Stop doomscrolling and make a difference

By this time next week, we will know who the next president of the United States will be. For those of us who, like myself, are disillusioned with both parties and kind of want to throw up thinking about how our options this year are between Trump’s absurd “Project 2025” and the first female president being someone unable to condemn a blatant genocide, things can feel pretty bad. On top of that, even if we do grit our teeth and vote blue in the hopes of pressuring Harris into better policies once elected, the last time North Dakota’s electoral vote went to anyone but the Republican party was in 1964, for Lyndon B. Johnson. That was 60 years ago, and I don’t think we’re going to have a repeat this year, so even my single vote feels pretty useless given the way the electoral college works. Feel sick yet?

However, I’m not here to fearmonger or spread despair. Actually, I think pretty much every second you and I and every other ordinary person in this state spends worrying about who will be president could be used infinitely better. For a lot of people who consider themselves “liberal” or “leftist,” “activism” seems to be limited to posting online and complaining to their like-minded friends. These things have their place, but instead of sitting around worrying if the already-shitty lesser evil is going to be president, we should be taking action to change things ourselves. The role of president holds more weight in people’s minds than I think it should, and a lot of us seem to think the direction of the country is based on who sits in that office. But here’s the thing: the president has power, but you have more.

The people in this world who have made the most difference and helped the most people are the ones who picked something to work on, and worked. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin’s work brought to life the Catholic Worker Movement in the 1930s, which is still a powerful force today. Just across the river in Moorhead lies one of hundreds of Dorothy Day houses, all because she saw a problem and got to work fixing it. There are a million and one things wrong with this country, but if all I do is sit online doomscrolling, I’m not actually helping anything. 

I want to urge my fellow self-described leftists, progressives, revolutionaries, et cetera to turn your gaze away from the big picture for a moment. The internet makes it easy to feel like you need to fix everything in the world, but that’s not possible or plausible. Take a look at your own community and see what you, personally, can do to make a real-life difference today.

Fargo alone is full of opportunities for you and me to make real, meaningful social change, far more effectively than voting for any politician ever will. I think sometimes we get so caught up in the suffering of the whole world that we become paralyzed, and take no action at all–which is the worst thing we can do.

I personally try to focus on support for Fargo’s low-income and unhoused population in my activism. Fargo is full of food banks and aid programs in desperate need of support and volunteers, and no action is too small. In the winter, I like to go to thrift stores and pick up as many mittens and hats and other winter gear as I can, wash it, and donate it to the mitten trees in the Fargo Public Libraries. This is easy, doesn’t take me long, and doesn’t cost hardly anything, but it makes a real, immediate difference in the lives of people who are cold and living outside. There are people right here with us who need help and support, and a strong community of mutual aid is more important than any president ever will be, so get off your phone, stop worrying, and get to work. There is so much to be done, and we need to step up and do it instead of hoping a president will do it for us.