Listen To This Story

It’s too much. As a journalist, I have trouble reading through the headlines each morning. Dozens of stories about the state of the nation and the world around us. Nothing is happening that I agree with. It feels like we’re alone out here. It’s meant to. Not only does this deluge of information and opinion about administrative action, ICE bombardments, leadership dodging, and judicial failures overwhelm our capacities and induce helplessness, it also serves to isolate us… if we let it. 

And while One Small Thing is meant to give small, individualized things each person can do on their own, when they are alone, a lot of the work must be in banding together, in making the effort to continue to connect: upward, downward, and sideways. Here are some things you can do this week.

       1.  Write to Florida officials (or your local and state officials) about Alligator Alcatraz.

Alligator Alcatraz is a makeshift tent detention center in the Everglades. It was put up in days, and lawmakers touring the facility in mid-July said the conditions were “inhumane.” It can hold 3,000 people with the potential for up to 5,000.

Many of Donald Trump’s plans are being implemented with little public input, and less jurisdictional approval. Once something is done, we want to throw up our hands. We feel it’s too late. And while the best time to stop something like Alligator Alcatraz is before it starts, the second-best time is now. We must continue to raise our voices. Why? Because the secretary of homeland security is already looking to expand into other states with facilities like this one.

I called Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, and you should too. His number is (850) 414-3990, use prompt 2. You can also call your own congresspeople, if you don’t live in Florida. Here’s a basic script that you can change based on your own experiences and opinions:

Florida and the federal government have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to restore the Everglades to preserve the water quality for over 9 million residents in south Florida. That money will also restore fishing and tourism industries. 

his high-density detention center will produce industrial waste and millions of gallons of sewage, require fresh water, and create enormous traffic on a single road. 

Also, it is hurricane season. South Florida already has difficulty with evacuations, and now the detainees and employees there will exacerbate the efforts to get out of the way of hurricanes. 

A detention center in the Everglades makes no sense financially or logistically. We need to get rid of it.

Lawmakers will only work to undo these implementations if we continue to make noise after they are ram-rodded through.

       2.  Flood Ron DeSantis with messages about that detention camp.

I used this letter by the Sierra Club to tell Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to shut down Alligator Alcatraz. It might seem pointless to write to him, since he has shown he doesn’t care, but it’s important that the written record show widespread opposition to this camp. You can sign on, too, regardless of where you live.

       3.  Send the Action Network letter for immigrant child defense.

In February, Trump slashed legal services for immigrant children. In March, he was ordered to reinstate it. By April, he still hadn’t. And that’s the last we ever heard about it in the news. 

Immigration lawyers are sounding the alarm for these children in op-eds and letters, but their fate in the legal system remains unknown. Due process, in these cases, appears to be a thing of the past — for children or adults. I sent this letter by the Action Network to my congresspeople to remind them that this is a very important issue that needs to be addressed. According to the letter, legal funds for 26,000 children have been terminated. Lives are on the line.

       4.  Continue to build your structural knowledge of the groups you have joined. (And join groups!)

As we trudge through this toxic political and social landscape, it becomes increasingly clear that organizing through issue-oriented action groups is what we truly need. If you haven’t already joined a group (or two) to which you plan to give your concentrated efforts, please consider doing so. Doing small individual things is important. But coming together with like-minded people in action-focused groups multiples the power of everyone involved. 

To that end, I went through intense website training for the League of Women Voters, the group for which I have decided to officially volunteer — with the aim of using my communication skills and experience to improve their online outreach. 

       5.  Use your knowledge to help those groups. 

The current LWV communications volunteer walked me through how to write and upload new stories, blogs, events, and, most importantly, action alerts. It all involves a tedious process that anyone who has blogged or run a website knows by heart, with little irritations and hiccups along the way. But I managed to upload my first event, plus an action alert (which informs people about concrete actions they can take to support a specific cause — much like what I’ve been doing here at One Small Thing.)

Again, this tech-intensive labor is not my favorite type of work, but it’s necessary. Through the League’s website, our local residents can stay updated on the policies and the causes being championed, and learn what they can do to help. 

       6.  Help people who are fighting battles alone. 

While sitting outside a coffee shop in my home town of Gainesville, FL, I overheard some University of Florida students talking about “affordable housing” zoning in midtown. By local law, any new development must set aside 10 percent of units for “affordable housing.” Which sounds good, but it’s a very small set-aside for a development that will displace current residents while also driving out existing small businesses through zoning and rising rents in the area.. The students were discussing all this, and trying to figure out how to fight it. I gave the leader of the group my card, and she emailed and then called me several times.

By the time I was able to get back to her, the young activist had already gone to a zoning and planning meeting alone, where she was condescended to and bullied as she tried to make her points. She is a struggling student with conservative parents and doesn’t really know how to bring the fight in local politics.

So, I spent an hour with her, strategizing about how she should go about this in the future (get a group around you, use the activist systems in place to help you, talk to people affected by these gentrification pushes — and don’t expect to win right away, but don’t give up).

It doesn’t sound like much, but, as she had been so demoralized by her experience and was feeling so sad and alone, I think it really helped her to hear from an older person who has been doing this for a while. I offered her support and filled her in on the issues that she didn’t fully understand. (She had assumed that “affordable housing” was meant to house the unhoused.) We’ll keep in touch, and I’m committed to helping her throughout this necessary apprentice period.

Despite her youth, she’s already farther along on this journey than I was when I started decades ago. When I was 18, I was anti-abortion and I thought that girls who got drunk in “bad” parts of town should have known better, which is a hair away from “they deserved it.” I had help along my long journey to informed activism; and with some sympathetic guidance, hopefully my idealistic young friend will become a generational force of the kind we need in this fight.

       7.  Don’t be a one-off helper. 

After our conversation, I watched a recording of the city planning board meeting that the young activist had attended. I took careful notes, and then I called her to tell her the following:

• The board clearly thought she was adorable and, as patronizing as that sounds, it’s something she can use to her advantage.
• At least one member of the board who voted for the development actually appeared to have doubts about it. I showed the young woman how the questions this board member asked and the comments she made indicated an underlying skepticism, and I suggested she set up a meeting with that woman to learn more.
• From their behavior throughout the meeting, the chair of the board and the developer were obviously buddies. They called each other by first names and joked together. I told my young friend to look into that.

Then I told her to go back and watch the developer’s presentation again, and take notes as to where its weaknesses are, so she can make a more effective, critical presentation of her own at the next meeting.

When she told me the developer of the project wanted to meet with her, I was able to help her coordinate her next moves: get together with the skeptical board member to get some insight into the internal dynamics of the planning board; then meet with the developer and be prepared for him to try to smooth-talk her.

Then I sent the developer’s original presentation to an architect for affordable-housing communities whom I know, so that he can tell me what is actually going on here, because zoning is not my expertise. When he gets back to me, I’ll pass that information along to her.

Remember that being part of a group is great, but it’s the connections within the group that will really make the difference — friendships, mentorships, allyships. No one should be alone in any group, be that a MAGA group or a group of anti-MAGA activists. The one-on-one connections we forge with like-minded people will be some of our strongest tools in this fight. See you next week.

Past weeks of “One Small Thing” can be found here.