I have been feeling so helpless lately, and that’s not usual for me. Being locked into my very effective local DSA chapter, I usually feel like there’s a way I can contribute. Everything now is so overwhelming that nothing feels like it’s enough.

Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe you live in a rural area and can’t even make it down to one of the many Tesla protests. If so, here’s an action you can do from your home. Libraries for the People, a leftist libraries advocacy group, needs volunteers to gather data on library boards around the country. If googling library boards and maybe calling for more information sounds like something you can do, scroll down on this page to Research Support for more information.

You can find other suggestions for things to do ranked from easy to hard in this guide from The Disruption Project.

One of my friends was surprised to hear that there were multiple protests going on around town. He hadn’t heard about them, which seemed like a failure in the advertising of the protests to him. If you’re not on social media—maybe you’re one of the people who recently dumped Instagram and FB after Meta’s increased technofascism—how would you hear about a protest? You’d have to be a deliberate part of a group that’s communicating events to members or have a friend who is doing the research for you as part of a group and then sharing that information directly. This isn’t extremely efficient, especially given the time sensitive nature of many actions. I think more people should leave social media, so this problem of how to learn about mass events is one that I am chewing over.

If you are in Austin, here are some groups you might join to find out about these events:

• Austin DSA
• Your workplace union – If you are a worker, you have a modicum of power in capitalism. Don’t leave that power on the table. If you don’t have a union yet, you can get advice and support from the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee.
• Indivisible Austin – they would not be my first choice because they are only activated during crises and maybe we could have avoided those crises if they were, for instance, preemptively working with Austin DSA to keep Tesla from moving to Texas in the first place. They are extremely active right now, though.
• Austin Justice Coalition
• Former council member Jimmy Flannigan has started a mailing list to connect people and was one of the primary promoters of the recent Tesla protest. You can sign up at https://www.jimmyflannigan.com/the-work-2-0/