I just finished Naomi Klien's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate and have been thinking about it ever since. It connected a lot of dots for me in terms of the environmental movement, made clear what we should focus on, put a lot into context, offered a lot of hard to stomach realities (i.e. it was depressing) but led to a small, necessary glimpse of hope.

I've been struggling recently with the writing project I've been working on and by struggling, I mean I have only looked at it once since my move to Utah. Moving cross country, finding a job, starting a new job, scouring the internet to furnish my apartment has taken up a lot of my time, but also in the last few months, children have been separated by their families at the border, among other tragedies, and so figuring out where to put my energy seems increasingly hard to decipher.

I recently stumbled on Emily Johnson's essay The Darkness and the Needle by way of Bill McKibben a while back, and Johnson really got at a lot of the despair that I've felt recently but couldn't quite articulate. A fiction writer, she finally gave up writing because she found it more imperative to spend her time kayaking in Seattle ports, blocking Arctic rigs. "If I had the time," she said, "there's nothing I'd rather do [than write] and the lack of that time writing hurts me like a phantom limb sometimes. But I understand the stakes of this moment and writing cannot be my priority right now."

The threat of climate change is so great that Johnson had to give her writing up. The time to act is now, and so Johnson had to put the pen away. I feel the same way at times. Writing a book while working and living requires a lot of time and focus. It requires a lot of me, and I wonder whether my efforts are desperately needed somewhere else.

In the end, it pains me to give up my writing project but it also pains me to give up working toward the resistance and so most likely, I will do what I do best. I will put my effort in many things and see small but encouraging successes in both. If someone has a better idea, I'm all ears.

This post is different from most mainly because it's long, and I don't feel much like editing. I've been wanting to talk about a lot of things related to resistance here but never fleshed out my thoughts, thinking maybe it was too self-congratulatory but I think it's important to move beyond that and have concrete conversations about what we're doing, what we're not, what we should be doing, what's hard, what's easy. This is my attempt at being less vague, less wandering, just transparent.

Here's a rundown of everything in my toolkit regarding how to work toward a future with a livable wage, widespread public transportation, wealth redistribution, immigration reform, reparations and radical equity for the black community, affordable healthcare and so on and so on...

Donating - I donate a portion of my salary every year. I don't know if my donations are large or small in the grand scheme of things (I'm sure they're too small) but it's a habit I've tried to keep. Sometimes it pains me to punch my credit card numbers in because managing money is hard but I do think it's something I can afford to do, being I spend quite a bit on myself. I donate monthly to an international NGO, donate to a local social service agency in Chicago, donate to the Sierra Club around the holidays, and then donate any place that I feel called to after tragedies occur (for ex. Hurrican Harvey, Hurricane Maria, the Parkland shooting, the recent news about family separation at the border, GoFundMes of friends and family). For me, donating is an easy way to feel a little less helpless.

Also, as an environmentalist with a larger footprint than I would like, I tend to take my guilt and use it as motivation for larger donations. I bought carbon offsets a few years ago to offset the driving and flying that I do but then I started donating yearly to the Sierra Club because I felt that the Sierra Club was working toward a longer-term solution than offsetting (i.e. 100% renewable energy). This year, my footprint is even larger than usual because I have to drive to work daily, which means I'm going to try and donate twice as much as I did last year (kind of arbitrary but whatever).

Instead of the Sierra Club though, I'm leaning toward donating to Indivisible or Swing Left, two organizations spearheading the movement to flip seats for the midterm elections. More and more, I'm beginning to see that a lot of what I want to see changed won't be changed unless we have people in office who are pro-clean energy, pro-livable wage, pro-healthcare for all, pro-immigrant rights, pro-public school funding, etc. etc.

The thing is I could be putting this money into retirement and savings as many of my co-workers are doing (and talk about more than I would like). But I'm lucky enough to not have student loans (a privilege not afforded to many) and so I am able to contribute toward savings and retirement as well as donate. It's not always easy but the way I see it is that I am extremely privileged. I came into this life so far ahead, and so it is the debt that I owe. As Brittany Pact writes, "Spend your privilege. And then when you think you've spent enough, spend some more."

Volunteering - I have mixed feelings about volunteering. I think it's a good way to get to know an organization, to grow, to understand issues beyond the headlines and learn more of the nuance that comes with reality but in the end, I feel like short-term volunteering is only good if it entices you to donate (it's really the only reason organizations bring in short-term volunteers) and long-term volunteering/mentoring is great, but only if you can put in the time that it calls for.

I think it's best when people are compensated for the work they do and for skilled lawyers, social workers, educators, scientists to tackle the issues at hand and dedicate 40+ hours a week to social justice work. Plus I think full-time, skilled staff is much better for anyone receiving social services than a volunteer, which is why my default is usually towards donating (to help organizations better be able to hire/retain their workers) but obviously, everything is case by case.

Marching - Protesting is a form of therapy for me. The energy and community I feel at protests is palpable; it's one of the few forms of activism that doesn't feel disheartening so I try to make any marches that I can. I do think protests are more effective when not planned in advance (i.e. the protests that showed up at airports after the travel ban) but those are usually harder to make, understandably.

Voting - Obviously, a very important to-do in the fight. Naomi Klien writes in This Changes Everything, "Climate action has failed on Capitol Hill for the same reasons that serious financial sector reform didn't pass after the 2008 meltdown and the same reasons gun reform didn't pass after the horrific 2012 school shooting in Newton, Connecticut. Which in turn are the same reasons why Obama's health reform failed to take on the perverting influence of the medical insurance and pharmaceutical companies. All these attempts to fix glaring and fundamental flaws in the system have failed because large corporations wield far too much political power -- power exerted through corporate campaign contributions, many of them secret."

The majority of people in power speak to the wealthy because they receive financing from the wealthy and so voting in primaries, midterms, local, and federal elections is critical to take back any control we can. Both the Sierra Club election guides and Ballot Ready are helpful resources to look through before hitting the polls, especially for lesser known seats. I definitely recommend utilizing them as elections come up.

Calling legislators - I never called my senators before Trump was elected because I was much too shy. I still hate calling but as one of my friends said, "The good thing about Trump's election is that it's teaching us all how to be activists and I don't think we're ever going to forget that." Indivisible and 5 calls are my go-to for scripts and weekly priorities regarding who to call and what to say. I don't call as much as I should but I still do when I'm really compelled to. It's hard because I work and have to slip away -- plus it usually only feels slightly validating -- but I think it's a really important tool in the fight.

Staying informed - I have a tendency to spend more time reading and sitting on things rather than getting involved, which may not be totally beneficial, but I do think that being aware of the news is good. I just think that it should come in moderation.

I go in and out of New Yorker subscriptions (which I love but can't always keep up with), I listen to NPR (although it's not always great for my mental health), I read articles online but one thing I find really helpful is reading through emails/newsletters from the groups I'm involved with. Sierra Club newsletters, Indivisible emails, Swing Left emails are all quite good at giving up-to-date information on local issues and usually involve concrete call-to-actions, which I find to be productive.

Speaking Up - I could definitely be more vocal. Writing here is good (mainly for me take thoughts spinning through my head and put them somewhere) but I wish I spoke up more in real life, talked about all of this with people other than friends. Having conversations in real life not just about what is wrong but what we can all do I think would be helpful.

Buying ethically - I feel like there's been a big push recently, at least in the blogosphere, to buy ethically, to spend more time and money to make sure your purchases come from companies that support a livable wage, safe working conditions for workers, and promote environmentally sustainable practices. This is great obviously, and I have begun buying more clothes and other goods from ethical brands in the last few years but it's hard. I'm a big fan of companies like the Reformation, Everlane, PACT, Girlfriend Collective, and Patagonia and have bought from all of them but they are expensive and I don't love shopping online. It's hard for me to know what to I want to buy without trying it on so it's not my favorite option.

Ideally, I would love to buy everything either ethically made or secondhand but sometimes it just doesn't work out and I have to buy from Target or Ikea or the Gap or whatever. When I do, I try to buy something that I will use for a a very long time. Honestly, I don't love shopping because all of this comes into play, plus women's fashion changes constantly and I can never keep up, so I do the best I can. 

Mobilizing - The main takeaway from Naomi Klien's This Changes Everything? That mobilizing and collective action is probably the most important thing we can do to create comprehensive change on the scale that we need to. "Only mass social movements can save us now," Klein writes. 

While I do my best to donate, protest, vote, stay informed, and call my legislators, I put down Klien's book and immediately reached out to the Sierra Club (an organization that I feel does important work toward a clean energy future). The book helped me realize that nothing will change if I sit back and keep thinking small, individual acts are going to enact the sweeping change I want to see. Being part of a community and working collectively is at times frustrating, at times nourishing, and at best, effective. So if anything, if someone is looking for what to do, I think joining an organization that works toward a much larger movement is a good place to start.

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There are so many things we can do to bring about a more sustainable, inclusive, dignified, healthier future. We can compost, ride our bikes or take public transportation instead of drive, try to go zero waste, buy local, grow our own food, put our kids in public schools to fight segregation, run for office, register people to vote, use positions of power to cultivate diverse workplaces, work in social services or health care or education or what have you, and a million other things that I'm forgetting but I do think it's important to note that we can't do them all.

Making these changes takes time. I hate when greenwashed advertising or social media says that doing the right thing is also doing the easy thing. It's not! Usually, it takes more time to do and while these actions can come with benefits, they also often come with added, unexpected difficulties. Please, let's talk about both. Riding my bike throughout college meant I got easy exercise and felt the city in a more visceral way but it also meant I put myself in danger and my jeans got worn through quickly and sometimes I ended up at my destination wet from an unexpected rainfall. It was both wonderful and hard.

So instead, let's calculate what we can all personally do while also staying somewhat sane and then take some pressure off ourselves to bear the burden alone. As Naomi Klien writes, "The end of the world as we know it, after all, is not something anyone should have to face on their own."

But okay, phew, long-winded blog post over. This post might have zero relevance to readers if their politics aren't similar to mine but in case they are and these times are trying, anything else you're doing that I'm forgetting? Would love to hear.