Donald Trump is ruining and dismantling our country. In his misguided effort to “Make America Great Again,” he is trying to take us back to what many of us know as the “bad old days.” Trump seems to want to destroy what is best about the United States by pushing back the progress we have made in every area: arts, culture, race, foreign policy, education, health – you name it – and he and his Project 2025 have a plan to disrupt and tear it apart.

The most upsetting thing about all of this is that we, the people, are letting it happen. I, like many of you, am frightened by all the chaos. I haven’t known what to do about any of it, so I have done nothing . . . other than talk with friends about our country’s decline and how abnormal the president’s actions are.

However, now, I say it’s time to get into some “good trouble.” How? By pushing back with letters to the editors of the newspapers still publishing, regardless of their political leanings, decrying the unnaturalness of everything Donald Trump has done and is doing. My city, Dallas TX, only has one newspaper which tends to the right of things. I will write to it beginning with this blog post as an open letter to my fellow citizens.How else can we push back? By serving as witnesses to the detaining of the undocumented as they leave their Immigration Court appointments. We can push back by calling and writing our municipal, state, and federal representatives urging – no, demanding – that they push back against what they know is wrong. And finally, by meeting with friends and neighbors to figure out other ways of resisting.

Even though it doesn’t feel like it right now, we, the people, have the greater power, not Donald Trump and his minions. Let us gird up our loins and act as if we are in charge of this nation’s destiny. Because we are!