1. CVS just stopped offering Covid vaccines in 16 states. Trump removed Kamala Harris’ Secret Service protection. Republicans once again are proving they don’t care about children and gun violence beyond thoughts and prayers. Prices are up thanks to tariffs. AI is keeping coal plants open that were closing. MAGA is attacking abortion pill access, having already killed Roe rights. The President thinks he’s a King, and that Congress and SCOTUS will back him up on anything. Masked-up ICE is bigger than the FBI, ATF, and DEA combined, with fewer checks on its power. Education and science are defunded at the federal level, Confederate and racist historical figures are back in places of honor while gay and black names are erased, deleted. Basic standards for clean water, and air, are gone. PFAS, sewage are up, while funding for small farmers is way, way down. Subsidies for clean domestic energy are gone, projects attacked, while oil and coal are bolstered with taxpayer dollars. Gerrymandering to win the midterms is in play, which is a fancy way of saying “you won’t have to vote again if I win.” That’s anti-democracy, anti-American.

2. Bombs fall abroad, children starve, communities reduced to rubble. Our leader yawns, and wonders if a late night talk show host can be fired for making fun of him. He hides the files, sending 1,000 FBI agents to erase his name. He golfs, and his underling vacations, charging public servants nightly rent and profiting and stealing and accepting bribes or selling perfume or crypto, taking and raking and making billions behind closed doors or in the open, it doesn’t matter, the swamp has flooded us. Those who toil to make our food or grow it or work in our factories are so filled with fear that their festival, celebrated for 40 plus years, here, is canceled. Food trucks closed. And we wonder why prices go up and MAGA-voting farmers wonder why workers have vanished. They threaten or disappear people, including citizens, for social media posts or activism critical of Our Dear Leader, while hanging banners of his big face on the sides of our buildings, and brownnosing him at Cabinet “meetings.”

3. And yet, thanks to billionaire’s social media platforms, we are divided, unable to see the truth, the facts from which to begin to care. Protestors are threatened and the military is sent, at our expense, at us. US. We blame what little is left of journalism, which we don’t read, while giving hours of our time, every day, to Big Tech’s profits. Our children’s future on a stable planet is rapidly closing, while we’re distracted by memes and just trying to get home from work to rest on the couch.

4. We’re exhausted. We’re distracted. We’re anxious. We’re doing our best. Or, if we’re rich enough, we’re privileged to actively-not-care, to ignore, to enjoy our beautiful home and travel (a gutted FAA permitting).

5. And yet, there are voices—poets, politicians, environmentalists, activists—reminding us not to give up our power. That we, together, can combine our micro mindful actions into macro. That we, together, can be more powerful than the drug-addled trolling billionaires yachting to their vast underground bunkers on private islands. That power begins by doing the little things with care. Being kind, being eco-responsible, being active in our community, and also by sitting quietly or hiking through nature—without headphones, without our phones, simply being and communing with the bubbles in the river or the leaves shaking in the sunlight, with the peace of wild things.

6. We have the power. It’s right here.

7. We have normalized abusing our planet—all of us are part of that. We need not continue to normalize it. Veganism, zero waste, bicycling or walking or public transport or train or EV…never getting our coffee to-go in plastic, meditating each morning and evening, going to counseling with our partner and therapy with our sweet self, eating simple food, often in bulk or local, gardening, wearing secondhand, greeting our neighbors—there are a thousand points of light, daily, nightly, that combined will illuminate our hearts and turn anxiety into relaxation, joy, empathy, even a more enlightened society.

8. It all begins with one kind, caring action. Then another. Then, someone else is inspired, and decides to care once again, if only just a little. They do one caring thing, and that lifts us up on a day when we are ready to give up, to normalize defeated cynicism or lazy nihilism. And renewed kindnesses and community connections begin to reawaken the people, the land, even animals feel safer, clouds feel more full of rain where it’s hot or lighter where there’s been too much rain. Snow falls, peacefully, instead of ash.

9. One kind action. One kind action. The greatest activism, perhaps, is one kind action.