I decided to risk arrest at Hanscom Field because I don’t have a retirement plan. Thousands of climate scientists predict that “untold suffering” will wreak havoc on the planet if fossil fuel expansion, among other actions worldwide, does not come to a screeching halt. In fact, in many ways, the havoc is already here. Even the privileged people whose homes have yet to be lost to flames, floods, or brutal bombings, those who have not yet been reached by the ripple effects of crop failures, or whose organs have not yet failed during a heat wave still cannot lay claim to a livable future. A lot of the concerns that white, middle-class climate activists like myself have about our future are already the current reality for a majority of the world’s population. I don’t have a retirement plan because I wonder whether someday I will join the legions of people whose everyday survival is already under threat as a consequence of the very systems upon which my middle-class American comforts depend.

Nearly a year after my arrest at Hanscom Field, tragedies and disasters stack up, but legislators, like our Massachusetts governor Maura Healey, drag their feet (or simply shirk responsibility) in enacting policy that would relieve Americans of the issues ailing our daily lives. For example, defending women, as a recent Trump executive order claims to do, means addressing issues that affect women. A more effective way to defend women than legislating word choice would be ending the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, which is only rising. As I have elaborated on elsewhere, the same harassment, degradation, and assault that women face daily go hand in hand with the practices sucking the life out of this Earth and, as research suggests, limiting our life expectancy. Stopping private jet expansion halts an egregious source of emissions that accumulate, making our lives more vulnerable to tragedy and disaster.

There is already precedent that points to the legality of our actions: On this same airfield in 1971, more than 150 peace activists were arrested protesting the Vietnam War and the lack of a record of their arraignments suggest that they never faced charges. If you’re reading this, please start a volunteer organization in your community or join your nearest chapter of Extinction Rebellion to resist the systems driving the destruction of our world.

In the words of Uruguayan journalist Raúl Zibechi, “It is impossible to change the world without first changing ourselves, because change, like movement itself, is singular and it is multiple, and we cannot afford to not be involved.” To truly defend ourselves from harm, we must not sit idly by, but continue to speak out, loudly and visibly against those legislators and executives who set our future on fire and are content to feed the flames.