I’ll be honest: my main goal for 2025 is to make sure that all of the people I know and love are still breathing at the end of it. With the way the world is turning, bureaucracy’s inertia or not, I’m mostly concerned that people I know and care about will be targeted for simply living their lives as their most authentic selves. Pretty much everything I have in mind for the rest of this incredibly fresh year is geared toward doing what I can to make that happen. It isn’t much, given the relative imbalance of myself and the systems that might be leveraged against them (and, of course, the inability to shield anyone from the random misfortunes of the world), but I will be doing what I can. Effective activism is often a subtle thing in this day and age, especially compared to the performative stuff that fills social media. I’m not going on diatribes about what I’ll do to anyone who hurts my friends, but I am calling my senators. I’m calling my state and federal government representatives. I’m doing what I can to directly support people in dangerous positions with direct financial contributions, at least when I can afford them. It never feels like enough, it is rarely lauded, and it almost never feels even remotely effective, but at least it beats sitting on the internet, joining the chorus of voices who say they will kill/die for those being targeted but can’t be bothered to try organizing locally.