#although i'm happy to share Gross Puritan Anecdotes with anyone who asks

[maddie-grove]

What Can You Do?

A really important part of advocating for any cause is sitting down and figuring out what you realistically can contribute. Making decisions on the fly or in the throes of emotion often leads to doing less than you intended (because you didn’t figure out how it would fit into your routine/budget) or more than you can handle (which leads to you needing to put out fires in other parts of your life, which in turn leads to you...doing less than you intended in the long run). Making a plan is its own step and deserves to be recognized as such. Do not worry that you’re wasting time by planning before you act. I’ve made that mistake before in many areas of my life, and it always led to a lot of unnecessary stress and made me less productive sooner rather than later.

The first thing you can do is think about the resources you have. For example:

Money: Can you afford to give $10 or $100 to charity a month? Or are you barely getting by?

Health: Are you pretty strong and healthy? Or do you have physical conditions that would make it particularly risky to catch coronavirus or be thrown in jail without your meds?

Time: Do you have a decent amount of free time? Or are you having to teach your three kids at home while working at the grocery store, and also you’re moving in two weeks?

Emotional Bandwidth: Do you have a pretty good handle on your stress and sadness? Or are you having a particularly hard time with trauma or mental illness or family issues or working in an emotionally demanding job?

Knowledge: Are you pretty familiar with the history of the people you’re trying to help or the problem you’re trying to solve? Or did you just hear the term “systemic racism” last week? 

Experience/Skills: Do you know how to organize a protest or annoy your representative into doing something or invoke your right to a lawyer? Or are you at a loss of how to apply your particular skills to any of this?

Power/Authority: Do you have a job or hold a volunteer position where you’re able to help the people you want to help? Or...not that?

Freedom: Are you free to decide how you expend your resources or express yourself without fear of violence or destitution? Or are you under the thumb of an abusive partner or caregiver?

None of this is to say that only the strongest, most self-actualized millionaires should be expected to help; it’s just that (a) everybody has to work with their actual circumstances and (b) everybody has strengths and weaknesses in what they have to give. 

If you have a little extra money but can’t watch the news or consume a lot of social media without crying yourself to sleep or having a panic attack? Buddy, no one needs you to watch the news that bad. Donate to the NAACP Legal Fund, ask a politically engaged friend what they’re writing their rep about, and get as much help for your anxiety issues as possible--not just so you’ll be a better advocate, but because you’re a human being and you deserve help.

If you work full-time as a nurse or a legal aid attorney or something else emotionally (and maybe physically) taxing where you help vulnerable people? The most important things you can do are almost certainly going to be related to work. Learn as much as you can about how the cause intersects with your work, and advocate for ways to make things better for your clients/patients, as well as your coworkers who don’t have the privileges you do. Then go home and rest. If you can go out and protest after all of that, you have my admiration, but you don’t have to run yourself ragged.

If you’re a college student, broke and stuck at home with not much to do now that classes have wrapped up? You don’t have to give up eating all protein and produce in order to donate to charity; you can instead take this time to inform yourself and get involved in organizations.

And if you’re truly not able to do anything, because you’re in the middle of a crisis or you’re living with controlling people who will hurt you for even reading the wrong thing? Get away, get safe, get better. Don’t wreck your life to help other people in the short term. At best, you’ll temporarily be in a position where it’s even harder to help others than before. At worst, you’re dead, and never able to help anyone again. Live to help people another day, when you’re stronger and can do more. You deserve a life where you are able to take care of yourself and help others. Everyone does.

Other things to keep in mind:

If you’re unsure whether you’re doing too much or too little, ask another person. I recommend someone who personally knows you and genuinely cares about you, but wouldn’t take your side in a dispute with a third party if you were being a real dick. 

Decide on what you’re going to give and stick to that for a set amount of time. Then you can assess if you are able to do more, or need to scale back.

Don’t worry if other people are doing more than you. If you admire them for what they do and you want to work up to that, that’s wonderful, but your contributions are not worthless just because they’re smaller.

If you’re worried about other people doing less than you (not actively doing harm or not participating because they don’t care or “want to remain neutral,” just doing less than you), channel that energy into helping other people do more. Do some people avoid helping out of bad faith? Of course. Do you always know who those people are and never end up making someone more vulnerable than you feel guilty instead? Nope. Send a petition or one of those streaming videos to your friend you don’t think is that poor, or recommend The Color of Law to your anxious friend whom you privately think should just buck up and get back on Facebook. 

Don’t focus so much on being a good person; focus on doing good things. These can include actions (donating to a mutual aid fund), words (challenging a racist comment), and introspection (reexamining beliefs). The Puritans spent a lot of time wondering whether they were good people, and they actually had some very good ideas about social justice, but they were also mentally exhausted all the time and once accused a one-eyed dude of fathering a one-eyed pig. (Just like in recent Star Wars fandom.) Also, most people, especially people you don’t know very well, put more value on how your actions affect them and those they care about than your overall character. Which is fair.

You can and should listen to people who have activism experience and/or are more marginalized than you are, but no one can be your brains for you. You have to come to an understanding on your own, and that’s okay. 

I’m not a Methodist anymore, but something John Wesley said still resonates with me:

Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.

This seems like a tall order on the surface, but what I like about it is that it doesn’t tell you how much good you need to do for it to matter. You should try to do more throughout your life, but what you can do always matters.