Every day that we show up to fight matters

I needed a pep talk, and maybe you did too. Plus, a new resource.

Every time I open Twitter these days I freak out a little bit. It’s not hard when we are all waiting on tenterhooks for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade (as promised in the leaked draft opinion) or Christian fascist groups are sabotaging Pride with violence. The Texas GOP just adopted a platform declaring homosexuality as unnatural and asserting that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president. Men with guns keep shooting people, sometimes in large numbers, with guns they can buy more easily than many people can register to vote, or buy sudafed, or yes, get an abortion. The Republican attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, which launched the January 6 insurrection and got people killed, has continued into 2022 with over 100 GOP primary winners backing Trump’s false fraud claims. And yet, somehow, more people claim to want Republicans in charge of Congress than Democrats. 

I’d say I don’t mean to freak you out, but I honestly can’t help it. I need some company. 

Of course, I get why we’re all frustrated (me included). Everything feels impossibly hard right now. The pandemic is ongoing, two recalcitrant Democratic Senators have stymied essentially the whole of the Democratic agenda. The weather has been absurdly perfect in New York in the past few weeks, but across the country record heat waves have already begun and summer hasn’t technically started yet. 

Even in the face of all that, however, there’s hope. Here’s what I know: 

Our work was never going to end with one election. There was no version of this story where we elected Democrats in 2020 and never had to worry again. We have a lot that we’re up against - entrenched corporate power, voter suppression, radical right wing violence, our own understandable all consuming grief and exhaustion. But we also have our own power, our own voices. We have generations of activists and movements that we can build on. We have the power of our communities and our indefatigable support of each other. We have people to fight for. 

They want to keep us small and scared. They want to convince us that we don’t matter, that we can’t make a difference, that it’s better to just give up. But they are wrong, and they don’t get to decide what our future looks like. 

There are about a million ways you can show up to this fight, and protecting and expanding our Democratic majorities and keeping power from fascist Republicans is one of them. If that’s something you’re also interested in, I hope you’ll find this resource I created helpful. It’s a guide to volunteering in the 2022 midterms, organized by how much you actually want to interact with people. There are options for talking to strangers and talking to friends and talking to people who can’t talk back. There are resources and organizations and places to donate. I hope you’ll check it out and find the best option for you. And I hope you’ll share it with your friends. 

We matter. Our voices matter. Our time, our energy, our commitment - it all matters. Every day that we show up to fight matters. We can, and will, make a difference. See you out there.