48 Everyday Things to Do to Resist

​Ed Chang

1. Breathe.  
   
2. Sleep.  Rest.  Save and spend your energy where and when you can. 
   
3. Celebrate others.  Celebrate yourself.  Try not to let things diminish joy, success, good luck, light, collaboration, and creation.  
   
4. Embrace change, difference, diversity. 
   
5. Make a new friend.  Someone older, younger, amazingly different than you.  
   
6. Be curious.  Curiosity leads to empathy.  Empathy leads to centering someone other than yourself.  
   
7. Learn.  Educate yourself.  Take a class.  Check your Power, Privilege, assumptions, and internalized b(ia)s.  
   
8. Fact check.  Use evidence.  Share truth.  Foreground expertise and wisdom.  
   
9. Read Octavia Butler, James Baldwin, bell hooks, Ralph Ellison, Audre Lorde.  
   
10. Stick 'em with stickers.  
    
11. Wear a t-shirt, pin, scarf.  
    
12. Culture jam.  Disrupt.  Turn the machine against itself (e.g. flood “snitch” lines, make memes, brigade the good, downvote the bad)
    
13. Sing.  
    
14. Write a poem.
    
15. Dance.  In your chair.  Next to your desk.  Out on the street.  
    
16. Acknowledge, transform, repurpose anger, fear, pain, and grief.
    
17. Give someone else flowers.  Give yourself some flowers.  Practice random acts of kindness.  
    
18. Get vaccinated.  
    
19. Wear a mask.  
    
20. Learn to sew.
    
21. Learn to cook. 
    
22. Feed someone else.  Feed yourself.  Deliver a meal.  
    
23. Go for a walk.  With a friend, neighbor, coworker.  
    
24. Follow (with) kindness.  Lead (with) compassion.  
    
25. Hold someone's hand.  Ask for a hug.  Share a touch.  
    
26. Speak up.  Practice random acts of bravery.  Practice bystander and upstander interventions: https://www.apa.org/pi/health-equity/bystander-intervention. 
    
27. Buy, barter, trade something from BIPOC and LGBTQ+ artists, creators, shops, and businesses. 
    
28. Donate money, if you can, to an organization, fund, campaign, or cause.  
    
29. Make a call to your representatives.  Make five: https://5calls.org/.
    
30. Send a short letter, postcard, email, fax to your representative: https://www.aclu.org/writing-your-elected-representatives.
    
31. Donate blood, if you can.
    
32. Partner with local businesses, schools, libraries, institutions to put up a sign, to create safe zones, to support vulnerable or marginalized groups, to fundraise for area needs, goals, projects, candidates, communities.  
    
33. Build coalitions, alliances, allyship, unlikely friendships.  
    
34. Volunteer in your neighborhood, community, city, or region.  Help a friend, neighbor, family member, coworker, even a stranger.  
    
35. Send a supportive letter, card, or email to representatives, administrators, teachers, first responders, healthcare workers, people who run our elections, and other community leaders who are facing increasing hatred, bile, and even death threats.  
    
36. Vote, especially at the local and state level.
    
37. Curate social media.  Post prosocially.  Signal boost selectively.  Share other strategies and care.  
    
38. Brush up on first aid.
    
39. Get CPR training.  
    
40. Learn basic wilderness and survival skills.  
    
41. Pack a bugout bag.  
    
42. Cast a spell.  Light a candle.  Scatter some native seeds.  
    
43. Plant a tree, native flowers, garden.  Grow food for pollinators and people.  
    
44. Endure.  Survive.  Put down roots.  
    
45. Love. 
    
46. Create.  
    
47. Witness.
    
48. Imagine a better, kinder, greener, more just and hopeful world. ​