I’m Manolo Avalos. I’m 19 years old and live in River Forest. Some of you may know me as an overworked volunteer and an alum of It’s Our Future, and now trying to find my place. I love it though and I bet you can too if you find the correct place.
I consider myself a person who is scared, but willing to roll up my sleeves and educate others about how to get involved locally and to do it in whatever form they like. This can be through music, poems, or writing in general, or just being you. I am sure I am missing a bunch. Personally, I just like meetings and speaking engagements. Your voice matters in whatever form you use it.
I am sure many of you reading this are scared, confused, and don’t know how to take action in light of the Trump administration rollback on climate change and many other pressing issues. You are not alone. I still have moments where I am scared and simply cannot focus on the future for a day. I need to realign myself. I find, though, when you meet on a regular basis with people who care about the same thing, you have less intrusive thoughts resulting in less anxiety. That’s why I love groups like Oak Park Climate Action Network (OPCAN) and Seven Generations Ahead, just to name a couple.
Even if you don’t take action for a while and listen in to meetings, it can change you and help with identifying your voice and how you want to use it. If you listen to those meetings and feel guilty or hopeless, you can turn it into action in many different ways. You can choose the way. What I always love to do is contact the organizers of the meeting or event and ask what I can do: “How can I help you all plan?”
I wish feeling remorseful did not exist, but it does, and that can often turn into action. So I encourage you to join one of the many meetings, or just one meeting, of any organization, locally or nationally.
My generation has so much to worry about: climate crisis, gun violence, threats to democracy, to name a few. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and numb out. But finding your community, you can be empowered to do something. And if we’re going to tackle these intersecting crises, we all need to do something.
Side note: I am on the River Forest Sustainability Commission, and from firsthand experience, we love when even one person shows up, no matter if they say anything or not.
Manolo Avalos
River Forest