Vote.
Also knock on doors, volunteer for campaingns.
Get involved locally. Go to meetings, work with others, make your own community safer, better, more organized. Know what's on school board agendas. Show up and comment.
Give politicians a reason to know what you want, and why they should care.
Really cannot emphasize enough the emotional benefit of picking a spot where you can have an outsize impact and digging in to really work on it in addition to your other efforts. My contributions to protecting anonymity online have been SUCH a motivator for avoiding despair.
In 2020, I worked a voter assistance hotline and helped dozens of people figure out registration and voting in a complicated state. It was immensely satisfying and I am signing up to do it again this cycle. It was relatively low stress, in the calls were from people who WANTED to talk to me.
Yessss, fellow vopro volunteer! I volunteered (and am coming back to volunteer) in a different complicated red state, but the experience was very similar! ❤️
