5 Ways to Fight Back This Year That Don't Burn You Out
You are allowed to be tired and still be in the fight. Here are five sustainable ways to push back and stay visible without running yourself into the ground.
The news is designed to exhaust you, and exhausted people stop showing up. That is the point of it. So the most radical thing you can do this year might be to build a way of fighting back that you can actually sustain. Not one furious weekend and then silence. Here are five ways to stay in it without burning out.
1. Pick one cause, not all of them
You cannot carry every fight. Choose the one closest to your heart, put your energy there, and let go of the guilt about the rest. Depth beats doomscrolling.
2. Give small and regular beats big and never
A recurring $5 to a local org, a mutual-aid venmo, a monthly hour volunteering. Sustainable support is worth more than one guilt-driven splurge.
3. Be visibly, stubbornly yourself
Visibility is resistance. A flag on your porch, a pin on your bag, showing up as you in a place that would rather you disappear, is a political act that costs you nothing extra to keep doing.
4. Protect your own battery on purpose
Log off. Touch grass. See the people who love you. You are not a quitter for resting, you are staying usable for the long haul.
5. Find your people and move together
"It's me against the wall" is a heavy way to live. Local orgs, group chats, community meetings. Fighting back is lighter when it is a we.
"Feeling powerless against the hatred present in my city."Customer
"Spite, and the need to outlive those who would see me dead and deny I ever existed."Customer
If that fire is still in there under the exhaustion, good. Let's keep it burning without letting it burn you down.
Put it where the street can read it
Sometimes the most sustainable act of resistance is the one you do once and then it works for you every day: putting a statement where the whole street can read it. Our statement flags, like We're All Human and She Believed She Could So She Did, say the thing out loud so you do not have to keep finding the words. They are part of our free-flag offer, you just cover shipping, and every order helps fund LGBTQ+ charities, so a defiant porch is also a donation. Fighting back does not have to be loud every day. Sometimes it just has to be up, where everyone can see it.
