By: IO

I tried to find something to write all week but nothing’s coming out. This has been a rough summer filled with discouraging decisions from SCOTUS. I wanted to find empowering words for myself, for the brilliant women I write with, but all I’ve got is this.

Do something. Anything. Any small thing.

Know that you alone are not gonna fix what’s been broken since before the ink dried on the parchment declaring ourselves a nation. It’s not on any one person to untie the binds that’s taken many others many decades to wrap around us. There are no human wrecking balls capable of demolishing a wall in one strike. But if we all do something, support the organizations and the activists that have made these struggles their lives work, donate some spare change, some time, some necessity…if we all act as a chisels, chipping away at the obstacles to our rights, then maybe we can get the work done and we won’t need the wrecking ball. 

Where do you start? Right here.

The Afiya Center is a reproductive justice organization founded and run by Black womxn in Dallas. They have a comprehensive call for volunteers on their site:

https://www.theafiyacenter.org/volunteer

And if you can’t volunteer, or even if you can, there’s also the option to donate:

https://www.theafiyacenter.org/donate

There are other organizations that need help too. This one is important to me as a Black Texan woman who loves her state despite all it does wrong. 

Another thing you can do, and I hate sounding like a shill for one of the biggest corporations in the world, is use Amazon Smile to shop. It’s a program of Amazon, not widely advertised, that makes donations to a charity of your choosing, at no additional cost to you, when you make an eligible purchase. A lot of Prime items qualify. The amount that gets donated is tiny (0.5%) but it’s something. And that’s all we have to do…something.