, and force of will can be very inspirational, and the “with great power comes great responsibility” message is a good one. These stories can get pretty nuanced in their explorations of good and evil, state oppression, working outside the system, and so on. Cool.
But there are messages in these stories that can be harmful, and those lessons are in the air we breathe whether we’re fans of the genre or not. Only exceptional people can triumph over the forces of darkness. Fighting evildoers involves direct confrontation with bold and flashy moves, either by yourself or with a group of friends just as special as you are. Superman doesn’t need help, not really: he’s Superman. He can do it on his own. The traditional super hero dilemma isn’t whether they can. It’s whether they want to.
Our vision of the heroic is very individualistic, and that leads to a lot of guilt. Surely we should be able to fix things, right? If we could find the right words, the right actions, we could fix this: face down the administration and force them to stop. And if we can’t, we’re helpless. Useless. Not enough. You can know intellectually how silly this framing is and still feel it on a deep, personal level, and a lot of people do. It’s something I’ve struggled with. The people who write these comments are often struggling with it too.
Here’s the truth: it takes a lot of people to save the world, with a LOT of different skillsets and talents. There are so many jobs to do, and most of them aren’t very glamorous, and we’ve been taught to view a lot of them as small and inconsequential. But all those jobs need doing, and none of us can do all those jobs alone.
I have no doubt that your social circle provides you with comfort, dear reader, and I am equally certain that you provide them with comfort right back. These things keep people going. Having friends we can trust and lean on helps all of us through tough times, and times are really, really tough right now.
I have a friend who periodically asserts that she’s not doing enough. Three years ago, this friend inaugurated something we call Soup Night. Once a week, someone makes soup at their place, and then whoever’s free comes over and eats the soup. People are encouraged to bring bread or a side dish, but no worries if they can’t. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Three years later, there are multiple soup nights in New York City and it’s the locus of an extended social network of people who enjoy each other’s company. It’s a spot of warmth in my own life that’s sustained me through some pretty dark times, and I know I’m not alone in that. In a million years, I could never have made Soup Night into the institution it’s become: I’m not a great cook, I have a lot of anxiety around organizing events and I don’t have the social network for it (or I didn’t, before Soup Night helped me gain one).
We all bring something to the table. A lot of people take their own skills for granted, especially when those skills are traditionally unpaid labor. Arranging a gathering and making a delicious soup out of nothing is as natural for my friend as it is anxiety-inducing for me; it doesn’t feel like a skill to her. But it absolutely is, and I sure am glad some people have it.
If you want to do more but don’t know what to do, a good place to start is by thinking about what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing. Make a list, if you’re so inclined. Include everything, even if it seems completely irrelevant to our current situation. How can those skills make the world around you brighter and better? How can you use them to build community or give people something they need, tangible or otherwise?
This is such a weird story, but: in late 2021 I had a full-on nervous breakdown. The brownstone directly across the street from me had a red door and, since it was Christmas, the occupant had hung a big wreath on it. I spent a lot of time staring out the window at that door. It was such a cheerful color of red, and such a lovely wreath, and it was this tiny bit of color when the entire world felt grey. You’ve done things that have impacted people in ways you’ll never know. Anything that makes the world more beautiful can be a message of hope for someone who might need it very badly.
I've found all of Rebecca Solnit's Meditations in an Emergency worth reading, but for today, I'll link her most recent article: Between the Impossible and the Inevitable: The Case for Defiance (aka Never F**king Surrender)
History offers countless examples of those who not only did not obey in advance of whatever threat hovered over them but did not obey after threat became reality. At the heart of this country's own history are the enslaved people who refused to give up believing in their right to be free and the quest for freedom and the Indigenous people who refused over centuries to abandon their land, their rights, and their culture in the face of immense pressure to do so. The rest of us can take instruction from their tenacity.
The first: calling your representatives in the House and the Senate. You've undoubtedly seen people talk about this already, but it bears including regardless, especially since people don't always provide clear instructions on how to do so. 5calls is a site that will look up your representatives for you, that also provides scripts. If you'd rather do the lookups manually, you can find info here:
Senate: https://www.senate.gov/states/statesmap.htm
House of Representatives: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
There are a number of scripts floating around, if you struggle with finding words. Here's suggestions from Bluesky user celestepewter. User vermontgmg also has a suggestion for something to include, though not a script.
(If you're wondering whether it's worth calling, I think it is. Republicans have been quietly defecting, and Democrats could always use a boot in the butt to do the right thing. If nothing else, we can make them more afraid of us than they are of Trump.)
The second: attending protests. Not everyone is capable of doing this, but for those who are, Mobilize.us is a site that shares local opportunities for protest and advocacy. You'll likely find more opportunities via connecting with local organizers.
Via the NAACP: Staying Safe During a Protest
Via the HRC: Tips for Preparedness, Peaceful Protesting, and Safety
There's also an upcoming general strike on May 1: no school, no work, no shopping. Still a ways away, but worth mentioning so that folks can make plans.
The third: looking after others in your community. This is a pretty broad category, so here's a few suggestions:
Donate to food banks. Prices for everything are sky-high, government safety nets are shredded, and the most vulnerable are being hit the hardest. But we can still look out for each other. (Remember, money donations go further than item donations.)
Help local friends with self-care. There will be many people who are struggling to be functional at all, today and more days to come. If you have your own oxygen mask on, check in with them and see if there's anything you can do to help. It might mean watering their plants, or making them food, or washing their dishes. These may seem like small kindnesses, but even the smallest kindnesses can keep people going.
Be there for each other. Reach out; spend time with each other; cry together; carry onward together. Tyranny thrives on making us think we're utterly alone. But no matter what happens, we will still be here, and we will still be here together.
I'm going to mute notes for this post for my own mental wellbeing, but you're welcome to reblog and repost it wherever, credit not needed. Look after each other, and don't forget to also look after yourself. We can't know the future and we can't change the past, but we can show up for the present.
