In Five Weeks

In the last four and a half weeks I’ve:

  • met one-on-one with a representative of a Latina empowerment nonprofit to talk about how to train their clients to be better story tellers regarding their experiences with oppression and harassment, so the stories can be captured and better communicated to the press, city officials, the police, etc. (they aren’t being captured currently)
  • met one-on-one with the police’s community outreach person to hear about his trainings on inherent bias in the police force and to talk about outreach to those that aren’t native English speakers
  • attended a “Conozca sus derechos!” workshop at a local cultural center so I can learn how to refer immigrant and Latino community members regarding such
  • gotten in touch with Right Wing Watch about two local activities I think they should know about
  • attended a public meeting by one of my national Senators to learn what he’s doing on a national level and what he wants his constituents to be doing to back him up
  • attended a public meeting by my local state representative to hear what she’s doing in the state capital and to hear what she wants us to be doing to back her up and let our voices be heard
  • offered public testimony at a city council meeting in support of a sanctuary resolution
  • attended the open house of the nearest Islamic mosque to hear Muslims, in their own words, tell me how to be a better ally
  • attended the women’s march
  • posted information about all of the above before it happened to encourage other people in my community to attend and participate as well
  • expanded my resources on my web site about how to combat fake news (I’m one of the only people that has been researching and writing about how misinformation campaigns target government health and NGO development initiatives, and have been doing so since 2005)
I’m tired. What keeps me going? What YOU do. When you post to social media about what you’re doing, about what you’re outraged about, what you are seeing and experiencing. Please don’t stop. 
But I confess I’ll be taking a break at some point… 

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