How can you act politically without pretending to be someone you’re not?

This guide grew out of a question a friend asked at my book group: What can introverts do for political action?

I paused because I knew the answer was bigger than the question. Introverts can write letters, send emails, and write postcards to voters, but they can also research issues, support campaigns, and help advocacy groups in many ways.

Political action should not require you to become someone else. You can choose ways to act that fit your temperament, energy, skills, and interests.

This guide uses broad, practical descriptions, not formal personality labels or psychological diagnoses. Many people will recognize themselves in more than one category. The goal is not to sort people into boxes but to help you find political action that fits your energy, comfort level, skills, and interests.

Start with temperament, not tasks

Temperament affects political action. It affects whether you feel energized or drained by crowds, conflict, strangers, meetings, public attention, and spontaneous conversation.

It also affects whether you prefer to think before speaking, write before calling, work alone before joining a group, or build trust one conversation at a time.

None of that makes you more or less committed. It simply means you enter political work through different doors than other people do.

A movement that values only the loudest forms of action will waste the talents of many good people.

For introverts: meaningful action without constant social drain

You do your best work with time to think, lower-pressure contact, written communication, or smaller groups.

Best-fit actions:

• Writing letters or emails to elected officials.

• Writing postcards to voters.

• Researching issues, candidates, legislation, and organizations.

• Preparing talking points for others.

• Taking notes at meetings.

• Tracking action items.

• Managing resource lists.

• Helping with newsletters, websites, or social media posts.

• Donating strategically.

• Having one-on-one conversations with trusted people.

• Preparing written testimony instead of speaking off the cuff.

• Joining small committees rather than large public meetings.

Stretch actions:

• Attend a meeting without speaking the first time.

• Bring one prepared question.

• Read a short written statement at a public meeting.

• Join a postcard party or small volunteer gathering.

• Try text banking before phone banking.

• Canvass with a partner rather than alone.

You do not need to become an extrovert to be useful. You may find that some public actions become easier when they are prepared, purposeful, and limited.

For extroverts: turning people energy into political power

Best-fit actions:

• Canvassing.

• Phone banking.

• Tabling at events.

• Welcoming new volunteers.

• Hosting gatherings.

• Speaking at public meetings.

• Introducing people to each other.

• Recruiting volunteers.

• Meeting with elected officials.

• Leading chants, songs, or group activities.

• Serving as emcee or facilitator.

• Following up with people personally.

Stretch actions:

• Listen more than you talk.

• Help quieter people enter the work.

• Share the microphone.

• Do follow-up work after the exciting public event.

• Learn the facts before repeating a message.

• Pair with researchers, writers, and organizers.

You can help movements grow quickly, but people energy needs discipline. The goal is not just to gather a crowd. The goal is to build trust, focus, and follow-through.

For ambiverts: choosing the right role for the day

You might not identify strongly as either an introvert or an extrovert. Some people use the term ambivert for this middle ground.

Best-fit actions:

• Mix public and private work.

• Rotate between events and writing.

• Canvass occasionally, then do follow-up research or communications.

• Attend meetings but avoid overcommitting.

• Help bridge quieter and more outgoing volunteers.

• Shift roles depending on urgency, mood, and available energy.

You may be especially useful because you can move between public-facing and behind-the-scenes work. The challenge is knowing when to stretch and when to recover.

For people who like structure more than spontaneity

Best-fit actions:

• Scheduling.

• Agendas.

• Checklists.

• Volunteer sign-ups.

• Data entry.

• Donation tracking.

• Legislative calendars.

• Meeting notes.

• Event logistics.

• Reminder systems.

• Follow-up emails.

Some activists are inspired by big moments. Others make sure the big moments actually happen. The revolution needs someone who knows where the extension cords are.

For people who connect one-on-one

Not everyone likes crowds. But you can be powerful in personal conversation.

Best-fit actions:

• Talk with friends, neighbors, family, and co-workers.

• Invite one person to an event.

• Mentor a new volunteer.

• Check in with someone who is discouraged.

• Have careful conversations with persuadable voters.

• Write personal notes.

• Build trust across differences.

Some political change begins not with a speech but with one honest conversation. This kind of action can be especially useful if you dislike mass politics but care deeply.

If conflict or harsh settings drain you

You might not be simply introverted. You may be deeply affected by anger, hostility, noise, online ugliness, or aggressive meetings.

Best-fit actions:

• Write prepared messages.

• Support nonviolent organizations.

• Work on voter education.

• Help with de-escalation resources.

• Do research and fact-checking.

• Create calm explainers.

• Support candidates and groups financially.

• Help with kindness-based outreach.

• Work in pairs or small teams.

• Choose roles away from confrontation.

Stretch actions:

• Attend peaceful public events with a buddy.

• Practice short scripts before calls.

• Take a training in de-escalation or nonviolent communication.

• Help prepare others for tense situations.

Not everyone is built for confrontation. That does not mean you are built for silence.

For public-facing people

Best-fit actions:

• Rallies.

• Public testimony.

• Canvassing.

• Phone banking.

• Candidate events.

• Press events.

• Community forums.

• Coalition meetings.

• Speaking roles.

• Media interviews.

Public-facing people help make political action visible. But visibility is different from effectiveness unless it is connected to organization, strategy, and follow-through.

Consider your skills, abilities, and interests

Temperament may help you choose the kind of setting that works for you. Skills and interests help you choose the role that’s right for you.

• Writers: letters, postcards, testimony, op-eds, newsletters, scripts.

• Researchers: issue summaries, candidate research, fact-checking, legislative tracking.

• Organizers: agendas, sign-ups, schedules, logistics, volunteer coordination.

• Talkers: canvassing, phone banking, tabling, public meetings, recruiting.

• Listeners: one-on-one persuasion, volunteer care, mediation, welcoming newcomers.

• Artists and photographers: signs, graphics, event photos, videos, storytelling.

• Tech-comfortable people: websites, email lists, databases, social media, digital events.

• Number people: budgets, fundraising, donor records, campaign finance research.

• Hosts and helpers: food, rides, setup, cleanup, hospitality, accessibility.

Finding your lane

Ask yourself:

• Do I gain or lose energy from crowds?

• Do I prefer writing, talking, listening, organizing, researching, or creating?

• Do I work better alone, in pairs, in small groups, or in large groups?

• Do I handle conflict well, or do I need lower-conflict roles?

• Do I prefer planned work or spontaneous action?

• Do I want to be visible, useful behind the scenes, or both?

• How much time can I give without burning out?

• What kind of action would I actually repeat?

The best political action is not always the most dramatic action. It is the action you can do well, do honestly, and do again.

Moving forward with your personality as your guide

Political action is not the job of any one personality type.

Democracy needs the public speaker and the note-taker, the canvasser and the researcher, the marcher and the letter writer, the host and the hermit, the greeter and the spreadsheet wizard.

The work is too important to leave anyone thinking, “I’m not built for this.”

You may not be built for every kind of political action. Almost no one is.

But you are built for some kind of political action, especially if you start with who you are, not who you think an activist is supposed to be.

When you’re ready to look for step-by-step guides, toolkits, and organizations that match your preferred role, visit the Plainly, Garbl Activism Tools section.

This guide was built to be used. Please share it with people, groups, and local organizers who could put it to work.

Share

Subscribe now

This guide is part of a series on Violence Prevention and Community Safety. Check its Introduction for an overview of the series, its goals, and other guides in the series.

Political violence, hate-based threats, extremism, and digital harassment can silence people, intimidate communities, and weaken democracy.

This guide highlights organizations working to prevent violence, counter hate and extremism, protect vulnerable communities, defend civic participation, and support people targeted by threats online or in public life.

Top advocacy organizations

Anti-Defamation League | ADL Pacific Northwest

ADL works to counter antisemitism, extremism, online hate, hate crimes, domestic terrorism, and identity-based harassment. Its Center on Extremism, online hate resources, incident tracking tools, education programs, and regional offices make it one of the most active and visible organizations in this field.

Western States Center

Based in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain States, it works nationally to strengthen inclusive democracy and help local leaders, schools, libraries, governments, and community organizations respond to white nationalism, organized bigotry, anti-democracy movements, and political violence.

Over Zero

Over Zero focuses on preventing identity-based violence and group-targeted harm, including violence tied to religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, politics, and other identities. Its work is especially useful for people interested in communication, conflict prevention, and reducing the social conditions that can lead to violence.

Bridging Divides Initiative

The Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University tracks and analyzes political violence, threats, crisis response, and de-escalation efforts in the United States. Its research and community safety resources can help local leaders and activists understand risks before they escalate.

Life After Hate

Life After Hate helps people leave violent hate and extremist movements. Its work is important because preventing violence also means helping people disengage from extremist groups, online hate spaces, and violent identities before more harm occurs.

Committee for Safe and Secure Elections

The Committee for Safe and Secure Elections brings together election officials and law enforcement to protect election workers and voters from violence, threats, and intimidation. It offers practical resources for safer elections, including law enforcement guides and planning tools.

Brennan Center for Justice

The Brennan Center researches domestic terrorism, hate crimes, counterterrorism policy, political violence, election threats, civil liberties, and government overreach. It is especially useful for understanding how to respond to extremism without expanding abusive or discriminatory policing powers.

Right To Be

Right To Be works to end harassment and discrimination through training, storytelling, bystander intervention, and online abuse resources. Its tools are useful for activists, journalists, public officials, community leaders, and ordinary people targeted by harassment online or in public spaces.

PEN America | Online Harassment Field Manual

PEN America provides practical guidance for writers, journalists, activists, and organizations facing online abuse. Its field manual includes safety planning, documentation, reporting, escalation, legal considerations, and links to organizations that help people targeted by online harassment.

Coalition Against Online Violence

The Coalition Against Online Violence, founded by the International Women’s Media Foundation, supports women journalists and others facing online abuse, harassment, digital attacks, and threats intended to silence public voices.

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

SPLC’s Intelligence Project has long tracked white supremacy, anti-democracy extremism, hate groups, and conspiracy-driven movements. The Trump Justice Department is pursuing charges related to SPLC’s alleged use of paid informants inside extremist groups. SPLC disputes the allegations and says its work helped law enforcement prevent violence.

This guide was built to be used. Please share it with people, groups, and local organizers who could put it to work.

Share

Related guides

Confronting Hate, Extremism, and Authoritarianism—in the Rights and Freedoms section
A ranked guide to organizations working to expose, resist, and prevent movements that threaten civil rights, human dignity, and democratic norms.

Inclusive Language—in the Clear Writing section
Writing that respects people and makes meaning clear.

Top related issues

Political violence and intimidation: Threats, attacks, and harassment aimed at elected officials, election workers, activists, journalists, judges, public employees, protesters, and voters.

Hate-based violence: Violence or threats targeting people because of race, religion, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or other identity.

White nationalism and organized bigotry: Movements that use racism, antisemitism, anti-immigrant hostility, anti-LGBTQ+ hatred, misogyny, or conspiracy theories to recruit, intimidate, and build power.

Online harassment and digital threats: Coordinated abuse, doxxing, stalking, impersonation, threats, swatting, and platform manipulation meant to silence people or make them afraid to participate in public life.

Election-related threats: Intimidation of election workers, voters, candidates, and public officials, including threats tied to false claims about election fraud.

Extremist recruitment and radicalization: Efforts to draw people into violent or hate-based movements through online communities, propaganda, grievance politics, conspiracy theories, or social isolation.

Threats against journalists and writers: Abuse and intimidation aimed at discouraging reporting, commentary, investigation, and public truth-telling.

Community safety and de-escalation: Local efforts to recognize risk, reduce tension, protect vulnerable people, and respond to threats without encouraging vigilantism or unnecessary escalation.

Civil liberties and accountability: Responses to extremism must protect people from violence while avoiding broad surveillance, discriminatory policing, or laws that can be misused against protesters and marginalized communities.

Democratic participation: Political and hate-based violence are not only public safety issues. They are attacks on people’s willingness to speak, vote, organize, run for office, report the news, and serve their communities.

Subscribe now

Corporate power is not just about markets and profits. It also affects wages, prices, small businesses, consumer rights, public services, tax fairness, environmental protection, political influence, and democracy itself.

When a small number of corporations, billionaires, and financial interests gain too much control over markets and public policy, ordinary people lose bargaining power. Workers have less leverage. Consumers have fewer choices. Local businesses struggle. Communities lose public revenue. Government becomes more responsive to money than to people.

This guide highlights advocacy groups, including several with Washington state connections, working to limit monopoly power, expose corporate abuse, strengthen tax fairness, protect workers and consumers, and build an economy that serves people, communities, and democracy, not just shareholders and the wealthy few.

Related resource: For groups focused directly on worker rights, fair wages, safe workplaces, and unions, see Worker Power: Labor Rights, Fair Wages, and Unions.

Core anti-monopoly and corporate power groups

American Economic Liberties Project

A leading anti-monopoly organization that challenges concentrated corporate power through research, policy advocacy, and public campaigns on antitrust, corporate consolidation, and fair markets.

Public Citizen

A broad public-interest watchdog that works on corporate accountability, consumer protection, antitrust enforcement, democracy, healthcare, climate, and government ethics.

Open Markets Institute

A research and advocacy organization focused on stopping monopolies, strengthening antitrust law, and explaining how concentrated corporate power threatens democracy.

Institute for Local Self-Reliance

A national organization that fights corporate monopoly power and supports policies that strengthen independent businesses, local economies, and community control.

Fight Corporate Monopolies

A political advocacy group working to challenge corporate power and support policies that help workers, families, small businesses, and communities.

Corporate accountability, subsidies, and public money

Good Jobs First

A research and policy organization that tracks corporate subsidies, tax breaks, violations, and government accountability in economic development.

Project On Government Oversight

A nonpartisan watchdog that investigates waste, corruption, abuse of power, federal contracting problems, and failures of government accountability.

Corporate Accountability

An advocacy organization that challenges transnational corporations whose actions harm democracy, human rights, public health, water, food systems, and the climate.

Tax fairness, wealth concentration, and Wall Street power

Americans for Tax Fairness

A national coalition working to make wealthy individuals and big corporations pay a fairer share of taxes and reduce loopholes that favor extreme wealth.

Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

A nonpartisan tax policy research organization that provides data and analysis on how federal, state, and local tax systems affect economic fairness.

Patriotic Millionaires

A group of wealthy Americans advocating for higher taxes on the rich, better wages for workers, and less political power for concentrated wealth.

Americans for Financial Reform / Take on Wall Street

A national coalition working to make the financial system serve working families and the real economy, rather than big banks, private equity, and Wall Street power.

Racial, economic, and community power

Action Center on Race and the Economy

A campaign hub that works with partners to challenge the corporate, billionaire, and financial power harming communities of color, workers, the environment, and democracy.

End Citizens United / Let America Vote

A political advocacy group working to reduce big money in politics, overturn Citizens United, end unlimited and undisclosed political spending, and protect voting rights.

Economic Security Project

A policy and advocacy organization that supports anti-monopoly work, tax credits, guaranteed income, and broader economic security for families and communities.

Washington state connections

Economic Opportunity Institute

A nonprofit policy organization working on tax fairness, progressive revenue, worker well-being, and an economy that works for everyone.

Invest in Washington Now

A movement of activists, educators, working families, and everyday Washingtonians advocating for a fair and just state tax code.

Balance Our Tax Code

A coalition working to make Washington’s tax system fairer and less tilted toward wealthy households and powerful interests.

WashingtonCAN

A grassroots organization that works on economic justice, progressive revenue, healthcare, housing, and policies that help working people.

Related resources at Plainly, Garbl

Public Services & Civil Service Protection
A ranked guide to organizations defending fair, professional public institutions.

Social Safety Net & Economic Security
A guide to organizations strengthening the social safety net for individuals, families, and communities.

This guide was built to be used. Please share it with people, groups, and local organizers who could put it to work.

Share

Top related issues

Monopoly power: A few dominant corporations can control prices, wages, suppliers, competitors, and political influence.

Antitrust enforcement: Stronger antitrust laws and enforcement can prevent abusive mergers, challenge monopolies, and restore fairer competition.

Corporate political influence and money in politics: Corporate lobbying, billionaire spending, dark money, and campaign finance loopholes can weaken democracy and public accountability.

Tax fairness: Wealthy individuals and corporations often use loopholes, deductions, shelters, and political influence to avoid paying their fair share.

Extreme wealth concentration: Billionaire wealth can distort politics, media, philanthropy, labor markets, housing, and public policy.

Corporate crime and fraud: Companies that violate labor, consumer, environmental, financial, or safety laws should face meaningful penalties.

Union-busting and worker power: Corporate concentration often weakens workers’ bargaining power and makes organizing harder.

Wall Street power and financialization: Financial firms and private equity can extract wealth from housing, healthcare, retail, local news, and public services.

Corporate subsidies and tax breaks: Public money should not be handed to corporations without transparency, enforceable job standards, and community benefits.

Local business and community resilience: Independent businesses and local economies need protection from predatory chains, platform monopolies, and absentee corporate ownership.

Consumer protection: Corporate concentration can mean higher prices, worse service, fewer choices, hidden fees, and weaker privacy protections.

Democracy and economic power: Political democracy is weakened when economic power becomes too concentrated in private hands.

Subscribe now

Before May Day, it’s worth remembering what the day has long stood for: worker rights, labor solidarity, fair wages, safe workplaces, and collective action.

Those issues are not confined to one day on the calendar. They affect people’s lives every day—in grocery stores, schools, farms, offices, hospitals, restaurants, government agencies, care work, delivery jobs, and countless other workplaces.

My updated Worker Power: Labor Rights, Fair Wages & Unions resource highlights advocacy organizations and labor unions working year-round to protect workers, strengthen unions, improve working conditions, and expand economic fairness.

Share

Environmental protection seems to have slipped from public urgency at the very moment it needs defending most.

Not environmental concern. Many people still care about clean air, clean water, public lands, wildlife, climate change, and the places they love.

Not environmental volunteerism. People still clean beaches, plant trees, restore habitat, recycle, conserve, and show up for local projects.

I mean protection: the harder work of defending laws, agencies, climate rules, shorelines, refuges, public lands, clean-air standards, clean-water rules, and public health safeguards before damage is done.

That concern came into sharper focus for me after Earth Day, when a friend challenged me to think harder about the difference between environmental restoration and environmental protection.

He was not attacking restoration. Neither am I. Restoration projects give people a way to take part, see results, build community, and draw attention to environmental care.

Damaged places need repair, and habitat work, cleanups, and native plantings give people practical ways to help.

But his larger worry stayed with me: Have we become more comfortable repairing damage than preventing it?

Repair is not prevention

Restoration repairs. Protection prevents.

A serious environmental movement needs both. But they are not the same. Restoration can heal a damaged shoreline, replant a forest, reconnect a river, or rebuild habitat.

Protection asks a harder question: What are we willing to defend before the damage happens?

That question is less comfortable because protection often creates conflict. It can mean source control—stopping pollution before it spreads—along with fighting destructive projects, confronting regulators, challenging business interests, questioning public bodies, and sometimes criticizing people or groups we otherwise respect.

That is where some of the old spirit seems to have faded.

Experts make the same point

Experts do not treat restoration as a substitute for protection. The United Nations’ restoration framework describes the goal as preventing, halting, and reversing ecosystem degradation. And that order matters. Prevention comes first.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has made a similar point about forests: Restoring degraded areas is important, but it cannot replace protecting intact primary forests.

Climate change has not paused

Climate change also belongs in this discussion.

It has not gone away. It has been crowded out. Public attention is scattered by threats to democracy, war, prices, immigration fights, culture-war conflict, and the daily turbulence of Trump-era politics.

But fires, floods, drought, erosion, heat, sea-level rise, damaged habitat, and polluted air do not pause because the news cycle is exhausted.

Climate change has become oddly normalized in the U.S. Its impacts are no longer shocking enough. They risk becoming background scenery in a country overwhelmed by crisis.

Yale and George Mason’s fall 2025 climate survey found that 64% of Americans are at least somewhat worried about global warming, including 29% who are very worried.

But the same research found that only 39% hear about global warming in the media about once a month or more; only 23% hear about it on social media that often; and only 14% hear people they know talk about it that often.

Concern remains. Public conversation lags.

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions remains essential. But environmental protection is also climate work. Protecting forests, wetlands, shorelines, watersheds, public lands, and wildlife refuges helps store carbon, reduce flooding, cool communities, protect drinking water, and give natural systems a fighting chance.

EPA: Protection is in the name

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began operating on Dec. 2, 1970, during the Nixon administration.

Its name still matters. It was called the Environmental Protection Agency because the country had finally recognized that clean air, clean water, public health, and natural systems needed national protection.

That was true 55 years ago when I was a college sophomore and seeking causes to support. It is more urgent now.

The irony is bitter. An agency created under a Republican president is now being undermined under another Republican president.

The Trump administration is weakening federal environmental protections. Climate rules are under attack. And other agencies created to safeguard public health and natural resources are being hollowed out.

In February 2026, EPA finalized its rescission of the 2009 greenhouse-gas endangerment finding. That finding had served as the legal prerequisite for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles and engines under that part of the Clean Air Act.

Buried under the daily storm

Part of the problem is attention. Trump dominates the political weather. Daily outrage crowds out long-term threats.

Environmental protection is competing with everything else: democratic breakdown, court decisions, immigration fights, foreign conflicts, economic anxiety, public safety, and the daily presidential spectacle.

But environmental protection is not separate from those fights. It is part of the same question:

• Do public safeguards still matter?

• Do laws still matter?

• Do agencies still serve the public?

• Does science still guide policy?

• Does the government still protect people and places that cannot protect themselves?

Put protection back in front

Environmental restoration is still necessary. So are cleanups, recycling, conservation, public education, local projects, and practical hope.

But the environmental movement also needs its protective backbone.

The EPA was created because the country recognized that clean air, clean water, public health, wildlife, and the natural world could not be left to goodwill, profit, or local politics alone. That remains true.

If we care about the environment, we cannot only repair damage after the fact. We must also defend the protections that prevent damage in the first place.

That is the work in front of us now.

Related commentary: This piece follows my earlier Earth Day reflection, “Earth Day Is a Reminder, Not a Ritual,” shifting from environmental care and awareness to the harder work of defending protections before damage is done.

Resources for action

Environmental Protection & Climate Action
A ranked guide to groups fighting pollution, defending ecosystems, and promoting climate solutions.

Energy Conservation & Climate-Smart Energy
A ranked guide to organizations supporting renewable energy, decarbonization, and energy justice.

Environmental Justice and Community Resilience
A ranked guide to advocacy groups helping communities confront pollution and build climate resilience.

National Parks, Public Lands & Natural Resources
A guide to advocacy groups protecting public lands, conserving natural resources, and expanding environmental access for all.

Share

Subscribe now

This guide is part of a series on Violence Prevention and Community Safety. Check its Introduction for an overview of the series, its goals, and other guides in the series.

Conflict is part of everyday life. It shows up in families, schools, workplaces, communities, and public life. Most conflicts don’t begin with violence, but they can move in that direction when emotions rise, positions harden, and people stop listening to one another.

Not every conflict becomes violence. What matters is how people respond and whether escalation is interrupted.

The organizations in this guide focus on that moment. Some work directly in high-risk situations to prevent harm. Others help people resolve disputes before they escalate.

Many teach practical skills—communication, mediation, and intervention—that increase the likelihood of nonviolent responses.

Together, they offer a different approach to safety: not just reacting to violence after it occurs, but preventing it by strengthening relationships, accountability, and community-based solutions.

Direct Intervention and Civilian Protection

Organizations that operate in active or high-risk conflict settings and work to prevent escalation in real time.

Nonviolent Peaceforce

Protects civilians in conflict zones using unarmed peacekeepers trained in de-escalation, accompaniment, and community engagement.

Cure Violence Global

Treats violence as a public health issue, using trained community members to interrupt conflicts and prevent retaliation.

Mediation and Community-Based Conflict Resolution

Organizations that help individuals and communities resolve disputes before they escalate.

National Association for Community Mediation

A national network supporting community-based mediation programs that resolve disputes outside the courts.

National Conflict Resolution Center (NCRC)

Provides mediation, training, and conflict resolution services nationwide, with a focus on community, workplace, and civic disputes.

Restorative Justice and Community Safety

Groups focused on repairing harm and reducing future conflict through accountability and dialogue.

Restorative Justice Exchange (RJE)

Promotes restorative justice practices that bring together those affected by harm to repair relationships and prevent recurrence.

Creative Interventions

Provides tools and training for communities to address violence without relying on police or punitive systems.

Training and Nonviolent Skills Development

Organizations that teach practical skills for de-escalation, communication, and conflict transformation.

Alternatives to Violence Project | Washington affiliate

Offers workshops that teach conflict resolution, communication, and nonviolent responses in prisons and communities.

Center for Nonviolent Communication | Trainer locator

Trains individuals and organizations in communication practices that reduce conflict and build understanding. Available in Washington state.

Dialogue, Peacebuilding, and Systems-Level Change

Organizations working at broader social, political, or international levels to reduce conflict and build sustainable peace.

Search for Common Ground

Works globally to transform conflict through dialogue, media, and community engagement programs.

Everyday Peace Indicators

Develops community-based ways to measure and strengthen everyday conditions that reduce conflict and build peace.

Related Issues

Conflict escalation and de-escalation: Recognizing when disputes are intensifying and using practical skills to reduce the risk of harm.

Community mediation: Helping people resolve disputes through trained, neutral facilitators before conflicts become legal, political, or physical battles.

Restorative justice: Bringing affected people together, when appropriate, to repair harm, accept responsibility, and reduce future conflict.

Unarmed civilian protection: Protecting people in tense or dangerous situations through trained, nonviolent presence, accompaniment, and monitoring.

Violence interruption: Using trusted community members to intervene in conflicts, prevent retaliation, and stop cycles of violence.

School and youth conflict prevention: Teaching young people communication, peer mediation, and problem-solving before conflict becomes violence.

Protest and event de-escalation: Training people to reduce risk at public gatherings, demonstrations, and civic events.

Workplace and organizational conflict: Addressing disputes, bullying, retaliation, and power struggles before they damage people or institutions.

Dialogue across divides: Creating structured conversations among people or groups in conflict to reduce fear, misinformation, and hostility.

Peacebuilding culture: Building habits, institutions, and community norms that make nonviolent responses more likely than retaliation or domination.

How to Get Involved

Not sure where to start? Choose an approach that fits your interests:

• Learn and practice: Take a workshop in mediation or nonviolent communication.

• Support local programs: Look for community mediation centers or violence prevention efforts in your area.

• Volunteer or train: Many organizations offer opportunities to become a facilitator or a conflict-resolution trainer.

• Apply it in daily life: Use de-escalation and listening skills in your own relationships and community.

Even small steps—learning a skill, supporting a program, or changing how you respond to conflict—can help prevent harm.

Share

Subscribe now

Turn on political coverage during an election season, and you might think you’re watching a game.

The language sounds familiar: Who’s ahead, who’s behind, who’s gaining momentum, who’s slipping. Candidates become front-runners. Polls become scoreboards. Commentators decide who “won the week.”

The news media lean heavily into this horse-race framing because it’s easy to follow and easy to sell. Political parties often lean into it, too, because competition energizes donors and voters.

It can feel less like civic decision-making and more like a running play-by-play. We don’t just describe elections this way; we start to treat them that way.

Elections are contests. That part is true. They involve strategy, competition, and, ultimately, winners and losers.

But democracy is not a sporting event.

Three different things

It helps to separate three things we often lump together. Elections choose leaders. Politics is the competition over ideas, priorities, and power. Governing is the responsibility that begins after the votes are counted.

The word politics doesn’t help much. It’s often used as a catchall: “I’m sick of politics,” or “That’s just politics.” People may mean campaign combat, partisan gamesmanship, or even government itself. Those are not the same. Blurring them together makes it easier to dismiss the entire system instead of expecting it to work better.

Politics isn’t just a game people play. It’s how we decide how to live together.

The problem comes when the competitive mindset of campaigns carries over into governing.

When language shapes the outcome

You can see it in the language. Terms like “front-runner,” “surging,” “slipping,” and “momentum” don’t just describe a race. They can shape it—steering attention, donor confidence, and media coverage toward candidates already ahead. And candidates with different ideas or stronger local ties struggle to break through.

That kind of framing narrows the field before voters have fully weighed their choices. It also rewards familiarity and incumbency, sometimes more than judgment or ideas.

After the election

The same mindset shows up after the election. Winning is often treated as total victory. Losing is treated as total defeat. Governing becomes an extension of the campaign, a chance to reward supporters, sideline opponents, and keep score.

That may work in sports. It doesn’t work in a democracy.

In a game, the losing team goes home. The fans regroup and wait for next season.

In a country, the people who supported the losing side still live here.

They still pay taxes. They still rely on public services. They still send children to school, drive on public roads, depend on public safety, and expect their government to function. They don’t become spectators just because their candidate didn’t win.

That’s why governing cannot be treated as a continuation of the contest.

Public office carries an obligation that goes beyond winning.

It means making decisions that affect everyone, not just the people who voted for you. It means recognizing that disagreement is part of democracy, not a reason to dismiss or ignore large parts of the public.

The way we talk about elections can make that harder. When coverage focuses on who’s ahead instead of what they plan to do, it trains us to think like fans instead of citizens.

Democracy is not meant to be a spectator sport. It depends on citizens who pay attention, take part, and expect to be represented—not fans watching from the sidelines while others keep score.

When political leaders act as if victory gives them exclusive ownership of the outcome, it reinforces the idea that governing is about winning, not serving.

We should expect more.

Voters have every right to choose sides in an election. That’s how democracy works. But after Election Day, the standard should change.

Less scorekeeping. Less chest-thumping. Less treating fellow Americans as defeated opponents.

More evidence that governing still means serving everyone who lives here.

The horse race may make for good headlines.

But once it’s over, the job is to govern.

Share

Subscribe now

For Earth Day, I wanted to create a playlist that’s more than pretty songs about nature. I wanted music that reflects what is at stake: the beauty of the Earth, the harm people have done, and the shared responsibility to protect the world we live in.

These 20 songs include environmental anthems, songs of warning and protest, and quieter reflections on place, loss, wonder, stewardship, and belonging.

Arranged as a 90-minute listening experience, they move from alarm to reflection to a deeper sense of home. Earth Day is about action, of course. But music can also help us feel connected and remember what we are trying to protect.

Streaming on Tidal

1. Joni Mitchell — Big Yellow Taxi

2. Marvin Gaye — Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)

3. Tish Hinojosa — There’s Something in the Rain

4. R.E.M. — Cuyahoga

5. John Prine — Paradise

6. Pete Seeger — My Dirty Stream

7. The Beach Boys — Don’t Go Near the Water

8. Bruce Cockburn — If a Tree Falls

9. Midnight Oil — Beds Are Burning

10. Bob Dylan — A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

11. Jackson Browne — Before the Deluge

12. Neil Young — After the Gold Rush

13. Judy Collins — Farewell to Tarwathie

14. Cat Stevens — Where Do the Children Play?

15. John Denver — Rocky Mountain High

16. Louis Armstrong — What a Wonderful World

17. The Eagles — The Last Resort

18. Neko Case — People Got a Lotta Nerve

19. John Stewart — Mother Country

20. Woody Guthrie — This Land Is Your Land

About Tidal

If you don’t use Tidal, its website includes information about the app, plans, and how the service works.

Share

This is the Introduction to a series on Violence Prevention and Community Safety. See the list below of current and future guides.

A domestic violence call ends in tragedy.
A teenager is shot in a neighborhood dispute.
An election worker gets threats for doing their job.

These stories are usually covered on different beats—crime, education, politics, for example. Each comes with its own facts and debate.

This series highlights organizations working across these and other issues. Some respond after violence occurs. Others work to prevent it. Many do both. Their goal is to reduce violence over time and replace weak systems with stronger ones.

Their work includes protecting survivors, holding offenders accountable, and building safer communities through education, intervention, and policy change. Some approach violence as a public health issue. Others focus on civil rights or justice reform. Many use mediation, restorative justice, and nonviolent communication to resolve conflict before it escalates.

Taken together, these efforts reflect a simple idea: Enforcement matters, but it is not enough. Reducing violence also depends on better systems, stronger communities, and earlier intervention.

The resources in this series include national and local organizations offering research, legal advocacy, crisis support, training, and practical ways for people to get involved. Some focus on specific forms of violence. Others work across several areas. All offer ways for individuals to support safer, more just communities.

Guides to Violence Prevention and Community Safety:

• Conflict Resolution and De-escalation

• Gun Violence Prevention

• Political, Hate-Based, and Digital Violence

• Family, Sexual, and Vulnerable-Person Violence—coming soon

• Youth and Community Violence—coming soon

• Policing, Custody, and State Violence—coming soon

Each guide highlights organizations, key issues, and ways to take action. The aim is practical: to help readers understand the landscape and find meaningful ways to be part of the solution.

Related Guides

Confronting Hate, Extremism, and Authoritarianism—in the Rights and Freedoms section
A ranked guide to organizations working to expose, resist, and prevent movements that threaten civil rights, human dignity, and democratic norms.

Inclusive Language—in the Clear Writing section
Writing that respects people and makes meaning clear

Share

Subscribe now

In the spring of 1970, I was a college sophomore when the first Earth Day on April 22 sharpened my growing awareness that air pollution, damaged waterways, and unchecked growth were not simply the price of progress.

Earth Day helped change how we understood our relationship with the natural world.

What began as a nationwide day of teaching, organizing, and public action became one of the defining civic moments in modern American life.

It helped move environmental stewardship from the margins into the mainstream. It laid the groundwork for laws and institutions that still shape our daily lives, from clean air and water protections to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Over time, that shift became part of my own working life.

For three decades, I worked in communications for two public agencies serving King County, Washington: Metro Transit and the regional wastewater treatment utility.

Then, as now, I saw both functions as part of the same environmental mission.

Wastewater treatment protects Puget Sound, Lake Washington, and other local waterways by controlling pollution and improving water quality. It reinforces the link between public infrastructure and environmental health.

Transit reduces dependence on cars, helping to improve air quality. It makes urban, suburban, and rural life more sustainable and connected.

At the time, much of my work felt practical and service-oriented rather than overtly “environmental.”

But that is exactly the point Earth Day still teaches.

Environmental protection is not only activism, legislation, or symbolic gestures once a year.

It is also the steady, often invisible work of building and maintaining the public systems that make healthier communities possible.

It is transit that gives people alternatives to driving. It is treatment plants that keep toxins out of marine waters. And it is land-use decisions that protect habitat and balance growth with stewardship.

Just as important, it is citizens taking daily personal actions to protect, preserve, and enhance our environment—from recycling their household and yard waste to ending use of toxic garden products to riding the bus, carpooling, bicycling, or walking to work and school.

My experience in local government reinforced for me something Earth Day has always tried to teach: Environmental stewardship is not separate from daily life. It is daily life.

It is the water we drink, the shorelines we treasure, the forests that define this region, and the climate patterns that increasingly shape wildfire seasons, drought, fisheries, and storms.

Earth Day 2026 calls on communities worldwide to begin environmental action on Saturday, April 18, and carry that momentum through the following week, including Earth Day itself on April 22. Scheduled events and activities vary by community.

This year’s Earth Day theme, Our Power, Our Planet, reminds us that sustaining environmental protections still depends on people, institutions, and communities working together. That continuing work affects the cost of living, public health, infrastructure reliability, and long-term stability.

Lasting change rarely starts in Washington, D.C., even when federal policy matters deeply.

It starts in communities.

It starts when people show up for a shoreline cleanup, support local land-use decisions that protect habitat, reduce waste at home, advocate for renewable energy, or simply refuse to look away from the long-term consequences of short-term convenience.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, that responsibility is especially visible.

We live close to what we are trying to protect: marine waters, forests, farmland, salmon habitat, and the climate patterns that increasingly shape wildfire seasons, drought, fisheries, and storms.

Fifty-six years after that first Earth Day, the lesson still holds: Public priorities can change when enough people decide they must.

Much of the most lasting environmental work is not dramatic.

It is built into the systems we rely on every day—and how we work to improve them through citizen action and involvement.

That is what makes Earth Day a reminder, not a ritual.

Related commentary: My follow-up piece, “Protect What Still Protects Us,” looks at why environmental protection needs to stay visible and defended after Earth Day—not just through restoration but through laws, agencies, and clean air, clean water, public lands, and climate safeguards.

Take action year-round

Looking for ways to turn Earth Day concern into year-round action? Explore these Plainly, Garbl resources.

🧭Advocacy Groups:

• Environmental Justice and Community Resilience

• National Parks, Public Lands, and Natural Resources

• Environmental Protection and Climate Action

• Transportation and Transit for All

• Energy Conservation and Climate-Smart Energy

🗺️ Local Government and Community Action

🏛️ Government Resources

🧰 Activism Tools

Share

Subscribe now

A nation’s budget is where patriotism stops being theater and becomes math.

The timing matters.

With war dominating the headlines, the White House is now asking Americans to accept historic domestic cuts while dramatically increasing military spending.

Whatever happens in Iran, Trump’s proposed 2027 budget sends a clear message about priorities at home: More for force, less for the institutions that help communities thrive.

He’s proposing a staggering $445 billion increase, pushing military costs toward $1.5 trillion. And he pays for it, partially, by driving domestic discretionary spending toward its lowest share of the economy since the Eisenhower era.

What this budget really cuts

Here is what “more for force” means in plain terms:

• Health research: $5 billion less for the National Institutes of Health, slowing medical breakthroughs and public-health work.

• Disaster readiness: $1.3 billion less for FEMA’s prevention and resilience grants, even as coastal and rural communities face more severe emergencies.

• Public health and family services: a $15 billion cut to Health and Human Services.

• Science and innovation: NASA loses $5.6 billion, weakening research, climate monitoring, and the innovation economy.

• Tax fairness: nearly $900 million less for IRS enforcement, making it harder to pursue wealthy tax cheats and large corporations.

• Everything local: schools, libraries, environmental protection, and community grants all face the squeeze of a 10% domestic cut.

These are not abstract numbers. They affect public services and the basic systems people depend on every day.

A budget shows a country’s priorities. The U.S. Constitution’s first spending clause places “the common Defence and general Welfare” side by side as national responsibilities.

This budget does not erase either duty. It raises the question of whether we are still keeping them in balance.

Right now, this budget asks Americans to normalize endless force while accepting scarcity everywhere else.

We should refuse that false choice.

Where the military money goes

The increase flows in three directions:

• Advanced weapons: The budget adds billions for shipbuilding, AI-enabled systems, missile defense, and nuclear modernization.

• Defense contractors: A large share of the increase goes to private companies building aircraft, ships, weapons systems, and surveillance technology.

• Global operations: More funding supports overseas bases, rapid deployments, and military infrastructure tied to an expanded U.S. footprint.

The contrast is no longer abstract.

This budget expands war-making capacity while cutting the systems that keep communities healthy, informed, and prepared.

It also exposes an old claim: There is “never enough money” for schools, health care, disaster response, libraries, or local infrastructure. That is not an economic truth. It is a political choice.

Real democratic strength is not just military power. It is also public trust, strong institutions, and local governments that still work. It is a government that serves people instead of trying to dominate them.

History shows that leaders can use a permanent sense of emergency to build authoritarian habits. In 1933, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler used emergency powers to suspend civil liberties in Germany and turn fear into control. People are easier to manipulate when they are tired, afraid, and told that only force can keep them safe.

That is why citizenship matters here.

Citizenship is not only the right to vote every few years. It is the responsibility to notice what government priorities are doing to the culture around us. It is the obligation to ask tough questions when leaders promise security while weakening the institutions that make communities secure in the first place.

Here’s what we must do about it

• Call your members of Congress and tell them to reject any budget that expands military spending by gutting health, science, disaster response, and education.

• Push local leaders and advocacy groups to spell out what these cuts would mean in your own community.

• Write letters, posts, and op-eds that connect federal numbers to local consequences.

• Defend public investment: Schools, hospitals, research, libraries, disaster planning, and child care are not luxuries.

If we can always find more money for destruction, why is there never enough for dignity?

Action resources

🟪 Advocacy Groups for Peace, Defense Spending, and Nuclear Arms Control

🗺️ Guides for Influencing Local Government and Community Action

🏛️ Contact Information: Washington’s U.S. Senators and Representatives

🏛️ How to Contact Federal Officials—and Be Heard

🧰 Suggested Text for Writing Email Messages to Elected Officials—And Calling Them, Too

🧰 Online Guides for Writing Letters to the Editor

Share

Subscribe now

Some of the most important advocacy work happens where daily life is most tangible: whether people can enter a building, keep a family farm going, or find a safe and affordable place to live.

These three guides in the Social and Economic Equity section focus on practical ways to support dignity, fairness, and opportunity in communities too often overlooked in national debates. Each includes ranked advocacy organizations, issue context, and direct ways to take action.

👉 Disability Rights & Accessibility

A ranked guide to advocacy groups fighting for inclusion, rights, and access for people with disabilities.

From disability justice and legal protections to accessibility standards, community support, and independent living, this guide highlights organizations helping ensure that equal participation is not optional but expected.

👉 Agriculture, Farmers & Rural Communities

A ranked guide to organizations advocating for sustainable practices, rural equity, and farming livelihoods.

Rural communities and family farmers often face economic pressures, land-use conflicts, climate challenges, and shrinking services. This guide points readers to organizations working on sustainable agriculture, fair policy, rural resilience, and economic survival.

👉 Affordable Housing & Homelessness

A ranked guide to advocacy groups advancing housing access and supporting people experiencing homelessness.

Housing affordability, tenant protections, homelessness prevention, and community-based solutions all connect to the larger question of whether people can live with security and dignity. This guide offers organizations and action tools focused on making housing more accessible and humane.

Together, these issues remind us that equity is not abstract. It shows up in ramps and sidewalks, crop prices and rural hospitals, rent checks and shelter beds.

Which of these challenges feels most urgent in your community right now?

Leave a comment

These three guides are part of 12 advocacy resources in the Social and Economic Equity section, covering additional issues that shape fairness, opportunity, and economic security.

Share

Subscribe now

At a time when birthright citizenship faces renewed legal challenges and voting rights are again under pressure, this resource highlights advocacy groups that defend citizenship rights and help people put them into action.

Their websites offer legal explainers, action alerts, organizing toolkits, civic-learning resources, volunteer opportunities, and practical ways for people to exercise citizenship collectively—not just possess it on paper.

American Civil Liberties Union | Washington affiliate

Defends constitutional citizenship, civil liberties, voting rights, protest rights, and equal protection through litigation, organizing, and its People Power grassroots network.

League of Women Voters | LWV of Washington

A premier nonpartisan civic organization that protects voting rights, strengthens democratic participation, and equips citizens with practical tools for informed engagement.

Brennan Center for Justice

Provides top-tier legal research, policy advocacy, and litigation support on citizenship, democracy, constitutional rights, and voting access.

Campaign Legal Center

Fights in court and through public education to protect equal citizenship, voting rights, and democratic participation, including birthright citizenship.

NAACP Legal Defense Fund

Defends equal citizenship under the 14th Amendment and advances civil rights protections against discriminatory attacks on belonging and political participation.

American Immigration Council

Offers authoritative legal resources on birthright citizenship, immigration law, and the constitutional rights of U.S.-born children and families.

National Conference on Citizenship

A congressionally chartered nonprofit dedicated specifically to strengthening active citizenship through civic health research, public engagement partnerships, and practical resources that help people participate more fully in democratic life.

National Constitution Center

Provides trusted civic education and constitutional literacy resources that help citizens understand both their rights and democratic obligations.

iCivics

Builds active citizenship through practical civic education tools, lesson plans, games, and participation resources for students, teachers, and families.

OneAmerica

A leading immigrant justice organization based in Washington state that builds civic power through citizenship assistance, voter engagement, leadership training, and community organizing.

Common Cause

Mobilizes citizens around voting rights, election protection, anti-corruption reforms, and direct democratic engagement.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

A broad coalition defending civil rights, voting access, equal citizenship, and inclusive democracy through national advocacy and action campaigns.

United We Dream

The nation’s largest immigrant youth-led network, it combines advocacy for pathways to citizenship with high-impact grassroots organizing, leadership development, and direct-action opportunities.

Fair Elections Center

A national nonpartisan organization that expands citizenship in action by removing barriers to voter registration, student voting, ballot access, and year-round civic participation.

LULAC (League of United Latin American Citizens)

The nation’s oldest and largest Latino civil rights volunteer organization, LULAC advances citizenship, voting access, civic education, and community leadership through chapters across the country.

Top Related Citizenship Issues

Birthright citizenship: Protecting the 14th Amendment guarantee that people born in the United States are citizens.

Voting rights and ballot access: Ensuring citizens can register, vote, and have ballots counted fairly.

Naturalization and immigration pathways: Supporting lawful routes to full citizenship and civic belonging.

Jury service and civic duty: Reinforcing citizens’ role in the justice system and rule of law.

Freedom of speech, assembly, and petition: Protecting active participation in public life and protest.

Equal protection and due process: Ensuring citizenship means equal legal standing for all.

Civic education and constitutional literacy: Helping people understand how government and rights work.

Public service and volunteerism: Encouraging service to community, democracy, and neighbors.

Digital citizenship and civic misinformation: Helping citizens navigate truth, media, and responsible participation online.

Collective democratic action: Using organizing, advocacy, meetings, and local engagement to strengthen shared citizenship.

Share

Subscribe now

We often hear that American jobs were “lost” to China, Mexico, India, or other countries. The language makes it sound as if those jobs simply disappeared, carried away by forces beyond anyone’s control.

Today, that story is retold as payback: Other countries took our jobs, and tariffs are how we strike back.

It’s a powerful political message because it creates a visible target: foreign governments and foreign companies.

But that framing misses a harder truth. In many cases, the decision to move production was made by U.S. companies themselves, often with the support of investors, trade policies, and consumers who welcomed lower prices.

Over the past several decades, U.S. companies have made deliberate decisions to shift manufacturing and production overseas. Sometimes they built their own facilities abroad. More often, they contracted with foreign companies to make the products Americans buy every day—from electronics and clothing to household goods and auto parts.

They did it for reasons that made business sense: lower labor costs, fewer regulations to protect workers and the environment, established manufacturing hubs, and easier access to materials.

There was also relentless pressure to keep prices low in a highly competitive marketplace.

Many of us, me included, accepted and often benefited from those lower prices. We filled our homes with less expensive goods, many labeled Made in India, Made in Vietnam, Made in Mexico, or Made in China.

Retailers built entire business models around affordability, convenience, and constant availability. Investors rewarded companies that improved margins by reducing production costs.

In other words, this was not just a corporate decision. It became part of a larger economic system that companies, policymakers, investors, and consumers all helped reinforce.

That is why tariffs alone cannot solve the problem.

With the one-year anniversary of Trump’s April 2 “Liberation Day” tariffs approaching, this is a useful moment to ask what those tariffs changed—and what they never could.

They do not automatically rebuild the factories, workforce pipelines, supplier networks, and infrastructure that once supported domestic production. They do not reverse decades of decisions that made overseas production the default choice for many industries.

Instead, tariffs often shift the immediate cost of imported goods to the people standing closest to the cash register: consumers and small businesses.

But as a broad promise to “bring jobs back,” they often ask for a tax policy to solve a structural problem.

The deeper issue is not simply where products are made. It is how we built an economy that rewarded moving production elsewhere in the first place.

That raises harder questions than campaign slogans usually allow:

• What should the government do to rebuild domestic supply chains, infrastructure, and worker training?

• What responsibility should companies bear when they choose short-term savings over long-term economic resilience?

• What responsibility do consumers share when lower prices come with hidden costs to local jobs and community stability?

Those are not easy questions, because changing course may mean paying more for some goods, at least in the short term.

Someone always bears the cost. The question is whether we are honest about who.

That does not mean ignoring unfair trade practices or neglecting industries that matter to national resilience. It does mean recognizing what tariffs can and cannot do.

It also does not mean returning to the industrial economy that the United States once had. That world has been transformed by automation, technology, and global supply chains.

But it is realistic to rebuild key domestic industries, strengthen regional supply networks, and create modern, stable opportunities for workers in manufacturing, infrastructure, clean energy, and advanced logistics.

Getting there requires long-term investment in people, worker training, modern transportation, and environmental protection. It means supporting policies that make domestic production practical, sustainable, and not merely symbolic.

And it may also require something from the rest of us: a willingness to think beyond the lowest price tag.

That is the part we do not talk about enough.

The real question is not who to blame. It is whether we are willing to help build an economy that creates stronger opportunities for American workers, job seekers, and communities.

Related reading

Tariffs Don’t Bring Jobs Back—or Lower Prices
How tariff costs often land on consumers and small businesses while doing little to rebuild domestic industries, July 9, 2025.

Share

Subscribe now

When trust is shaken—by leaders, institutions, or the stories we’re told—it’s easy to drift toward cynicism or simply tune out.

These songs in this playlist don’t look away. They question power, confront uncomfortable truths, and remind us that trust, once broken, has to be rebuilt through action, not assumption.

This is music for staying aware, staying engaged, and staying human.

Streaming on Tidal:

Trust, Power, and the Truth We’re Told

1. Exhuming McCarthy — R.E.M.

2. Ship of Fools — Grateful Dead

3. The Revolution Starts Now — Steve Earle

4. Blind Willie McTell — Bob Dylan

5. For What It’s Worth—Buffalo Springfield

6. All Along the Watchtower — Bob Dylan

7. Fortunate Son — Creedence Clearwater Revival

8. Ohio — Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

9. American Skin (41 Shots) — Bruce Springsteen

10. Dirty Laundry — Don Henley

11. When the President Talks to God — Bright Eyes

12. Biko — Peter Gabriel

13. Which Side Are You On? — Natalie Merchant

14. There Is Power in a Union — Billy Bragg

15. We Can Be Together — Jefferson Airplane

16. Eyes on the Prize — Sweet Honey in the Rock

17. People Have the Power — Patti Smith

18. Move On Up — Curtis Mayfield

19. We Live Again — Beck

About Tidal

If you don’t use Tidal, its website includes information about the app, plans, and how the service works.

✍️ Trust, Trumped
Commentary: When distrust becomes a strategy, what holds a country together?

Share

I was playing with the word trust the other night—turning it sideways, pulling it apart, probably overthinking it.

Then it hit me: This isn’t a word problem. It’s a country problem.

Trust isn’t a slogan. It’s what makes a country work. You don’t notice it when it’s there. You feel it when it’s gone.

Elections require trust. Courts require trust. Markets require trust. Streets require trust—drivers trusting each other not to kill them. Families, schools, churches, teams—all of them run on trust.

So here’s the question:
Can anything function without it?

What we’re seeing in this country right now isn’t random chaos. It’s not just politics as usual. It’s something more deliberate.

It’s a strategy:

• Undermine trust in elections. People stop believing outcomes.

• Undermine trust in courts. People stop believing the law.

• Undermine trust in journalism. People stop believing facts.

• Undermine trust in science and expertise. People stop believing what’s known.

Once trust is weakened everywhere, what’s left?

Not shared understanding. Not common ground. Just power.

This didn’t happen by accident. It has been encouraged, amplified, and exploited, most visibly by Donald Trump and those who have chosen power over truth: his advisers, his enablers, his benefactors, and those who continue to support him.

They have learned something dangerous: A country that stops trusting itself becomes easier to control.

We still print “In God We Trust” on our money. But a country can’t function if it’s taught to trust nothing else—not its institutions, not its neighbors, not even itself.

Now we’re being trained not to trust anything at all. Distrust is being weaponized as a path to power.

Our coins still say, E pluribus unum—”out of many, one.”
But if we forget the “many,” the “one” stops being unity and starts becoming control. It means one country, not one leader.

Words don’t have to change to lose their meaning. They just have to be hollowed out. And when shared meaning disappears, trust goes with it.

The U.S. was built on trust; it’s built into the word itself.

So what do we do?

Not blind trust. Not naive trust.

Earned trust. Defended trust:

• We show up, as people did across this country at the No Kings protests.

• We support institutions that still deserve it and challenge those that don’t.

• We support credible journalism and pay attention to reporting that earns our trust.

• We push back on lies, even the small ones.

• We stay engaged, especially when it’s exhausting.

Because once trust is gone, it’s not easily rebuilt.

And without it?

Without trust, there is no us, no U.S.

“More than 8 million people protested against the Trump administration at more than 3,300 No Kings events across the US and in more than a dozen countries on Saturday, according to organizers. It’s the greatest number of protests in a single day in US history.”—The Guardian, March 29, 2026

Turning Concern Into Action

Executive Overreach and Abuse of Power
A ranked guide to organizations resisting authoritarianism and defending democratic norms.

Trump, MAGA, and Right-Wing Resistance
Top organizations taking action against Donald Trump, MAGA politics, and radical right-wing agendas.

Legal Resistance for Justice
A ranked guide to legal groups challenging anti-democratic policies and abuses of power.

🌟 … and music for inspiration and resilience:

Trust, Power, and the Truth We’re Told
Songs about doubt, deception, resistance, and the work of rebuilding trust

Share

Subscribe now

Most writers don’t need a long manual on inclusive language.

They need clear, practical guidance for everyday decisions:

• Is this term respectful?

• Am I describing people—or labeling them?

• Is this specific enough?

• Does this add meaning or just fill space?

That’s what this guide is for.

One simple principle runs through the guide:
Don’t label people when you can describe them.

I’ve gathered the guidance I rely on—grounded in established standards and practical experience—into one clear, easy-to-use reference:

🔤 Garbl’s Inclusive Language Guide

It covers race and ethnicity, gender and identity, disability, immigration, religion, health conditions, and more—using examples, decision points, and plain language guidance.

If you want your writing to be clear, accurate, and respectful, I hope you’ll take a look.

Share

← Clear Writing Directory

Introduction | Stereotyping | Race | Gender | Disabilities | Immigration | Religion | Health Conditions | Older Adults

Labels can be useful, but they can also oversimplify people or turn groups into stereotypes. When that happens, writing becomes less accurate—and less respectful.

Labeling describes people using a single word or category, often in place of fuller explanation.
Stereotyping assumes that people in a group share the same traits, behaviors, or beliefs.

Both can distort meaning and reduce people to a single trait.

These issues don’t appear only in how we describe people directly. They can also show up in everyday phrases, sayings, and metaphors that carry stereotypes, historical baggage, or unintended meanings.

Why it matters

Using labels—or relying on shorthand language—doesn’t just simplify writing. It can also mislead readers and shape how people are seen and treated.

It can:

• distort reality by suggesting a group is uniform when it is not

• erase individual differences, making people easier to dismiss or ignore

• reinforce stereotypes that influence public opinion, policy decisions, and everyday interactions

• reduce credibility, especially when readers recognize the oversimplification

A label or familiar phrase may seem accurate but still be incomplete. When writing relies on shortcuts instead of clear descriptions, readers are left with a quick impression instead of a real understanding.

Decision points

Before using a label, ask:

• Does this help readers understand the person or replace understanding with a shortcut?

• Does it leave out important context?

• Does it suggest that everyone in the group is the same?

If so, describe instead.

Use:

• Descriptions that reflect what people do, say, or experience

• Specific, concrete language when it adds clarity: a group advocating stricter immigration laws; a person who supports expanded public health programs

• Context that helps readers understand differences within a group

Avoid:

• Labels that group people imprecisely or with assumptions: urban voters, rural Americans, inner-city residents

• “The” labels that reduce people to a category: the homeless, the elderly, the disabled, the wealthy

• Broad generalizations that obscure meaning: the left, the right, extremists, radicals

Examples:

• Too broad: Americans are worried about the economy.
  Better: Many voters in recent surveys say they’re worried about rising costs.

• Avoid: the homeless
  Use: people experiencing homelessness

• Too simple: Liberals oppose the plan.
  Better: Some Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups oppose the plan.

• Too broad: Latino voters supported the measure.
  Better: Latino voters in urban areas supported the measure at higher rates.

Everyday Phrases with Hidden Meanings

Not all problematic language comes from how we describe people directly.

Some everyday phrases, sayings, and metaphors carry stereotypes, historical baggage, or unintended meanings. Many are used casually, without intent to harm. But they can still distract, confuse, or offend.

In public writing, especially, these phrases can weaken clarity and credibility.

When to reconsider a phrase

Ask:

• Does this phrase rely on a stereotype or outdated reference?

• Could it be misunderstood or distracting to some readers?

• Is there a clearer, more direct way to say it?

If so, revise.

Examples

Race, ethnicity, or culture:

• Avoid: grandfathered in
  Use: legacy provision, existing exception

• Avoid: off the reservation
  Use: off track, outside expected bounds

• Avoid: low man on the totem pole
  Use: lowest priority, junior role

Disability or health:

• Avoid: that’s crazy, insane
  Use: that doesn’t make sense, that’s hard to follow

• Avoid: blind to the facts
  Use: ignoring the facts

• Avoid: lame excuse
  Use: weak excuse

Violence or harmful imagery:

• Avoid: kill two birds with one stone
  Use: solve two problems at once

• Avoid: take a shot at it
  Use: give it a try

• Avoid: sold down the river
  Use: betrayed, treated unfairly

Not every phrase will offend every reader. But some carry meanings or histories that are worth avoiding, especially when clearer alternatives are available.

Related entries

See below: alt-right, quoting insults and derogatory language.

← Clear Writing Directory

Introduction | Stereotyping | Race | Gender | Disabilities | Immigration | Religion | Health Conditions | Older Adults

I welcome suggestions for additions or revisions, especially from people with lived experience in these areas.—Gary B. Larson

alt-right

Avoid using alt-right as a general descriptor. The term is vague and can obscure meaning.

When relevant, use more precise terms, such as:

• white nationalist

• white supremacist

• neo-Nazi

• antisemitic or racist groups

If you use the term alt-right, explain it or attribute it.

Quoting insults and derogatory language

Use care when quoting insults, slurs, or other derogatory or vulgar language.

Include such language only when it is necessary to the story or context. Attribute it clearly and provide context.

When possible, describe the language rather than repeating it:

• an anti-gay slur

• a personal insult or name-calling

• a mocking or demeaning comment

Avoid repeating or highlighting offensive language unnecessarily, especially when it adds little meaning.

Consider whether repeating the language adds understanding or simply amplifies it.

Avoid using such language in your own voice.

← Clear Writing Directory

Introduction | Stereotyping | Race | Gender | Disabilities | Immigration | Religion | Health Conditions | Older Adults

Share

Subscribe now

← Clear Writing Directory

Introduction | Stereotyping | Race | Gender | Disabilities
Immigration | Religion | Health Conditions | Older Adults

Use clear, specific language when race or ethnicity is relevant. Avoid unnecessary or vague references that can reinforce bias or obscure meaning.

Race often refers to physical or social groupings.
Ethnicity refers to cultural background, nationality, or heritage.

Use the term that best fits the context.

When to include race or ethnicity

Race and ethnicity are only one part of a person’s identity.

Include it when it helps explain the story—such as disparities, representation, identity, or lived experience.

Leave it out when it does not add meaning.

Why it matters: Unnecessary references can reinforce stereotypes. Missing relevant context can hide them.

Use:

• Specific, accurate terms: Black, Latino, Vietnamese American

• Capitalized names for racial and ethnic groups

• Context that helps readers understand relevance

Capitalization practices vary across style guides and may evolve over time. This guide follows current Associated Press style.

Avoid:

• Vague or outdated terms: minorities, nonwhite

• Mentioning race or ethnicity when it is not relevant

• Treating any group as a single, uniform “community”

Decision points

How specific should I be?
Use the most specific, accurate term available when it matters. Avoid broad labels if they hide significant differences.

What if I don’t know?
Do not guess. Use a neutral description or leave it out unless it is essential.

When is a general term acceptable?
Use broader terms only when more specific information is not available or not relevant.

Word choice

Avoid using group labels as nouns:

• Black people, not Blacks

• white people, not whites

Avoid imprecise or outdated terms:

• minorities (too broad)

• nonwhite (defines people by what they are not)

Use more specific descriptions when possible: Mexican American, Somali American, Japanese American.

Describing racism

Use the terms racism and racist when they are accurate and supported by facts.

Do not avoid these terms with vague alternatives such as racially charged, racially motivated, or racially tinged.

Be clear about what occurred.

Be precise: Describe the words, actions, or policies involved. Provide context so readers understand why something is described as racist.

Avoid unnecessary labeling: Rather than calling someone a racist, describe the person’s words or actions unless the label is essential and well supported.

Stereotypes and generalizations

Avoid language that suggests all members of a group are the same.

Examples of problematic phrasing include stereotypes such as inscrutable Asian, fiery Spaniard, sleepy Mexican.

Avoid descriptions that reinforce assumptions about behavior, personality, or values.

Examples:

• Better: The policy disproportionately affects Black and Latino neighborhoods.

• Avoid: The policy mostly affects minorities.

• Better: A Korean American business owner

• Avoid: An Asian business owner (when more specific information is relevant)

Related entries

See below: Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander; Black; brown; dual-heritage terms; Hispanic, Latino; Indigenous, American Indian, Native American, Alaska Native; people of color; racial slurs; Roma; white.

← Clear Writing Directory

Introduction | Stereotyping | Race | Gender | Disabilities
Immigration | Religion | Health Conditions | Older Adults

I welcome suggestions for additions or revisions, especially from people with lived experience in these areas.—Gary B. Larson

Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander

Use as adjectives:

• Asian people, not Asians

• Asian American communities

Use specific terms when possible: Chinese American, Filipino American, Vietnamese American.

Avoid outdated terms such as Oriental.

Use the term preferred by the person or group when known.

Black

Capitalize Black when referring to people in a racial, ethnic, or cultural context.

Use as an adjective: Black people, not Blacks.

African American is also acceptable, primarily in U.S. contexts. Use the term preferred by the person or group when known.

brown

Avoid using brown as a general racial or ethnic descriptor. It is broad, imprecise, and may be unclear or misleading.

Use a more specific term whenever possible.

dual heritage terms

No hyphen for Arab American, Asian American, Mexican American, and other dual-heritage terms. When possible, refer to a person’s country of origin or follow the person’s preference. For example, Lebanese American or Egyptian American instead of Arab American.

Hispanic, Latino

Hispanic and Latino/Latina are widely used in the United States. Preferences vary.

Use more specific terms when possible: Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban.

Use gendered or gender-neutral forms (Latino, Latina, Latine) based on context and preference.

Avoid assuming all people prefer the same term.

Indigenous people/peoples, Native Americans, American Indians, Alaska Natives

Use Indigenous (capitalized) as a broad, inclusive term when describing the original people(s) of a region, especially in global or broad contexts: Indigenous people in North America.

In the United States:

• Native Americans is generally acceptable in broad references. Natives is acceptable on second reference.

• American Indians is generally considered outdated, but some tribal members and organizations may use the term. (Use Indian to describe the peoples of the South Asian nation of India.)

• Alaska Natives refers to Indigenous peoples of Alaska. Avoid Eskimo except in specific Alaska contexts where it is part of a group’s name or preferred usage.

Be precise. Tribal identity is political as well as cultural. When relevant, identify a person’s nation or affiliation.

Use the most specific nation or tribal affiliation when possible: Navajo, Hopi, Muckleshoot. Use Tribe (capitalized) when part of a formal name; otherwise, lowercase.

Preferences vary. Use the term preferred by the person or group when known.

Avoid outdated or offensive terms: squaw, wampum.

To specify someone was born in the United States but isn’t Native American, use native-born.

people of color

Acceptable in broad references to multiple racial or ethnic groups other than white.

Use with care. The term can be seen as imprecise or as grouping diverse people into a single category.

Use more specific terms when possible.

racial slurs

Avoid using racial slurs except when there is a clear and compelling reason, such as reporting or documenting a direct quotation.

When their use is essential:

• Provide context.

• Consider whether partial quotation or paraphrasing will convey the meaning.

• If a full quotation is necessary, consider using partial redaction (for example, first letter plus hyphens).

• Do not sanitize or substitute words—or alter the meaning—of a direct quotation.

Always consider your audience, purpose, and the harm such language may cause.

Roma

Use Roma for the ethnic group.

Some people consider Gypsy offensive. Avoid except in a quotation or when part of a proper name.

Use the term preferred by the person or group when known.

white

Lowercase white when referring to people in a racial or cultural context.

Use as an adjective: white people, not whites

Avoid using the term as a noun.

Why: Unlike terms such as Black, white generally refers to a broad category and is not widely used to describe a shared culture, historical identity, or the experience of discrimination.

Avoid terms such as Caucasian unless in a quotation or when relevant in a specific context.

← Clear Writing Directory

Introduction | Stereotyping | Race | Gender | Disabilities
Immigration | Religion | Health Conditions | Older Adults

Share

Subscribe now

← Clear Writing Directory

Introduction | Stereotyping | Race | Gender | Disabilities
Immigration | Religion | Health Conditions | Older Adults

Use clear, respectful, and precise language. Avoid defining people by a condition or making assumptions about ability.

When to include

Mention a disability only when it adds meaning.

Leave it out when it does not.

Why it matters

Unnecessary references can distract from the person and reinforce stereotypes. Relevant context can improve understanding.

Use:

• Person-first language in most cases: person with a disability, person who uses a wheelchair

• Specific, accurate descriptions when relevant: person with low vision, person who is deaf

Avoid:

• Defining people by a condition: the disabled, the blind

• Language that implies limitation or pity: suffers from, afflicted with, confined to a wheelchair

• Broad or vague terms when more specific language is available: special needs

Decision points

Person-first or identity-first?
Use the person’s or community’s preference when known.

Some groups prefer identity-first language: Deaf person, autistic person.

When in doubt, person-first language is widely accepted.

When is a disability relevant?
Include it when it helps explain the story or context. Leave it out when it does not.

How specific should I be?
Be as specific as needed for clarity but avoid unnecessary detail.

When helpful, describe how the condition affects the person rather than using a broad label: She has a condition that makes it easy for her to become lost.

What if a person prefers a specific term?
Use the language the person uses for themselves, even if it differs from general guidance.

Word choice

Use disability or disabled, avoid handicap or handicapped.

Use neutral, factual wording: has, uses, lives with.

Avoid language that implies suffering or helplessness: suffers from, victim of.

Avoid terms that frame disability as limitation: avoid confined to a wheelchair, use uses a wheelchair.

Avoid outdated terms such as mentally retarded. Use more specific and current terms, such as intellectual disability, when relevant.

Examples:

• Use: person who is deaf or person with hearing loss
  Avoid: deaf and dumb, deaf mute

• Use: person with a disability or a specific condition
  Avoid: handicapped, the disabled

• Use: has a condition
  Avoid: suffers from, afflicted with

• Use: person with schizophrenia
  Avoid: schizophrenic (as a label)

• Use: accessible
  Avoid: handicap accessible

Avoid euphemisms that can sound condescending or unclear: handicapable, physically challenged, special.

Be aware:

• Preferences vary by individual and community

• Language evolves

• Disability is one aspect of a person’s identity

Related entries

See below: ableism; accessibility; Americans with Disabilities Act.

← Clear Writing Directory

Introduction | Stereotyping | Race | Gender | Disabilities
Immigration | Religion | Health Conditions | Older Adults

I welcome suggestions for additions or revisions, especially from people with lived experience in these areas.—Gary B. Larson

ableism

Discrimination or bias against people with disabilities.

Avoid language or assumptions that treat people with disabilities as less capable, less independent, or defined by their condition.

accessibility

Designing spaces, services, and information so people with disabilities can use them.

Be specific when possible: wheelchair-accessible entrance, captions provided.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Spell out on first reference. Use ADA on later references.

Use terms such as: ADA-compliant, meets ADA standards.

Avoid vague phrasing such as handicap accessible. Use accessible or describe the features.

← Clear Writing Directory

Introduction | Stereotyping | Race | Gender | Disabilities
Immigration | Religion | Health Conditions | Older Adults

Share

Subscribe now