In a time of political unrest, some people are turning to small positive acts as a way to push back against the larger trends of intolerance.
Celeste Ng, author of the award-winning Everything I Never Told You, started the hashtag #smallacts on Twitter after the election of President Donald Trump. Her goal: to share small-scale but meaningful actions she was taking to resist injustice and support threatened communities, from people of color to LGBTQ individuals.
People have since used the hashtag to share their own acts of solidarity, including attending a lecture on racism and donating books on the immigrant experience to a local public school.
“I began using the #smallacts hashtag on Twitter shortly after the 2016 election as a way to resist,” Ng wrote in a Teen Vogue commentary in January. “To resist the intolerance growing in our nation, to resist an upcoming administration that I believe threatens to pull us backward and strip rights from those already marginalized.”
The author has suggested such small acts of resistance as calling your elected representatives, donating diapers to local refugee families and subscribing to news outlets to show your support.
On Tuesday, the day after Trump issued a new executive order barring travelers from six majority-Muslim countries, Ng shared another list of actions she recently took ― including placing books by writers of color in a Little Free Library, a no-cost neighborhood book exchange program that exists around the world. She also urged followers to share their own efforts.
“It’s easy to feel helpless — like you can’t fight the tide,” Ng wrote in Teen Vogue. “But remember: small actions can have a huge impact, and one person like you can inspire others to action.”
Here are a few small-scale but important ways that 18 other Twitter users are fighting hate.
For HuffPost’s #LoveTakesAction series, we’re telling stories of how people are standing up to hate and supporting those most threatened. Know a story from your community? Send news tips to lovetips@huffingtonpost.com.
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Source: HuffPost Black Voices