Today is overwhelming. Not this specific date, but this time. I feel helpless. I think many of us do.
It feels like nothing matters, that no matter what we do, the systems that enable injustice and violence will just continue their sinister work. This news doesn’t stop.
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee to relive her trauma. The country watches, and many remember times when they were powerless. Judge Brett Kavanaugh receives a lifetime appointment to this country’s highest court.
The New York Times publishes a 13,000-word investigation into the tax and fraud schemes Donald Trump used to hoard money before rising to the presidency. Still, his administration and their cronies continue to profit, lining their pockets with money .
And we’re moving closer and closer to a climate crisis with our room for error growing ever smaller, according to a United Nations report released Oct. 7, which was commissioned as part of the Paris Agreement.
The time when it’s too late is sooner than we expected and will bring real consequences: food shortages, wildfires and regular devastating storms.
There’s more than just these three stories. This is all from the past week! “Overwhelming” doesn’t begin to cover it. It seems like all we read in the headlines are new and old abuses of power, of those at the top maintaining their control.
So many times in these past months, with all of this going on, I’ve felt like nothing I do individually matters. It all seems out of my hands. My grandmother says, “This country is going to hell in a handbasket.”
It’s exhausting. It’s beating us down. 39 percent of Americans are feeling more anxious today than they did a year ago, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Diagnoses of major depression have increased by 33 percent since 2013, according to Blue Cross Blue Shield.
What we can do is be there for each other, at the most basic level. Kindness is radical. We can still care for each other and be there for each other. What we do matters. How we are to each other matters.
We owe it to ourselves and to each other. The macro makes us worthless. But that’s not how we live. We spend our days with each other.
A friend of mine told me that these feelings aren’t bugs in the system — they’re features. We’re powerless to the ills of the world only when we’re wrongly convinced that we’re powerless to them.
We can’t be pushed to apathy. We need to be moved to action. To organize. To recognize injustice and to continue work against it.
Midterms are Tuesday, Nov. 6. These elections can lead to real change. Conservatives have a majority on the Supreme Court, but they can lose their footholds in the House and Senate if people go to the polls. This print issue has a article about efforts on our campus to register voters. Our reporter Emma Tucker did a fantastic job in pitching it and seeing it through. I think it’s an important story.
Those in power stay in power when people don’t come out. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a woman of color, a Democratic Socialist, made national headlines when she wrested power from incumbent Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th congressional district, which covers parts of Queens and the Bronx.
Ocasio-Cortez’s upset wasn’t because of voter turnout — it was her efforts in canvassing. Directly engaging with people, hearing what they were concerned about and taking direct action. WNYC published a fantastic piece: “Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Won.” They went door-to-door and hit 11,300 homes in just Queens.
People matter. We can take direct action and make real change happen. We have power. We can’t allow ourselves to be convinced that our voices or actions don’t matter.
— Ryanne Salzano, editor-in-chief