We’ve all been there: Staring at the latest article about whatever messed up thing ${politician} did today, processing the existential dread that comes with living in the United States, grappling with feelings of helplessness in the face of fascism. This is a pretty common experience these days, at least for me. But how do we deal with it? And, how do we eventually fix this country so we no longer have to deal with it?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently, and have been asked these questions by others more than a few times. This article is my answer.

The automatic response to any question about politics is, “Exercise your right to vote!” That’s a fine answer, but there has to be a caveat attached to it: Vote, but it needs to be an informed decision. Republicans have it easy. All they have to do is fill in the bubble for the dude with an R next to his name, and you’ll get a fascist every time. If you don’t vote red (which if you’re reading this you probably don’t), things are a bit more tricky. While you’ll likely end up voting for someone that caucuses with Democrats, you could be voting for a conservative, a leftist, or anything in-between. If you don’t know who you’re going to vote for before going to the polls, you might just make the problems worse.

This naturally begs two questions: “How do I become informed?” and “What should I look for?” The first place I would go to is my state’s election website. You should be able to find the candidates for each office there and hopefully a sample ballot, but I’ve had trouble finding this stuff in the past; the government isn’t exactly known for their web design. After this, I head to an actually helpful website: Ballotpedia. Ballotpedia has a bunch of really great information about anything related to US politics. I highly recommend poking around the site. For today, we’re going to check out their “Preview Your Ballot” resource. You can enter your address, and it will bring up all the candidates for every race relevant to you. The best part about Ballotpedia, though, is that each candidate has their own page with basically everything you need to know about them. Every candidate will have links to their socials and website, elections they’ve run in/are currently in, and basic party information. If the candidate is a nonincumbent, you’ll probably have to go to their website to find their platform. Hopefully they’ll have a summary of their beliefs, and you’ll be able to dig into their history and more details about what they stand for. I’d also do a quick Google search to look through their Wikipedia page and make sure they haven’t done anything insane or illegal (looking at you, Mr. Gaetz).

If the candidate is an incumbent, though, Ballotpedia goes hard. You’ll find a short biography, a timeline of their career, committee assignments, voting record and political stances, previous election info, financial records (both in terms of donations and personal gain), and relevant news about them. Of course, you can dig deeper into any of these things with the extensive links Ballotpedia includes. If I’m not familiar with a candidate, I’ll usually look through their voting history on issues important to me, then if they align with my views, I’ll look at their finances. Money talks, and you can learn a lot about a candidate by following it. Donations from big corporations and shady organizations are a lot more common than you’d like to think. If we’re trying to fix this mess, we probably don’t want to support the people with a vested interest in keeping it broken. After that, I’ll do the same stuff I do for nonincumbents.

I know it sounds like a lot, but you can rule out people pretty quickly and only spend time on the candidates you might actually vote for. Once you have that small group, it should only take ten minutes or so to learn enough about a candidate to make a relatively informed decision.

Now we need to figure out what it is we’re actually looking for. This article begins with the assumption that you’ve identified that something is deeply wrong in our country, so it shouldn’t surprise you that the main theme we’re looking for is radical change. Progressives are, by definition, in favor of change, so they’re gonna be your best bet. The further left you go, the more change you want, and the more serious you are about getting it. We’re looking for eliminating things like the filibuster and the electoral college, or changing the legislative branch so that it no longer favors land over people (a holdover from lobbying by slave states, btw).

Beyond fundamental change to our government, things that upset the status quo are also important. A metric ton of the problems we deal with can be traced back to the ultrawealthy and massive corporations. Officials that are willing to limit the aristocracy’s ability to buy legislation and exist above the law are imperative. This is also why I recommend looking into candidates’ finances. People that are backed by the 1% aren’t likely to vote against them. On the topic of money, we also want candidates who will lift people out of poverty, so they actually have the chance to leverage their power as citizens. Social systems like universal healthcare, universal basic income, and free, high quality education will enable this.

Of course, all of this requires standardizing voting laws that protect everyone’s right to vote, and make it as easy as possible to vote. That means we need to look for support for mail-in voting, banning voter IDs, federal election laws, numerous and accessible polling places, and paid time off on election days.

All of this probably sounds pretty picky, but these people do exist; you just have to look further left than you might be used to. If these things sound too radical to you, I ask that you look at it this way: Democrats’ strategy up to this point has been gradual change that doesn’t upset the status quo or change our systems of government too much. Slow change feels safe. It feels normal. I get that, but it’s way too slow. It hasn’t kept up with the relentless march of fascism coming from the GOP, and we can’t count on that march slowing down. That plan has gotten us into this situation. We need big, radical changes, and we need them now. Well, we really needed them 20 years ago, but I’ll take what I can get.

But what can you do if there isn’t an election? Lend your support to the people I’ve been talking about. If you have the money, donate to their campaigns. If you have the time, go to their websites and look for volunteer opportunities. Look for the organizations or causes these people endorse and support them, as well as your local advocacy groups. But when you do these things, you have to be loud about it. Post about it on social media, go to protests, write a self-indulgent blog. Talk to people. The more visible these issues are, the more support they will get. Whatever you do, please do something. If you’re not actively fighting fascism, you’re just supporting it.

Democracy is powerful, but also fragile. If we don’t support it, it will shatter. Thanks for reading.