Want to Resist Fascism? Invest in Community

Use your agency to act locally

Feb 11, 2025

It’s been less than a month since we’ve ushered Trump 2.0 into office and we’re already seeing fascism take over. Entire departments taken offline and supposedly shut down, any kind of activity around “diversity, equity, and inclusion” being halted immediately, and an unelected billionaire and his teenage goons taking over the systems that house the entire U.S. citizenry’s most private information and data.

What fun the news has become.

This, however, is not about that national news. If you want to get a sense of what really is important to pay attention to and how to take action, check out

Anya Kamenetz

’s The Golden Hour Substack where her paid subscribers receive a weekly update that helps cut through the noise.

This post, on the other hand, is more about where we can focus our attention when it feels impossible to do anything to make changes at the national level. What that action involves is looking locally and investing in community.

We have seen the stripping of the government’s support of its citizens in just a few weeks and we’ve seen many large companies unceremoniously falling in line with the fascistic ideals that apparently only seem to hold cis-het White men in high esteem. An antidote, I believe, is to support our local systems.

I’m currently working on a story about Northern Californian food systems organizations and emergency preparedness agencies combining efforts to create a more resilient food system. What I’ve found is that, while the potential loss of FEMA support could be devastating, the success of their work is mostly rooted in developing strong relationships at a hyper-local level. And this is where we have power and agency.

And so, for you to think about where you can invest your time and energy, here’s a handy list of what you can do to invest in your community.

Join a club or group

I know this seems simple, but in our current culture, separated from one another and the emergence of social media has only helped to deepen that. This has not only made us isolated and alone on a personal level, but it has also torn apart our social cohesion.

In his writing and research, Robert Putnam, has shown that social capital (the sense of belonging and connection individually and in society) is essential to vibrant, democratic societies and community wellbeing. I think what we’re seeing in the trend toward fascism is an exploitation of the lack of social capital. We can counter that if we become more connected to one another. And that’s exactly what the movie Join of Die addresses. It’s a documentary about Putnam’s work with a deep and important societal need for all of us to connect with the people in our community.

Get involved in local politics

American’s participation in democracy has increasingly become relegated to voting during a Presidential election year and after that mid-term elections. And for both of those, voter turnout is pretty dismal, usually around two-thirds of qualified voters for presidential elections and less than half of qualified voters for mid-terms. And for so many people, voting is where the participation in democracy ends. We’ve come to take for granted that is vibrant democratic participation and that is how we got where we are.

That’s how we got to a place where over half of Americans voted for a fascist believing that he wouldn’t do the things that he said he would. That’s how we got to a place where both democrat and republican congresspeople are essentially watching idly while our democracy is being stripped before our eyes. Their constituents haven’t been speaking up to them unless it’s in a dire crisis like we see now.

So when I say get involved in local politics, I’m saying, that’s where it all starts. Call, write, and show up at your lawmakers’ offices; attend and maybe even organize town halls; rally your friends and neighbors to get involved and join you; and pay attention to what is happening at the local and state level.

I’ll give you an example. A friend of mine was telling me about her friend whose non-binary kid goes to a school district in a Portland suburb. In the wake of the administration’s attempt to reframe gender in their conservative vision, there has been silence from the school district about supporting queer and trans kids. This silence is hurtful to this parent in a community that they’ve previously felt is inclusive. This is a place where people (especially allies!) can take action by writing the school district and getting others to do so stating the importance of supporting children. Constituents can and should tell their lawmakers that they have a responsibility to protect all children from discrimination and their silence harms them.

This is an education funding forum I helped organize where we invited lawmakers to discuss with us what was coming up in the Oregon Legislative session and how we as parents can help them advocate for adequately funded public schools in our state. While the president talks about dismantling the Department of Education, we still have lawmakers locally who are dedicated to funding education at the state level. But we need to be involved in getting that done.

Find organizations to help get you involved in local and state politics

This is an extension of the previous point, but with a more specific directive to find the people already doing the work. As we’re seeing a fascist government restricting your tax dollars to serve billionaires and autocrats, there is power that we have at the local and state level and there are already people working to ensure that your local and state tax dollars help your communities be more vibrant and better.

Decide on an issue that you care about (education, climate, housing, etc.) and seek out the organizations that are advocating for these issues. No doubt that they are already working furiously to fight for their issues and they will have ways for you to get involved.

Invest in small and/or vision-driven organizations and business

With the oligarchy pretty much fully installed, it is more important than ever to support local businesses. And not only that, we should especially focus on Black, queer-owned companies and organizations and those dedicated to what the current administration has black-listed as “DEI” activities.

These small efforts by individuals to put their money where their values are helps resist the attempt to essentially erase the idea of systemic racism, rewrite history, and essentially reinstate segregation.

We can resist this and the oligarchy that is propping up this government by not supporting big business and investing in our local communities. We can also do this by investing in organizations and fields that are being targeted.

I’ll say this from the writing and art world, many artists and writers have relied on federal grant funding to support their work. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is a national organization that has long served to help people and artists historically left out of the elite art world to carve out a career in their field. Alas, given the “Anti-DEI” Executive Order, they have shut down the grants that specifically support “underserved communities.” And not only that, language has been added to all other grant applications that require the applicants to adhere to not promoting DEI nor “promoting gender ideology.”

Taking over and dominating the arts is a fascist tactic and, like all of the fields there is a current attempt at authoritarian takeover, we must resist by supporting the organizations that continue to do the independent of politics. So find those organizations whose missions you believe in and donate to their causes so they can continue to do their work.

Protest — with your money, your feet, and your actions

There are many forms protest can take, but the most obvious is participating in large-scale gatherings that seek to call attention to a problem. There’s a rally at your local ICE office? Join up and protest the attempt at mass deportations and intimidation of immigrants. Your state lawmakers are going all in on MAGA authoritarian policies locally? Join the rally at the capitol to show them they don’t represent your views.

But you also don’t need to attend a rally to protest, you can protest with your money—don’t support the companies propping this oligarchy up. You can protest by sharing information with your local community such as “Know Your Rights” information in case you encounter ICE. You’re a government employee whose work has been hampered? Find a way to fight back internally (I know this is a challenging one, but it does take all kinds of protest to ensure we maintain democracy).

Find ways to make the authoritarian takeover as difficult as possible!

Connect with your neighbors

And last, a simple but very important action is to get to know the people around you. I’ve said time and again in various forms that the best thing you can do for preparedness is to know your neighbors. And not just their names, but to know them well.

There is no time like now to start creating those connections. In part because we should be more deeply involved in our hyper-local communities, but also it’s about resilience. We can’t necessarily count on our federal government to swoop in and help us in a crisis (and even before this fascistic fiasco there were always limits to what the federal government could do in a crisis), but who we can count on are the people around us. So get to know them by hosting neighborhood coffees or block parties. Find the people who have similar interests/life experiences — parent groups, groups of retired people, knitting groups, book clubs, etc.

Basically, this is the same as joining a club, but just emphasizing it by bringing it all back to preparedness.

Use Your Gifts to Advocate for Issues You Care About

This one isn’t necessarily about acting locally, but can be. Know that you don’t have to go to show up at your capitol or even organize a forum with lawmakers to make a difference. But you can find your way to take action with joy.

I often go to Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s Climate Venn Diagram, which I think can be applied to any form of resistance.

And for those of you writers out there, we at

Scribente Maternum

have a session coming up with the aforementioned