Not In The Streets, Still In The Fight
Concrete ways to resist when marching isn’t your role.
Let’s keep it a buck. Marches are not the movement.
Yes, it’s inspiring to see tens of thousands of people take to the streets in frigid temperatures, in defiance of authoritarianism. No, you are not a coward if, for reasons you owe no one, you either can’t or choose not to. When you stand against fascism, any resistance IS resistance.
Neither Renee Nicole Good nor Alex Jeffrey Pretti were protesting when ICE murdered them.
What made Black resistance effective wasn’t eloquent oration, or the willingness to be wrongfully imprisoned. Those were highly visible roles that sat atop a larger infrastructure of organized refusal. By all means, read the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Senator John Lewis, and other Black leaders.
Not everyone can go out. Anyone can be someone to come home to.
When you look past what’s public facing, the true work of resistance is inglorious at best, tedious at worst. If your feed is full of crowds and chanting and cops in armor, it’s easy to feel like: If I’m not out there, I don’t count.
That’s a lie. Resistance isn’t a freeze-frame, it’s an ecosystem.
Everyone contributes differently. Take Georgia Gilmore. Familiar with the expression “an army lives on its stomach?” During the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, Georgia was the woman who fed that army. Dr. King helped her set up a restaurant in her own home, where she established “The Club From Nowhere.”
Not only did civil rights leaders dine with her after long days in the streets, the money raised from her dinners helped fund the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
If you are disabled, sick, elderly, broke, parenting, scared, or just not built for armed confrontation—no one is asking you to override your nervous system. Don’t die to prove a point.
But maybe provide snacks and a thermos full of hot coffee?
What made Black resistance work is that everyone did what they could, from where they were, for as long as they could hold. You don’t have to be the face of the movement. Sometimes you’re the archivist.
Without someone behind the camera we’d never see who’s out front.
David Jackson didn’t give speeches. He took the photographs of Emmett Till’s body that Ida B. Wells and Mamie Till insisted the world had to see. Those pictures brought tens of thousands of people to his funeral.
Six months later Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus.
Today we all have cameras in our pockets. Unlike David Jackson, you no longer have to wait to get film developed. No waiting for newspapers or periodicals to be printed. There’s no lag time for empire to control the narrative when you can livestream atrocities.
It’s harder for the party to reject evidence when you record it unfolding in real time.
Speaking of iconic images, what comes to mind when you think of the Black Panthers? Scary looking Black men and women in leather carrying AR-15s with fists raised in defiance? That’s not inaccurate, it’s simply incomplete.
Their primary mission wasn’t cosplay revolution. It was feeding kids.
Free Breakfast for Children. Health clinics. Education programs. They fed and vaccinated and taught Black children in neighborhoods this country had already written off as expendable.
The guns were theater. The meals were infrastructure.
Free breakfast may sound innocuous. FBI head J. Edgar Hoover called the program “potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.” The entire history of change is ordinary people in extraordinary times, choosing tiny acts of decency.
Wanna piss off a fascist regime? Give a hungry kid a sandwich.
The most disrespectful aspect of living through regime change is life’s relentless insistence. Bills still must be paid. Kids still must be picked up from school. Not everyone can get off work to stand in the freezing cold. Life be life’ing. The emotional impact is inescapable. Some days, it may take all the joules you have to spare to make it from the bedroom to the sofa, and back.
Heard and witnessed. You’ve got internet? You can spread the message.
You can contribute in impactful ways no one ever sees, and that counts. Some people have public-facing careers which could be negatively impacted by being the face of revolution. When Dr. King wrote “Letter From A Birmingham Jail” it was Harry Belafonte who wired the funds for his release.
Not everyone is ride or die. Some of y’all are ride or bail money.
Movements don’t run on vibes. They run on rent money, gas money, printing, groceries, childcare. Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier understood this. If you can’t protest, can you babysit for someone who can? Can you be that person who listens, who sends a meal, who amplifies the signal? Sam Cooke sang. James Baldwin wrote.
Jo Ann Robinson made xeroxes. Septima Clark taught literacy. Elle Baker organized meetings.
Do what you can personally do. Support those who do what you cannot.
Some are Rebels – they’re built for the street, for confrontation, for being seen.
Some are Helpers – food, rides, money, sitting with kids and elders.
Some are Advocates – they know how systems work and how to push on them.
Some are Organizers – they see the whole and move the pieces.
The role you play on any given day is assignment, not consignment.
Empire wants you frozen between “I should be doing more” and “I’m too scared / tired / broke.” Black history says there is always a job with your name on it. The system recognizes only two categories: people who maintain the status quo, and those who move the needle.
You don’t have to be on a poster to be part of that latter group.
If you can cook, you can be a Georgia. If you can film and upload, you can be a David. If you can wire $25 a month, you can be a tiny Belafonte. If you can listen, you can be the couch someone collapses on when they come home.
Without the back lines, front lines can’t advance.
March. Teach. Feed. Document. Archive. Broadcast. Contribute. Provide care in the manner your situation allows. You don’t have to put a target on your chest to resist. You don’t have to wreck your body or nervous system. You don’t have to go broke. You just have to keep going.
Any resistance IS resistance.
If at the end of the day all you have to offer is a soft place to land? That counts too.
I used to feel guilty for having zero desire to go outside. That was many years ago. Fear wasn’t the issue, it was impact. I wanted to know that what I was doing was impactful. And so my form of resistance is to untangle my [financial] relationship with the pillars of patriarchy. Last time I checked, Target is still feeling the pain from our collective withdrawal. The more we learn, the more we will see how our daily actions can shift and make meaningful change. It’s a long game strategy. Thanks for reminding us to be true to ourselves.
Thank you. I needed to hear this.