5 Things You Can Actually Do When the News Feels Hopeless

I am, on paper, one of the more politically engaged people I know.

I've called my representatives. I've donated. I'm on three mailing lists. I have a folder of bookmarks called "things I should be doing." My therapist has gently suggested that maybe I refresh the New York Times less.

But for the last two years, I have woken up every morning with the same feeling, and I'm guessing if you've clicked on this article, you have it too:

I am doing things, and none of them feel like enough.

In 2025, more than 600 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were filed in the United States. The DOJ tried to seize trans patient records. Idaho criminalized public bathroom use for trans adults. Target pulled half its Pride aisle.

And every morning, I refresh, and refresh, and refresh.

Here are five things I have actually done. Actually, physically, in the world. That have made the news cycle slightly more survivable. They are small. They are concrete. They are finishable. They are, I think, the point.

1. Make your home loud.

This is the one nobody talks about.

You have a wall. The wall is doing nothing. Every day, that wall is a quiet, neutral wall in a neighborhood where someone walking by might be looking for proof that they're not alone.

Hang a Pride flag in your window. Hang a trans flag above your bed. Stick a small flag on your bike. The visible queer house is a public service. For the kid walking home from school, for the parent of a trans kid moving to your block, for the closeted neighbor across the street who is, right now, trying to figure out if they're safe here.

This is the thing I underestimated for the longest time. The flag isn't decoration. It's a signal. The neighborhood reads it.

I hung mine eight months ago, and three different people in my building have come up to me unprompted about it. One of them was a kid.

2. Find one local organization and put $25/month on autopay.

I know. I know. Donating feels like outsourcing the work. I felt that too, for years.

But here's the thing about $25/month: you don't think about it. It happens. After a year you've given $300 to a local org that is putting that money directly into trans healthcare access or asylum legal fees or community defense or whatever your local people are doing.

Pick one. Local. On autopay. Then stop thinking about it.

The mistake I made for years was donating $100 once a year in a guilt spasm. The thing that actually moves money for these orgs is the recurring small donor. Be the recurring small donor.

3. Have a real conversation with one person who isn't already on board.

Not on the internet. In person.

I know the discourse around "you can't change minds on social media" is exhausting and also true. But the data on changing minds in person, especially in a one-on-one, over time, is actually really good.

Pick one person in your life. A family member, a coworker, a friend's partner. Someone who is not aggressively against, but is not really for. Not someone you want to fight. Someone you want to meet halfway.

Have one slow, low-stakes conversation a year with them. Listen more than you talk. Don't try to convert them. Just hold the door open.

This is the longest play on this list. It's also the only one that scales. Every person who gets pulled one inch toward us is one inch the other side doesn't have.

4. Boycott loud. Buy local.

I stopped shopping at Target after the 2023 Pride aisle retreat. I will never stop being mad about it.

But you know what's more useful than my anger at Target? My money going to queer-owned brands, local LGBTQ+-friendly businesses, and bookstores that haven't capitulated.

This is a labor exchange you can do today. Pull your dollar from the corporation that ran from us. Put it in the small business that didn't.

If you don't know where to start: your local queer bookstore. The coffee shop with the flag in the window. The brand that's been showing up in your Instagram ads with actually-political copy and you keep almost clicking on. Click on it.

5. Be visibly out, on purpose, in one small daily way.

This is the one that took me the longest to do.

I am out, obviously, in my life. But there's a difference between being out to your people and being visibly out to strangers. Walking around with a pin on your bag, having the flag in your window when a delivery driver shows up, wearing the ring at the grocery store.

Every time you do this, you are a data point for someone. A queer kid in a stroller. A trans person new to your city. A parent walking past your window with their nine-year-old who just asked about the rainbow flag.

You will never know who you helped. That's the deal. The deal is you show up anyway.