In addition to throwing shards of glass into the abyss, it’s time to start homing in on what you specifically can bring to this fight. We all have something.
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When we first began this project, the hurdle was finding enough small things to do that would have an impact. Now, the hurdle is narrowing down the mountain of things we discovered into one small thing a day. As time goes on, the project evolves, and the small things build upon each other and coalesce into other, larger things.
Our goal now is to be the conduit for people who want to help but don’t know what to do, who to talk to, where to begin to use their particular strengths to benefit their neighbors, their community, and society at large. Here are some tips:
- Join the ACLU…or renew your membership.
During Trump Round 1, back in 2016. I donated a massive amount (for me) to the American Civil Liberties Union. I was making big moves back then. I don’t have the energy (or the finances) to do that this time around. But I can afford $10 a month to renew my membership. And anything is better than nothing.
The ACLU is going to be one of our strongest bastions of normality and accountability in the years to come. It is established, it is experienced, it has funding, it will fight for us. Of all the organizations out there, the ACLU is one of the most powerful we have right now. Its reach is national but its impact is typically local. So, as we all come together to back our community groups, help keep strong the wide and deep safety net we have historically depended on.
You can do this with a one-time, or a monthly, donation, whatever you can afford. If you’ve never joined ACLU, go to the menu here and click “Become a Member.” You’ll get your membership card in the mail shortly after that. And you will be supporting the many freedom-defending lawsuits that are piling up on the White House floor.
- Send a complaint to Google about the Gulf of Mexico.
Feeling petty? Google “Gulf of Mexico”. You’ll see “Gulf of America” pop up. Click on the three vertical dots next to that name. Click “Send feedback.” It will ask you which part you’d like to send feedback on. Click on the title itself “Gulf of America.” Click “inaccurate content.” Click on “incorrect”. Then type whatever note you’d like to appear in the comment section, such as “This is the Gulf of Mexico.” Then click okay and continue to live your life. For a short while after I did this, Google appeared to shut this option down, but I tried it again today, and the option for feedback is back. This is simple, satisfying fun, and takes just a few moments.
- Attend panels put on by organizations in your area, and when you are there, speak up!
As I slid onto a bench seat on the patio outside a local bookstore to hear a couple of speakers talk about Florida’s book-banning practices, I had no idea what this One Small Thing was going to set in motion. I was there to listen and learn, hoping for some guidance from the speakers: one from PEN America, the other a tenured professor at the University of Florida. I also took cellphone footage so I could make a social media post for my day job. Posting video is an important part of message amplification, so I try to whip out my phone whenever I think about it.
The audience of about 50 was split between students and middle-aged couples; there was no apparent overlap with the older protesting population I saw last week. These disparate factions are all working hard although not necessarily in concert, and one goal of the One Small Thing project is to help bring various strands of the movement together.
From the speakers at the bookstore event, we heard about how book banning is currently arranged. I’d call it a shadow ban, in fact. Basically, any group can lodge a complaint about what they perceive to be sexual or illicit content in any book, and the Florida government will remove that book from the libraries and schools in that county “while they investigate the claim.”
So the books aren’t actually banned. But they are no longer available on the shelves. No longer accessible to children, or to adults for that matter. Everything from To Kill a Mockingbird to the children’s book Pinkalicious are stuck in this book purgatory. In one Florida county north of my home, Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus for Students, Merriam-Webster’s Elementary Dictionary, and the American Heritage Children’s Dictionary are banned, according to PEN America. Why? Because they contain a medically accurate definition of the word “sex.”
Learning about all this would have been enough for a Small Thing, but participating makes it more worth everyone’s while. Concerned citizens need to be attending public forums and speaking their minds. You’d be surprised how elected officials, even MAGA-leaning ones, pay attention when their constituents express their opinions in public.
I asked the panel about how to continue teaching my college course on media and politics in this fraught time. I got a clear answer: Be careful, but keep going. When I had to leave the meeting, I stopped at the organizers’ table to give them suggestions on how to make their action items more accessible.
For instance, they had encouraged people to go to a school board meeting and speak about book bans. But that’s a really daunting task for most individuals. No one wants to go to a school board meeting alone, stand up to comment alone, and leave alone. Most people don’t even know where to find information about meeting agendas, times, and locations. One way to boost participation, I told them, would be for the group that organized this panel to organize a group trip to a school board meeting, giving directions and instructions about how to get there, where to sit together, and what to do once the meeting begins. So many more people would feel more comfortable with such a clear to-do list. We have to make civic participation as easy as possible.
Another suggestion for combatting book bans in town and school libraries is for people to create and stock Little Free Libraries in their neighborhoods. Do you know how to do that? I don’t. So I suggested they hold a workshop to teach these skills. I would go to one for sure. But without such specific training, I wouldn’t be able to create a Little Free Library. Tasks like these are less intimidating when a knowledgeable group shares that knowledge with other concerned individuals.
Before I left, a woman with a heavy accent stopped me. She was from Marie Claire, France, a glossy monthly magazine with a print circulation of 1.3 million and over 6.6 million unique digital visitors per month. She said she liked my question, and that her magazine is working on a story about the education “squeeze” in Florida right now. She asked me for an interview. They took my photo. We set up to talk the next day.
I bring that up not to brag but to show how speaking up in public can lead to completely unexpected things, which can lead to even more.
So, don’t be afraid to put yourself out there for a good cause. Help concerned neighbors come together to form action groups and build bridges to other activists. And if, every once in a while, your activities draw attention from national, and even international, media, so much the better for the cause!.
- Open yourself to the public messaging.
The next small thing comes from the above small thing. As you implement this in your own life, you’ll see this happen too.
As noted above, I gave an hour-long interview to the Marie Claire, France reporter about my job as a professor, how book bans affect me as a teacher and a parent, what is different this time around from the first Trump administration, what Americans are doing to fight back, and what role the state of Florida has in this environment. The eight-page spread should be out in April or May. That will amplify the message on a worldwide scale.
On my way out the door, the reporter mentioned that she’d been concentrating on students locally but there wasn’t much action there. I told her that activists in my city had organized a resistance faction and that I was planning to go to a protest the very next day. She perked up and asked me when and where. When I told her, she said she’d be in town for a few more days, and would be on hand to cover the protest for her magazine.
- Go to a well-organized protest. Know the organizers.
When my daughters and I arrived at the protest downtown, more than 100 people had already gathered, holding up signs like “No one elected Elon” and “No Kings Day.” All four corners of one of the busiest intersections in town were flooded with people. We chanted and sang, we waved our signs. We stood on the sidewalks and cheered as passing cars and trucks honked at us, whether for or against, we didn’t know.
The reporter from Marie Claire, France showed up as promised. She interviewed my children, in part because most of the protesters were in their 60s and 70s. In fact, when we arrived, the people edged them to the front lines: “Young people in front,” they said.
Both my daughters and the reporter were disappointed by the vibe of the protest. Orderly older people politely holding signs on a sidewalk. Not the raucus marches my kids remember from their younger years during Trump’s first presidency. We’ll get there, I said, but we’re not ready yet. One of my girls offered to lead a more rule-breaking protest next time, and the other started calling her friends to get a coalition of high schoolers at the ready. We need the rambunctious energy of youth alongside the wisdom and experience of their elders.
In total, almost 400 people showed up, and while I can’t take credit for that, I don’t doubt that spreading the word about the international coverage helped. People need a goal, a reason to put themselves on the line. They need to feel like their concerted efforts will not be wasted. You can’t get hundreds of people to show up if they think it’s meaningless. The goal now is to fight despair and encourage hope by making people feel heard. So get out there, and get your friends out. For the greatest impact, start organizing around a common, easily understood goal, like fighting book bans, and schedule the action sufficiently far in advance, on a well-publicized day, to build toward a nationwide protest movement.
- Share your knowledge with people on the ground who need it.
The day after the protest, the women who had organized it were posting on social media that our one local news station did not cover the event. Someone put forward a short video apparently proving that the ABC station did cover it, although briefly and with little understanding of what was happening.
Being in television news, I shared my knowledge of how news directors decide which stories to cover, so that the organizers can get better coverage in the future. It turned out that no reporters or cameras from the local TV station were actually at the protest. The brief video they broadcast was what’s called a 20-second VO (voice over). Someone had sent them a short cellphone capture of the protest, and that’s what they aired.
So, a tip for better coverage: If you organize or participate in an event where the local TV station doesn’t show up, someone should take video and send it to them. Even better if you can get a couple of interviews with articulate participants. Be sure to get their names and how to spell them, then ask them to say why they are there. If a news station has a large enough news hole to fill, they might use your sound in what’s called a VOSOT, which can be anywhere from 40-60 seconds long. Take the video horizontally. That’s best for TV broadcasts. Record someone estimating how many people are there. Then email the TV station your footage and the basic information you’ve gathered, along with sources they can call to confirm:
When the event was
How many attended
Who organized it (and their contact info if you have it)
Why it occurred
When the next event will occur
It’s not a guarantee, but if the station didn’t have the resources to cover it with their own personnel, and you give them as many visuals and as much information as possible, you may get some respectable coverage of the event..
- Connect disparate groups to each other for important dialogues.
Following through on another aspect of the book banning panel, I connected a student leader of Support Is Overdue – an Instagram account that encourages people to support local libraries and fight book bans– to a leader in my kids’ school’s PTA. The student had emailed me because I had given her my business card and suggested the PTA as a potential ally.
I also happen to know the PTA president. And she wrote me back saying, “Thank you for doing this. I would be thrilled to help.”
Being a parent, a journalist, a teacher, and someone who works with nonprofits on a daily basis, I have many fingers in many pies, so you’ll notice my small things have shifted from screaming into the abyss (there will still be those though, don’t worry) to being a conduit for mobilization and connection of mutual aid groups and resistance organizations and our local public.
It’s time to expand and connect the isolated actions we’re all trying to take. Only through snowballing our efforts together can we have a voice in determining what our country is going to look like over the next few months. Everyone has something to offer. Look inside yourself and find it, then share it with others. See you next week.
Past weeks of “One Small Thing” can be found here.
