How are y’all coping with the political chaos

Y’all these are some hard times.

I’m a director level staff at a civil rights focused org and not only does all this impact our work, but everyone on our team has been personally impacted on the state and federal level policy shifts over the past month.

I try to keep a brave face on in front of the staff, but all of this is awful on every level. How do we prevent burn out in times like these? About half our staff has birthright citizenship and mixed status families- one of them got targeted for a mass harassment campaign from anti-immigrant extremists. A third of our staff impacted by the anti-trans policies that have been issued. We had to turn off all our social media comments because we’re just being swarmed with the most vile, hateful, trash that you’ve ever seen.

On top of all the personal impact, the folks we serve in our professional capacity are also having a rough time (to say the least) and come to our staff for help, but there’s a lot out there we just don’t have the power to change right now. we’re doing our best with harm reduction work, but it’s still really heartbreaking.

I’m sure we’re not the only organization going through this kind of thing. How are you all coping with this? How are you supporting your staff? How are you giving hope to the communities you serve so they can at least try to survive until things get better?