The cost of doing nothing

Stills from the LA No Kings protest on June 14th, 2025

It’s easy to see what’s at stake with your back against the wall and neck on the line, but what about when the danger doesn’t reach you? Let’s take a quick little stroll through the fields of history, philosphy, morality, and responsibility.

america: what & how?

For those of you who don’t recall the specifics of how the US came to be, or you never had to learn it, I’m going to give you the extremely broad strokes of what this place is and how it came to be.

The area of North America that is now the US & Canada was inhabited by a diverse collection of nations & tribes of Native Americans/American Indians/First Nation People for at least 10,000 years before Europeans arrived on the east coast of the continent to pillage & settle. During the following ~200 years, several groups with several different ideals all managed to coalesce into: committing genocide against the indigenous, claiming the land, and kidnapping/enslaving African people to work said land. 

**There are exceptions to this trend, but the percentages are too miniscule to bear mentioning.

   Numerous wars were fought, including the American Revolution against the British in 1775, which resulted in the formal formation of the United States. At this point, the country was  only 13 states along the east coast, but through continued genocide, slavery, theft, and “treaties”, the country eventually expanded all the way to the west coast in the mid-nineteenth century, which, coincidentally, is when slavery (as it was) was abolished.

   It would be another century before the final state (Hawai’i) was illegally annexed, making the country whole, and then about another 6 years until nearly everyone in the country was considered a person (Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, Immigration & Nationality Act of 1965). This is about where what you would call Modern History begins in the US: about 60 years ago.

   Now obviously, I’ve skipped a lot of information here: there were two World Wars, our Civil War, Manifest Destiny, the Restoration Era, Jim Crow, the Suffrage & Civil Rights Movements, Yellow Peril, the Red Scare, Neo-imperialism, Regan absolutely destroying the country, and about a million other key factors leading up to where the US is now. I’m a history guy, but I know not everyone is, so like I said, you’re getting the extremely broad strokes.

The social contract

Stay with me here, I promise this won’t be too long or boring. 

   The Social Contract describes “an actual or hypothetical compact, or agreement, between the ruled or between the ruled and their rulers, defining the rights and duties of each” (Britannica). It got its name from 18th Century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but conceptually, it’s so old and wide-spread that no one person can truly have the credit for creating it. Basically: the individual serves the collective, and in turn the collective serves the individual. This is the basis for every form of society ever created.

Now, when the Social Contract is in some way violated, that is how societies find themselves in decline, unrest, or revolution. A lot of monarchs have lost their heads due to forgetting that they themselves serve the people (French Revolution, American Revolution, Cultural Revolution), likewise societies have fractured due to individuals neglecting to serve the group as a whole (crack epidemic, billionaires, modern corporate culture). Essentially, when either side gets too selfish, the whole arrangement crumbles and everyone suffers.

   Fortunately, as people have gained more knowledge with each passing generation, we’ve been able to recognize fractures before they can become breaks. Unfortunately, as everyone now has that knowledge, those who wish to commit evil deeds on a large scale have now become more subtle. Predator and Prey evolve together, that’s the dance.

Anecdotal aside

   Alright, we’re gonna take a little break from all that academic stuff and I’m going to drop some of my lore. If you’ve known or been following me for a while, you know that I am very involved in my community; I’ve been out there marching, donating, and participating in social justice movements since I was a teenager. It took a few years for me to fully develop a “political identity”, but I’ve always been of the beliefs that no one should go hungry, thirsty, or without some semblance of safety in their lives. I myself have experienced these things long term via homelessness, police violence, and poverty, and I vowed that I would never let that shit happen to anyone around me if it was in my power. 

   Obviously, as I learned more about the complexities of the institutions that perpetuate this inequality, I felt overwhelmed and like nothing I could possibly do would matter in the grand scheme of things… but then I began to think back to key moments in my struggles and the little things people did or didn’t do to help me and I realized something: even the most seemingly inconsequential actions can save a life. A friend leaving the window unlocked so I could sleep on their couch, a classmate bringing their leftovers for me, a stranger paying my bus fare, all of those little favors that they probably don’t even remember saved me more than they know. None of them needed to do any of that, but they did, and I remind myself of that every time there’s an opportunity for me to do something for someone else, no matter how small.

In terms of today

  It’s a lot easier to see the effects of helping or ignoring those in need at a personal level, and we all instinctively want to protect those around us, but what about at a societal scale? This is where one must remember that they are both an individual and a piece of a larger whole.

   Elements such as racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, and religious discrimination are all veils which obscure the fact that we’re all just people. In the US, racism was used as a red herring to make poor white people disregard the fact that they were being exploited by the rich. That’s not even an opinion, in the early nineteenth century the concept of universal male suffrage elevated all white men to first-class citizenship by granting them the right to vote, which made it so that even the poorest white man was technically still above the richest Black one. 

   I bring this example up, because most labels and buzzwords you might hear on the news serve much the same purpose. “Illegals”, “Criminals”, “Socialists”, “Rioters”, and countless other phrases are tossed around with the sole purpose of drawing a divide between you and them by placing them on a lower moral standing. Do you really think one working-class family deserves less than another because they don’t have the same paperwork? Does a person’s life lose all value because they were involved in a crime? Will you remain quiet while your neighbors are stolen away in the night by secret police because they’re not from here?

   Currently, the US is experiencing renewed xenophobia and violence toward vulnerable communities under the guises of “securing American borders” or “protecting American citizens” or whatever stupid catchphrase du jour we’re at now. You can see the divisive phrase “American” or “citizen” being used to separate natural-born Americans from immigrants, refugees, non-permanent residents, etc. After reading all this, you know why they’re doing that: so group A is able to hold themselves in higher regard than group B, even though in reality, they’re all just people trying to make their way in life. This time, however, our government has doubled down by using Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to act as secret police to arrest and deport anyone who isn’t 100% secure in their citizenship status (it’s not just illegal immigrants).

You know who else had a secret police force that targeted and kidnapped members of a certain group? Hitler.

   One last bit of lore for the road: my maternal great grandmother escaped a concentration camp during the holocaust by holding onto the underside of a bus to sneak out of the country and eventually find refuge in the US. Was she a criminal? An illegal immigrant? A dirty Jew? Obviously not. She was brave as hell and escaped genocide with what little family she had left, and then started a new life here. That is what your morality would tell you (I hope), but legally speaking, she was all of those things. At the time and place, it was a crime to escape the camps, a crime for Jews to leave designated areas, and not exactly legal to emigrate as she did. 

   This brings me to my final point: Legality ≠ Morality. Slavery was legal, every holocaust was legal, internment was legal, lynchings were legal, genocide of the indigenous was not only legal but encouraged, the list goes on for way too long.

Civic Duty

 Now that we understand the history, philosophy, and morality of our world a little better, we’re onto the final item: responsibility. And I know we took a walk to get here, so to those of you still with me, thank you for enduring.

   This is the simplest part, but it’s also the most daunting because of how involved it is. There are so many ways to get involved with social movements: from being on the front lines, to working behind the scenes, anyone can contribute. You, like me when I first started, may not know what to do or where to go, but luckily you’ve got me here to help.

   Following your local collectives on social media, volunteering at soup kitchens/food pantries, donating to mutual aid funds, going to banner drops/protests, or even attending virtual council meetings is a great way to get involved and meet organizers, and from there you just do what you can. I just kind of walked into my first protest, and from there I met entire networks of people doing whatever they can for their community. Combating hunger, homelessness, domestic abuse, police brutality, gang violence, and targeted attacks are all interconnected causes, so being in proximity of one puts you in proximity of many. 

   At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you decide to do as long as you do something. Being brave enough to stand up or speak out inspires others to do the same, even if no one joins you at first, and that can be enough to unite and stop history from repeating itself. No nation cheers for their own oppression, they just stay silent about small groups being subjugated until little by little, minority by minority, they work their way up to complete facism. 

    So get active! Join me at the front or support from the back. Protect your family, your neighbor’s family, and families you’ll never even meet, because that’s what it is to be one of the checks and balances of a society.