Put yourself on these organizations’ mailing lists and look for opportunities to volunteer. Also, look for grassroots efforts where you live and have meetings with like-minded friends. Look together for ways you can meaningfully help.
4. Know what you stand for
At a rally in New York City to support the Standing Rock water protectors, I heard one of the speakers say, “You can overcome any obstacle if you know what you stand for.” So what do you stand for? What is the purpose of your life? Or, more aptly, what is the purpose of this part of your life, given the conditions we find ourselves in?
Getting clear about your purpose and intentions in bringing about the world you want is a long-term thing. So, while we need to assist with the emergencies faced by the vulnerable, how can we move ahead in a way that sustains us in the long-term? Here as an exercise I use in workshops that might help you, called “How To Really Know Your Calling.”
5. Learn about how social change happens
A lot of us are really naive about how change occurs in society. We think we vote once every four years or vote with our dollars, and those are our two ways to make a difference. That view makes us feel unsafe and insecure.
But we have so much more power than that. We get to change our culture by how we live individually and in community every day. We get to change our society by how much pressure we put we put on the institutions—governments, businesses, religions—that form society’s skeleton.