Treading Lightly
Treading Lightly

17 Things I’ve Been Doing to Resist

It’s been a full year. A full 356 days of standing up for what I believe in, fighting for what’s right, and bracing myself for the next New York Times notification.

Many of the things below are not necessarily new to my life – some have been around for at least a decade – but they have taken on new meaning to me. Here’s a fairly exhaustive list of what I’ve been doing to resist (in no particular order).

Resist Reading List: Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud

1. Reading

Books are powerful. Written language carries weight and meaning beyond the letters on the page. There’s a reason the current administration doesn’t want anyone reading newspapers or getting their right to free education.

Newspapers, magazines, blogs, and books illuminate other perspectives and immerse you in someone else’s experience for a brief moment. They add context and gravity to the things happening around us and help us better understand the real stakes. While I think any reading can be an act of resistance (and self-care!), here are a few of the books I read in the past year that fired me up or gave me much needed understanding:

The first two are must-reads.

2. Supporting Real News

It’s vital to support valuable sources of truth with money. I have a NYTimes subscription, but just remembering to turn off my ad blocker and spending more time with their content can make a difference for newspapers and journalists.

Resist: Bike to Farmers' Market

3. Riding My Bike

Every time I pick up my helmet instead of my car keys, I’m giving this repulsive administration a massive middle finger. Oil money has bought them off, and I refuse to put any back in their pockets. Instead I make every effort to ride my bike and pay for public transit. Each time I buy a ticket for the local train I am voting with my dollars and insisting that we need more funding and investment in our shared resources and sustainable transit. Riding my bike improves my community’s air quality, reduces traffic and road congestion, (hopefully) inspires other people to bike, and makes it safer for everyone. It also makes me really happy.

Who knew riding could feel so damn satisfying.

4. Calling My Representatives

I am lucky to live in a state/region that has politicians who are fighting for equality and justice. But that doesn’t mean they don’t need to hear from the people who support them. Actually calling makes me nauseous (and I totally cried once while talking to a staffer about health care and how much the Affordable Care Act has helped me), but I always feel better when I do.

Resist: Shop at Farmers' Markets

5. Eating My Values

I’ve been vegetarian for more than a decade. This year we’ve made an even bigger push to eat local foods by skipping the grocery store and getting our produce at our farmers’ market instead. Our veggies are from fields around the area and our money goes straight to the farmers instead of filtering through Amazon’s pockets. I refuse to give Monsanto or other massive agro-companies my money. We buy organic to protect our local environment, the workers, and ourselves. We’ve also been paying attention to foods with big carbon or water footprints and trying to eat them less.

Resist: Ditch the Trash

6. Working Toward Zero Waste

In general packaged foods don’t fit my values or come from companies I feel good supporting. Even more so, I can’t stand the idea of sending chip bags and granola bar wrappers to a landfill where they will either end up in the ocean or be buried in other plastic junk longer than I will be alive.

Reducing our trash has pushed us to support local business and farmers, discover new resources around us, reuse what we already have in different ways, and slowly cut down on our environmental impact. (You can see more about the changes we’ve made here.)

7. Refusing to Support Companies Who Support Hatred, Racism, and Sexism

A simple Chrome extension let’s me know when companies support the current administration. Before I purchase anything I do a quick search to make sure that the company ethically produces their goods, has sustainability practices, and aren’t in favor of the current regime. (Here’s a good list to get you started, compilations of dirty donors, or dive into the ultimate list of people and companies to boycott.

8. Keeping an Ethical Wardrobe

Creating an ethical wardrobe is about more than just buying from ethical retailers. Instead I have been taking good care of the clothes I already own. I have refused to buy from companies who don’t use sustainable materials and practices, don’t treat their workers fairly, and don’t pay fair prices for their raw materials. For much of the year, I just didn’t shop at all. When I did need something, I checked for used options first.

9. Reducing Online Shopping

Online shopping is a hard habit to break. I still research every purchase online before I buy it, but I’ve been trying to make purchases in a store rather than online. Sure, online shopping may be cheaper on the surface, but going to stores (especially when I ride my bike) saves carbon and helps starve oil companies. It takes untold amounts of oil to get all of our Amazon packages to us. Most things I can easily buy within 10 miles of my home. This also helps me cut down on packaging/waste.

 10. Supporting Independent, Ethical, Environmental Business

You don’t just have to shop to do this. I’ve been including more business that I believe in in the things I write (especially for other publications), following them on social media, and telling my friends about them when they’re looking for something in particular.

11. Staying Off Twitter

I refuse to fuel or partake in the distracting name calling and hatred that goes on in the space. It goes without saying, but not following the president and never retweeting him goes a long way. He takes power from people listening to him. Even retweets that are meant to show his idiocies or dispel lies turn into proof that people care what he says and that he’s being heard. Let him yell his lies to an empty void. (Related: Why I deleted my Facebook.)

12. Ignoring Clickbait

I refuse to teach publications that it’s okay to use the frequently unfolding horrors to drive clicks and revenue. I will not let publications get away with stories meant to inflame or needlessly entertain. This includes political ‘you won’t believe!’ stories, almost all celebrity stories, and anything that looks like it came out of a tabloid. I can’t stand the current president’s obsession with this “tv ratings.” I’m not watching. (That doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention or informed.)

13. Listening to New Voices

I’ve spent an outrageous amount of time listening to podcasts in the last 12 months. Top of mind are Seeing White from Scene on the Radio, Pod Save America (and its offshoots), and Call Your Girlfriend. They keep me up to date about what’s going, tell me how I can help, and help me understand the world a bit better. I’m also a big fan of the Small Victories newsletter that highlights the progress and good things that are happening.

14. Talking

There have been some falling outs in the last year over social and political beliefs within my extended family. But that hasn’t stopped me from seeing how important it is to talk to the people in my life candidly about what’s happening, how it’s affecting everyone, and what we can do to help one another.

15. Supporting Public Services

The library is one of my favorite places. It is one of the public services that I use the most, and I am so thankful for it. We have a great library system in our county. Not only does it mean I can read 79 books without having to spend a dime, but it offers so many programs to the entire community. When I go stir-crazy at home it’s the first place I pack myself off to for some quiet work or a much needed browse.
There are so many other things that fall into this category, but the others that I use or try to visibly support is bike access/parking in my community, public transit, and farmers’ markets and other open events.

16. Refusing Greed and ‘Me First’ Attitude

This obnoxious, toxic behavior is what got us here. We’re all trying to grab what’s ‘owed’ to use before the next person can, and it’s destroying our societies and our happiness.

I’m actively working on not getting mad at people who cut in front of me when driving, being mindful to hold open doors, wave other people through at stop signs, and generally reassess whenever I feel like I have to have something before someone else gets it. This also includes not chasing after the latest and greatest things and instead being thankful for the things we do have.

17. Recognizing Humanity

American society is weird. We pride ourselves on giving each other personal space and being self-reliant individuals. And yet we close ourselves off from others and ignore the humanity in the people around us. I’m all for gliding through the background unnoticed, but there are times when I think it does more harm than good.

This one is as easy as saying ‘hello,’ ‘thank you,’ or even ‘good morning.’ Start with people who hold doors open for you and move on to every service worker who helps you, homeless people, or strangers on your commute. Talk to the person in your office that you’ve never actually met. Get to know the people who take care of your yard or your local park. If an introvert like me can do it, anyone can.

Noticeably Absent:

This year I didn’t make it to any protests. I let my still healing ankle and fear get in the way. 2018 seems like a good year to change that.

 

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