In January when I started this journey to connect more deeply with my local community, I could not have imagined we’d be where we are today. In my little space in the world, everyone feels the impact of ICE immigration kidnappings and the collateral damage it leaves. People you know disappearing, masked agents with weapons on your block, terrified neighbors.
A growing number of folks are also now struggling to just get the basics covered as government funding and support systems get trashed. This weekend in Evanston there is an emergency mutual aid food drive to support those folks in our community.
I could go on. But you get the picture.
So as we move into 2026 I am starting to think about where my pair-of-hands continues to contribute over the next year.
I’m still following the be present and do stuff strategy and confident that good work will find me. It already is, through Environmental Justice (EJ) Evanston. That work, and other work, has also led me to folks who are deep into resistance. Organizing ICE alert systems using whistles and volunteers on watch in local neighborhoods. Showing up at multiple protests. Spending their own funds to support these activities and help those who are directly affected by ICE kidnappings.
But in addition to being present and doing stuff, I’m also feeling a pull to design and build something. Something that grows out of the writing work I’m doing here. I’ve found the act of writing, and thinking, to be both rewarding and beneficial. It helps prepare me to better participate and contribute to my offline activities with the community.
Not sure exactly where that will lead for 2026. But I do have one broad idea: Bringing in more voices from across Evanston, sharing what’s working across the landscape of climate, equity and justice. There’s a lot going on. And I sense that folks just don’t know who-is-successfully-doing-what, and what might be learned through sharing those experiences. (Have thoughts about this? Share them with me)
In the meantime, this past month has been a continuing journey of exploring and observing.
A trip to Maine opened my eyes to how folks can be happy and share joy with others while simultaneously acting in ways that demonstrate our best values (embracing diversity, respecting our history and past, opening new understanding) and openly resisting the opposite (divisiveness, white-washing history, censorship).
I was also reminded that folks have been through everything we’re experiencing right now, and there are endless lessons to be learned.
In Evanstons happenings, it’s been a mix of reflecting on details of events designed to involve the community in environmental justice work, and seeing the community at work in resistance, battling injustice, while also building stuff in the communities they love to make it right. I may be experiencing them as distinct events – for now – but my spidey sense says this will all come together somehow in the future.
- Civil rights, environmental justice, and working to make it right. ‘Why is this happening to us? We know why it’s happening.’
- What I saw at Evanston’s No Kings event. Folks who know this isn’t right. And they have your back.
- There’s power in folks just knowing folks, and what other folks know and care about. What organizations forget: Building relationships matters.
- How we might get better at getting feedback on policy ideas. “If this were in place, what would it do for you?”
- Learning about discipline in design and sweating the details from a somewhat surprising source. What I learned about paying attention to details in community listening. From an AI product team.
Jeff Merrell 