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Check out the Advent Calendar for Social Justice here!

We have one month left before we’re in 2017, and although it’s tempting to just curl up into a ball until it’s over, we know that we need to prepare to live in a Trump world. (For the many people who see how this year has just pulled back the mask on what wasn’t all that well hidden to begin with – I hear you. I’m sorry it’s taking some of us so long to figure it out.) Okay, so let’s live in this world, let’s make it as good as we possibly can, and let’s do it together.

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I used to be a weekly churchgoer, and the rhythms of the church year still echo in my life. The season leading up to Christmas is called Advent. Advent is a time of preparation, during which Christians prepare for the coming of the savior of the world. They prepare for the end of the world as we know it and the arrival of a better world we can barely imagine. This year, we are preparing for what certainly feels like the end of the world, and it’s hard to see anything beyond it. Trump is the opposite of a savior, no matter how he brands himself in his populist speeches. So this year we need to prepare ourselves to be our own saviors, to save ourselves from what we’ve allowed to happen. (I’m speaking mostly to my fellow straight white cis folks here – people of color and queer folk have been doing the heavy lifting since forever.)

This election seems to have served as a wake-up call for many of us. It’s not right that it took a loss that will devastate so many lives and alter the fabric of our democracy to serve as such, but here we are. So now what? is the question I see most frequently on Facebook, Twitter, in the news. There are a lot of good answers out there, from better thinkers than I. Read them, discuss them with friends and family, take action.

But for what it’s worth, here is my “what now?” response. Advent is a time of preparation, so let’s prepare. For each day of December, I’m going to take concrete action that makes me more prepared to resist the Trump presidency, or that offers some resistance now, or that contributes something good and kind to the world. Some of these actions can be done anywhere in the world, and some are US-specific.

I also think it’s important to do a mix of overtly political and more community-building or “good deeds” type things. Especially if you haven’t been politically active before, you may find this a little intimidating, but what we’ve seen from the way Trump’s campaign was run, and now after the election, is that white supremacy, misogyny, xenophobia, and homophobia play a prominent role in people’s political decisions and everyday lives. Coaching Little League builds community, yes, please keep doing that — but also see how you can assist your local Black Lives Matter chapter, to build community in that way as well. And artists — keep creating, always. Artists are vital.

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Will you join me for this month? Especially for people who wouldn’t normally consider themselves political, or who don’t have much experience with activism, I tried to make this an accessible collection of things to do that will show how easy it is to fit these things into our busy lives, and how it’s not that scary to do.

If you have suggestions, please comment. Share this with anyone you like. The key is to take action, and to do it together. So call your mom, talk to your coworker, make a new friend, and go all in. As Angela Davis recently said, “How do we begin to recover from this shock? By experiencing and building and rebuilding and consolidating community. Community is the answer.”

Here is where I was going to put the calendar, but I can’t get it to embed. So please click through to the Advent Calendar for Social Justice. Be sure to click on each day to see notes and useful links with further info for each action item.

This calendar is intended as a helpful tool for people who want to do something, but aren’t sure where to start. I hope it will help you sample different ways of taking action, so that in the new year, you’ll be better prepared to really dig in to volunteering, donating, and organizing roles. I’d love your feedback. I consider it a live document and will adjust it as necessary.

Shout-out to Liz and Emmett for providing excellent advice and action items.

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Resources for Educating Yourself and Taking Action:
Accomplices Not Allies
A List of Pro-Women, Pro-Immigrant, Pro-Earth, Anti-Bigotry Organizations That Need Your Support
Oh Crap! What Now? A Survival Guide
Opportunities for White People in the Fight for Racial Justice
“We’re His Problem Now” Calling Sheet
What Educators Can Do to Support Undocumented Students
What to Do Instead of Calling the Police

Organizations Fighting the Good Fight:
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American Civil Liberties Union
Amnesty International
Black Lives Matter
Campaign Zero
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Emily’s List
National Center for Transgender Equality
National Coalition for the Homeless
National Disability Rights Network
National Women’s Law Center
Planned Parenthood
Showing Up for Racial Justice
Southern Poverty Law Center
Sylvia Rivera Law Project
The True Colors Fund
Welcoming Refugees

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Temple of Literature

The Temple of Literature in Hanoi was the first place I’ve been to that literally makes a shrine to learning. When I visited, it was the end of the school year and dozens of schoolgirls congregated to pay their respects to ancestors and ask for success in the future. It was cool to see a specific place you could go to hope for academic success, a place that had been the seat of learning for almost 1,000 years.

Temple of Literature, Hanoi

This structure is so iconic that it’s been made the symbol of Hanoi.

I met another American in line for tickets, and we split the cost of hiring a guide. Hanh, our guide, was a middle-aged woman who was thrilled to hear we were from the States. She related the facts about the temple, but mostly she wanted to talk about how proud she was of her daughter, who is at college in Nebraska. It was fitting to hear a running commentary on the benefits of education in a place devoted to the celebration of it.

This character says men should be reliable. I do not disagree. (Okay, so it’s intended to represent a virtue that scholars should have, but they meant “men” when they said “scholars,” so I took the easy joke.)

There are 82 stelae inscribed with the names of those who passed the highest level of testing.

The place was established as the Imperial University in 1070, and it only closed in 1779. By 1802, the Nguyen dynasty set up the university in Hue, and the Hanoi temple became less important. For a 300-year period, large stone stelae were inscribed with the names of those who passed the rigorous examinations to hold the highest titles of learning in the land. The stone slabs were set up on the backs of stone turtles, which represent longevity and appear in various guises around the temple grounds.

Altar in the temple

The Chinese influence in Vietnam was strong for many years, and Chinese was the language of learning for centuries, much in the same way that Latin was the language of learning in Europe until recently. So most of the writing and inscriptions were in Chinese characters, including the stelae and the planters lining the central path, which spelled out virtues learned scholars are expected to possess.

One of the students who posed for photographs for family and tourists alike.

And then it got weird, with tourists hopping in to pose with the students, getting in the way of the students’ own photos.

Temple of the Jade Mountain

Hoan Kiem Lake is at the south end of the old town of Hanoi, and it’s a popular place with locals and tourists alike. I saw lots of Vietnamese relaxing by the shore on their lunch break or walking around the perimeter. There’s a tiny island of a shrine in the middle of it, and separately, there’s a Taoist temple, Temple of the Jade Mountain, accessed by a simple red bridge.

The approach to the red bridge (apparently called the Welcoming Morning Sunlight Bridge–it does go east-west)

People will do a lot for a good photo

Somehow, I never got a picture of the bridge from a distance, which is too bad because it was pretty nice looking. Expand on this photo in your imagination.

I found it an odd temple once I crossed the bridge: a few cartoon-like paintings on the stucco gates, a garden of patchy grass, a couple dusty back rooms. But the altar was well-maintained, and the view of the shrine on the lake was nice, and there was the preserved body of a giant tortoise on display. Giant tortoises are something of a legend in this lake, not appearing very frequently but always happily received when they do. The one on display was one such adored specimen.