This is not the post I was going to write today.
It’s been a rough week, hasn’t it? Waking up every day to a renewed deluge of cruelties. Knowing this is only the beginning.
This morning, it all hit me hard. Suddenly I was nearly crying on my coffeewalk. My brain started writing, like it does when it’s trying to wrap itself around big feelings. And what it wrote was about saying goodbye to things I used to think were true about our world, our future.
Then I looked at Coffeewalk River. The weather’s been so cold here, for so long, that a big stretch of it has finally frozen over entirely. I’ve never seen it like this before.
But the river keeps flowing, under the ice. A little ways downstream, it breaks free again and sparkles in the sun.
I started making a list. What if I picked five organizations that are fighting for the people and the country and the world that I believe in, and signed up to give them a tiny monthly gift? Just as a baseline for everything else I hope to do. Just so when I look at any given horror in the news, I’ll know I’m already doing something to fight it.
Five wasn’t enough.
Then ten wasn’t enough.
Here are the fifteen organizations I just signed up to support. Some of them are tax-deductible donations; some aren’t, because they do political lobbying, and I chose those anyway because we need a lot of different kinds of power. I’m giving each of them $10 a month; when I say tiny, I mean tiny. It’s a start.
1. The ACLU, for voting rights and the rule of law and so much more.
2. The NAACP, for civil rights and so much more.
3. ProPublica, because reporting the truth matters.
4. Associated Press, because see 3 above, and who knew it was a nonprofit, and they’re starting up a foundation to support state and local journalism which I’ll switch to supporting when it’s ready to accept donations.
5. National Immigration Law Center, to protect immigrants and their families.
6. Human Rights Campaign, for the LGBTQ+ people I love.
7. Respectability.org, because there’s no social or racial justice without disability justice.
8. Planned Parenthood Action Fund, for our right to medical care, and yes that includes abortion.
9. National Domestic Violence Hotline, because people who use domination and cruelty for power use it at home, too.
10. Climate Justice Alliance, for organizing and mobilizing against climate change.
11. American Red Cross, because this administration’s policies will make disasters worse for all of us in so many ways.
12. International Red Cross, because we’ll be making things worse for everyone else too, and as of today we’re not even providing foreign aid anymore.
13. The Democratic National Committee, because we absolutely need to take back Congress in 2026.
14. Working Families Party, because they’ll do grassroots organizing and mobilizing for the kind of Democrats I want to see in that 2026 Congress.
15. And last but not least: Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust, for the coffeewalk that helps me keep putting one foot in front of the other, step by step, day by day, year by year. It’s how I’ll get through whatever happens. What’s yours?
Onwards, my friends. So much love to you all. ❤️