How to Go On Offense When the Powerful Want Us On Defense

"This will be our reply to violence," wrote New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein after President Kennedy was assassinated, "to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before."

The night before, Mr. Bernstein had led the Philharmonic in Mahler’s Second Symphony, known as the Resurrection. It's an unconventional choice after a national loss. Why not the expected funeral march or requiem?

"We played the Mahler symphony not only in terms of resurrection for the soul of one we love," said Mr. Bernstein, "but also for the resurrection of hope in all of us who mourn him."

You could say that Leonard Bernstein's response to the assassination was not political. He wasn't writing his Senator or marching in the streets.

But you could also say that helping to pull an unsettled nation out of hopelessness is political. Because no good change - policy or otherwise - happens without a dogged belief in a future we haven't yet seen. Which is just a dressed up way of saying hope.

There are a million things we can do to meet this moment. We can make our voice heard with our Members of Congress. We can take time to thank the good politicians.

But there are plenty of things we can do beyond the corridors of power that will echo within them. A few I'm fond of:

Don't Give the Powerful What They Want
A favorite thought exercise of mine is to think about what the powerful want, then do the opposite.

You want us to be afraid? We'll be joyous. As the poet Toi Derricotte wrote, "Joy is an act of resistance."

You want us to be overwhelmed? We'll be smooth and steady. I so love that line, "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast."

You want us to check out? We'll be strategically engaged.

The powerful love to set out bait for us. And this bait serves one primary purpose: distraction. Distract us from our joy, our calm, our engagement, our hope.

The powerful don't love it when we stay focused. Focused on creating in defiance of all the destruction, to paraphrase writer Maxine Hong Kingston. Focused on caring in defiance of all the cynicism. Focused on protecting our hope, in defiance of all that would like to drain it away.

There's a reason "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" was such a seminal Civil Rights anthem.

Go On Offense
These days, it's easy to be in reactive mode. But if we're always whiplashing from one crisis to another, we get trapped in a bottomless well of reactivity.

Now is a fertile time to start shaping out our long-term approach to the months ahead, like the gardener who shovels snow in February, while ordering seeds she'll plant in April.

So let's go on offense, shall we? Let's spend some time building towards the world we want to live in. Because this season we're in will end. And what we do now will shape what comes after.

A few possibilities to stoke your thinking:

• Get voters registered for the 2026 midterms.
  
  
• Plan to plant more cukes, zucchini, squash than you need and give the surplus away.
  
  
• Volunteer for a local ballot initiative or race (many local races happen in off-years, like this one). So many of these odd-year town or state elections are determined by skinny margins. Your work could move those margins.
  
  
• Make a weekly practice of sending out one thank you note to someone you appreciate. Nobody every said, "Your thank you came at just the wrong time."
  
  
• Volunteer at a civic institution you love: join Friends of the Library and drive books to housebound folks, join Friends of the Parks and organize monthly cleanups, paint sets or usher for the community theater, walk dogs at the shelter.
  
• Run for office! Find out what's available in your area here. Remember: you don't just have to run for Congress; there are school, library, hospital boards; county commissioners (who are key in making sure our elections are secure); city/town councils, state legislators, and so much more!

And if you think for one single second you're unqualified, let me remind you that part of how we got to this moment is wholly unqualified people throwing their hat in the ring and winning.

Remind People of the World We Could Have
There is a house a few blocks from mine that always has a big jar of dog treats at the end of the driveway. In the summertime, they put out a water dish.

A woman I know regularly buys coffee for the person behind her in line at the coffeeshop.

A friend of mine puts on a reflective vest (to look official), grabs a pair of loppers, and heads into the park to hacks away at bittersweet, an invasive vine that chokes trees to death.

The powerful want us to be forever looking over our shoulder, to believe the world is zero-sum, that more for you means less for me, to adopt a dog-eat-dog mentality.

The powerful want that because the opposite of that is community, belonging, generosity, abundance; watch your back becomes I got your back.

Which the powerful can't stand.

Because all those good, connective, kind things melt fear. And fear is the powerful's oxygen.

The powerful aren't the sole authors of this moment. We still have some say in it. And as historian Howard Zinn put it, "The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now, as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

PS! Tired of feeling overwhelmed and powerless? I'm doing Civic Strategy Fireside Chats with individuals and organizations about how we can be rooted, impactful, and strategic during these chaotic moments. If interested, drop me a line!