Choices are hard when life's hard
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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Sometimes standing up for what you believe in is worth the consequences of refusing to sit down.
In my life, I’ve held an array of jobs. Sometimes I’d just be off randomly on a Friday (because I’d have to work all weekend).
Some people in this economy are struggling to find full time/permanent jobs, so they can spare time to protest.
Speaking from my current situation, I have a bank of time I could pull from if I wanted to take time off. Many people can easily fake saying they are sick to get time off on short notice. Some people probably have cool bosses who will let them request vacation at the last minute. There’s a million possible scenarios.
My workplace would allow me the time off if I put the request in ahead of time, but i would take a financial hit for taking days off. Im not as free as I want to be.
Unpaid time off sucks, I’ve been there too. The American economic system feels designed as if everyone has a full time job with benefits.
You don't have paid leave?
In the US, you usually only get paid time off if you’re in a full-time, salaried position. Even then, most people only get two or three weeks, and it accrues over time, so you have to save it up for winter holidays, etc
No, most US jobs dont.
Sacrifice.
If you can't see past your nose, protesting seems crazy. But to do so means sacrifice. Risking your job, your home, your well-being, whatever, because you know that the risk of losing these things could yield something better if the collective actions of you and your comrades create change.
Lose now to gain later.
There's no one answer
People work different schedules, the schedule I personally work has me working slightly more hours than average overall but I have more days off, so I'm free on a lot of weekdays, other people have more flexible schedules or work nights or weekends
Some people have PTO they can use, some have cool bosses who will just let them take time off whenever they want to, some people are those cool bosses or are self-employed and can set their own schedule
Some people are unemployed, some are retired (I've seen a lot of older folks at some protests near me)
Others are financially secure enough to be able to take the hit and think little to nothing of it
Others make sacrifices in order to make it work (if I had to take off without pay, I'd be out a few hundred bucks, it would hurt but I wouldn't be ruined for it, I might have to skip out on a few things I'd like to do, maybe cut some corners and buy cheaper groceries, cancel a subscription or two, borrow a couple bucks from friends or family, put a couple things on my credit card to pay off later that I otherwise might have paid for outright, or maybe work some overtime before or after it to make up the difference, but nothing I couldn't recover from fairly quickly.)
And with some exceptions, not everyone is going to every protest, some may only make it to a couple, some may make it to all or most of them, some may not be able to make it to any but may find other ways to help
There was a very raucous council meeting in my city where a woman said she had walked out of work to be there and expected to be fired. I hope they forgave her but if not that's fucking bad ass.
We definitely need more networks of support to help people show up because it isn't easy.
If you work 10 hours a day and sleep 8, that's 6 hours left over for protesting. If 40 adults are going to a protest 2 can watch the kids. 2 1 can make soup for everyone. Same for transportation to and from protests.
You can make it work if you prioritize.
There's an entire galaxy of people doing stuff in their free time to support their community, you just never see them if you aren't also participating in some sort of voluteerism.
Virtually every school in America has a PTA or PTO group of parents that volunteer to support the school. When I was on the board of a PTO, everyone else on the board had jobs but they had schedules that weren't 9-5s. One was a medical biller that had a set amount of work they had to get thru, so they could just adjust their daily schedule to the needs of the school. Another owned a small family run motel and so was able to volunteer in the mornings when the motel had little work to be done. Another was a remote worker for a company in a different time zone so their "9-5" was off hours locally.
I volunteer at an unhoused shelter now. I get there at 630am with the other volunteers. A bunch of us make breakfast, then catch the bus to downtown for the daily 9-5 (or drive, we live close to downtown). A social worker comes in on her day off on Wednesdays to volunteer as a social worker at the shelter.
I used to volunteer at a Senior Center. Volunteers were mostly college students who worked in voluteering between classes.
Youth sports coaches are mostly volunteers after their work day.
From my experience retirees generally like to support museums, art galleries, and public beautification stuff (picking up trash, planting gardens, etc).
All of them will make the time to protest. Getting motivated to start volunteering is difficult (it was for me!) but once you start to dedicate time to community building activities, you start to see protesting as just another activity that you believe in and need to make time for. For me, it was just like motivating myself to read more. I'm sitting at the house, I know I should do it, but I didn't. I forced myself to really look at my time management and realized doomscrolling and general bullshitting was taking up a ton of my day. If I just cut down on the bullshit, I had much more time for reading and volunteering and other stuff.
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Fucking make time.
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I don't really afford shit while working becsuse shit is so fucked up, so IDFC. I'll walk out and slap my manager in the face as I do so because I am fed up.
I've been burning sick days
Besides going out and holding a sign, there are many ways to help and display solidarity. Boycott, spread the words, volunteer online, do what you feel you can do. And the next time, see if you can do more.
You’ve gotta stand up for what you believe in. The medium is the message — your boss and coworkers will start to understand that you are serious once there start being consequences. That’s how it spreads. Little people, everyday people, saying “I won’t do this anymore, damn the consequences.”
In the end we all have a point