As federal agencies are defunded, immigrants deported, scientific articles censored, and as mass layoffs of federal employees continue, I’ve noticed that the question, What can I do? comes up almost daily online and in conversations at all kinds of gatherings—sometimes in the grocery line.
It’s a question with many layers. Here are some:
What can I do as a voter and concerned citizen to help challenge the blatantly illegal or unconstitutional measures the Trump administration (along with his unelected sidekick, Elon Musk) is taking to reshape American government along classic authoritarian lines?
What can I do as a private citizen to resist “obeying in advance,” or normalizing what needs to be recognized as abuses of power, threats to democracy, and abridgment of basic rights?
What can I do as a white person or person of color, as a person of my demographic and generation to reach across the lines that divide us from one another and join hands humbly with others in this effort?
What can I do as a member of the workforce or a retired person or a participant in decision-making in any institution to help maintain sanity, compassion, clarity, and grace as we navigate our options under increasing censorship or surveillance or disinformation?
What can I do as a parent or grandparent to help kids understand those parts of this constitutional crisis that affect them directly—new regulation of language in schools; removal of books from libraries; new forms of de facto segregation, possibly ICE raids and certainly fear among children of immigrants or other vulnerable people?
What can I do as a reader, conversational partner, and sometime writer to help find, learn from, and disseminate accurate information, hold liars accountable, and call out Orwellian manipulations of language and media that spread confusion?
What can I do as a person of faith to reassert and reaffirm the depth and breadth and kaleidoscopic complexity and richness of my faith tradition over against dangerous oversimplifications that legitimize bigotry and inequity?
What can I do as a person who prays? How do I direct and deepen my prayers? How do I focus my attention rightly on any given day? How do I maintain peace and even joy that run deeper than the turbulent currents of this historical moment?
I’m sure each of those questions could be fine-tuned, and needs to be, as new situations arise for each of us. I find that writing them out for myself helps me reflect more clearly on what may be “the call of the moment,” a term a mentor taught me years ago, and which has been a rudder for me in times of turbulence. My intersecting identity markers are reminders that I speak from a particular corner of the public square, that not all dimensions of any large public issue are immediately apparent to me, that I have vested interests or unconscious biases that may need modification. Also, because of how I’m situated with my particular skill set, geographic location, economic resources and limitations, obligations to students or clients, and constellation of family and friends, some of whom depend on me, I don’t make decisions about what I can or should do in a vacuum.
The first thing and the least I can do is make an action list under each of those questions (and then act!):
1) call representatives and other decision-makers both to hold them accountable and to thank and encourage them when (as they increasingly must) they act ethically and with courage;
2) show up and speak up at schoolboard or city council or faculty or vestry meetings and make sure the most pressing issues are addressed;
3) learn what organizations in my neighborhood are already giving assistance to people most likely to be deported, lose access to services or food, or lose jobs or medical coverage;
4) take time to read about people in earlier generations who have courageously and intelligently resisted abuses of power;
5) share the news sources, books, articles, documentaries, or YouTube clips that have helped me; stay in conversation with friends about things that matter, and help each other find ways to inform as well as protect children, since they can’t be completely shielded from the consequences of some of the changes;
6) pray with others who pray, and ask pastors to extend their leadership to carefully, consistently, even subversively bringing the prophetic wisdom of scripture to bear upon this time of deep disruption;
7) recognize that we are in a moment when neutrality is complicity, and that justice doesn’t always lie in the middle of the road, but sometimes requires stopping by the side of the road. Sometimes even veering off into the weeds to take a road too-little traveled.
Marilyn McEntyre has taught courses in literature and spirituality at Westmont College, Princeton Seminary, and New College Berkeley. She has published many books of poetry and prose, including Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies.