This is what we’re going to do
With every protest effort or gathering the question is always, “okay, so now what do we do?” Which — VALID.
Gathering together connects us. It creates visibility. It raises awareness. It helps us to channel our energy. BUT THEN WHAT?
How can we come together to build momentum? How can we effect actual change that we can see? If you’re new to all of this, we put together an easy list of micro-activisms. When protest is just the first step, this list is loaded with things you can actually do to make a difference.
As things change in ways that feel scarier everyday, filling the community fridge or reading a banned book can feel like they don’t make a huge difference. I promise you they do. But if those actions aren’t meeting the moment for you, we’ve pulled together an additional list of steps you can take to keep pushing forward.
This is what we’re going to do.
ACTION 1: Protect Each Other.
Join a mutual aid group.
Mutual aid enhances social connections. It is rooted in solidarity and collective responsibility. Mutual aid is often considered an active form of protest. It is nonjudgemental support and completely upends the typical hierarchies created by traditional charities. No one decides who is deserving of help. Mutual aid has direct, immediate, positive impacts on our community.
Working with a mutual aid group can look like:
- Cleaning out a closet and donating your gently used items
👉 Skip the Goodwill. High CEO salaries, sub-minimum wages for disabled workers, and huge amounts of waste when they toss perfectly good donations. - Showing up to sort and organize donated items so that it’s easy for people to find what they need
- Volunteering to help set up / clean up at a mutual aid pop up
- Volunteer to hand out food at a free food market
- Would you rather be outside? You can volunteer to work in the community garden
- Offer your skills in social media, email marketing, or web / graphic design
- Offer other professional skills such as legal services or accounting
- Tell friends and family to skip large charity organizations and offer to pick up donations for them
- Got chickens? Share eggs
- Save your plastic bags! People always need bags at pop up markets
👉 Learn more about Broad River Community Market
👉 Learn more about Cleveland County Mutual Aid Partnership
Attend a Know Your Rights Training
There are two primary networks in North Carolina that are helping to educate immigrants and US citizens alike about their rights.
We HIGHLY recommend attending a training. Some are in person, others are virtual. We’ve done both and found them incredibly valuable.
Knowing your rights protects you and helps you protect others.
SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING
Hello to all our straight white friends 👋
This one, very specifically, is for you.
Silence makes you complicit.
Sorry if that’s hard to hear.
When people in your circle say things that are racist or misogynist or homophobic or transphobic, you have to speak up.
Even (or especially) if it’s presented as a joke or a comment in passing.
This is not a call to be confrontational. The fact is that people are more likely to listen and reflect when the callout comes from someone they know or trust, and they are more likely to hear it when it comes from someone that looks and sounds like them. The goal here is not to change their minds or win an argument; deconstructing happens over time.
The goal is to draw your line in the sand.
These interactions are best had in person. Hoping your social content lands with the target audience (those whose minds you hope will eventually change) won’t get you there. Neither will sharing social content in an echo chamber of people that already agree with you.
You have to be brave.
BONUS ACTION
Stop registering for protests. For the love of all things good, STAHP.
Large national organizations collect your information and use it for their own purposes, and they don’t always disclose what those are. At the very least, your data is definitely for sale (ever wonder why you get so many texts from politicians you’ve never heard of?). The more nefarious version of this is that your data is used to track and intimidate or persecute protesters.
Registering also often means that protest numbers are UNDERreported because news organizations take those registered numbers and rely on them in reporting, instead of estimating crowd sizes using more traditional methods.
People have been organizing WITHOUT asking for personal information since this country’s inception. Find a friend, show up, stand together.
(The ACLU has great resources on protester’s rights.)
ACTION 1 IS PROTECT EACH OTHER.
In all the ways we have listed here and more.
Follow the Kudzu Coalition for additional actions and ways to come together. We need each other and we need you! If you have ideas, thoughts, questions, or are just trying to find a way to be involved, reach out to thekudzucoalition@gmail.com.