Is Care the Secret Ingredient to Activism?

By Javay da BAE, the Millennial Sexpert

Happy New Year! It’s 2025, and you probably have quite a few emotions swirling around regarding this year and everything it has in store. You are not alone. We are also feeling that way, which is why we have decided that our word for the year will be care: self-care, community care, and all other forms of care that we will need to sustain us through this year. Come along if you want to join us in prioritizing care this year! Here is a brief breakdown of all the different ways care will be vital to everything that is coming.

Why does care matter?

Before we get into the ways we practice care, it is important to understand why care matters, especially as we enter this year. Care is at the foundation of community. Care is a pivotal component for enacting change and fighting back. Taking care of each other, ourselves, and our spaces is how we work to change the world to make it better and a place where we all want to live. Caring for ourselves is what keeps us going physically, and it is how we ground ourselves emotionally to do hard things. Caring for our community is how we come together, how we learn more, and how we have each others’ backs. Caring for our physical spaces—community centers, the environment, and things of that nature—is vital for having places to be together, for having homes, and for building sites of resistance. Care is integral in sustaining us all. If we aren’t cared for individually, communally, and physically, then we can’t continue to fight for each other and change the world. 

Ways to practice care

Self-Care

You are probably familiar with the idea of self-care already. There is so much content out there that focuses on telling you to take bubble baths and drink enough water, and those are definitely options for self-care, but they aren’t the only things you should focus on. As we enter into the unknown and ambiguous waters of 2025, it is important to practice self-care, such as learning what our limits are, understanding where our growing points are, and recognizing burnout in ourselves. At face value, these might not seem like activities of care because they don’t center on joy or pleasure, but they do center on taking care of all the aspects of yourself, not just your physical body. We all have limits–physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. Understanding those limits provides an awareness that is important to staying engaged in community work and growing as an individual. 

Understanding your growth opportunities is going to be valuable for recognizing where you start to get uncomfortable and may begin to step back or away from challenging things and how that is working against the work you are trying to do for yourself and your community. Self-care that focuses on recognizing and minimizing burnout is extremely important. We exist in a capitalist society, and so much of the way the world works pushes us to burnout, so having the knowledge to recognize and avoid burnout is going to be key to staying active in the fight against oppression. You can get started with self-care activities like journaling and meditation to help develop your introspection skills to recognize your own patterns and make changes as you need and desire. You can also practice self-care by intentionally resting. Rest is resistance, as The Nap Ministry has said countless times, and integrating rest into your self-care is going to make a huge difference in your personal resistance.

Community Care

Caring for your community can and does look like so many different things. Knowing your strengths and areas for growth is important for how you show up to caring for your community. Some people’s skills are in organizing, others are in relationship building, and for some, it is more material. Whatever your skills are, there is always some way that you can help care for your community. If you are someone who has less bandwidth for showing up physically, you can support and care for your community by donating to mutual aid funds like Lane County Mutual Aid, the Neighborhood Anarchist Collective (NAC), Civil Liberties Defense Center, and the BIPOC Liberation Collective. If you have more time and ability to show up, consider volunteering with a community organization. Communities work when we work with them, which means that volunteering your time is a wonderful way to show care and give back. You can also show up physically to care for community members, especially if you are a person with identities of privilege. Using your privilege to protect more vulnerable community members is vital for safety, and there is power in numbers. 

Consider joining the next rally or protest that is happening. If you are going out in person to events, be sure to educate yourself so that you are protected and share that information with others. A great starting place if you want to care for your community is getting connected to it. Attend community events, and we mean a variety of them, not just activist events. Community is about relationships and knowing the people you are in community with. You can’t sustain activism 24/7, so you have to also connect with community in fun, joyous ways. Attend musical performances, film screenings, book clubs, karaoke nights, drag brunches, and any other fun events that interest you. The centering of pleasure and joy in community with each other is a way of caring for one another. 

Physical Care

The last community of care that we all need to prioritize is caring for our land and spaces. The fight for a better world means nothing if we don’t take care of the planet. This is not to say you must become an eco-justice warrior, but rather, learn about the spaces in your community and fight to protect them. Living in the Pacific Northwest, we are surrounded by neverending beauty, but that beauty needs our active care to continue to exist. Take time to connect with nature and spend a few extra minutes to pick up debris and trash that you find to help keep her healthy and beautiful. 

You don’t have to go out into nature to make a difference and practice care. Places like community centers, public libraries, shelters, and food kitchens are already under attack, and as a community, we have to work to protect them. If you don’t already have one, get a public library card. Visit your community center and take advantage of the resources and programs available to you. If you want to become more ecologically justice-focused, start by learning about whose land you are on because it is not yours; spoiler alert. You can learn about the native lands you are on by visiting Native-Land.ca. Look into and learn about the Land Back movement. Take direction from Indigenous communities' work to protect the land. 

How does care play into what’s coming?

You might be wondering why we are having this conversation, and there are quite a few reasons. We are about to enter the second presidential term of someone who got elected by spewing hate and encouraging discrimination and oppression. We have seen the harm that has come from him being president already, and now he has added even more people who are determined to further oppression to positions of power. Every day, we are getting closer and closer to living in a fascist society–autocratic government, dictatorial leadership, and the suppression of opposition. We can’t fight back and fight for ourselves if we aren’t cared for and take care of each other. For some people, that may be a hard pill to swallow, so we need to start by unpacking all that it entails. For most of us, unpacking won’t and shouldn’t happen alone–it should happen in community so we don’t feel hopeless or like there is nothing we can’t do. Care is paramount for the next four years, for changing the world and for not losing hope. Without care, we lose our humanity. 

All of us here at As You Like It will always be here as a community resource, a space for community building, connection, and education. We are all together in the fight to change the world. If you want to learn more about care and how it connects to activism, stop by the store and peruse our extensive book offerings.

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