As the Trump administration attacks science and expertise, and a measles outbreak is already testing its laidback approach to health, ordinary people are fighting back.

There’s a good/infuriating article about anti-vaccine sentiment in West Texas during the growing measles outbreak there. It’s really illuminating and I recommend reading it, if you’re able. This line has stayed with me the most:

“We’re not going to harm our children or [risk] the potential to harm our children,” said one mother of an unvaccinated child with confirmed measles infection, “so that we can save yours.”

“I don’t know how to live in a world like this,” I told a friend after reading.

Where do we go from here — how can we possibly move past such mind-bending and blatant disregard for one’s own children and for everyone else’s? How do we reach people who believe that a very safe vaccine is worse than one of the most infectious diseases known to mankind? People who reject expertise, knowledge, and facts outright? How do we live in these fractured realities?

Not a Doctor is 100% free. Sign up now for more updates on health, science, and technology.

But here’s what I started thinking about: the people I’ve interviewed. The everyday people who, when I ask if they’re comfortable with me using their full names in articles, pause a minute to think, and then square their shoulders.

“Someone has to say it,” one person told me.

“I know there’s a lot of harassment out there. But people need to stand up,” another said. “This is our moment.”

Not everyone is able to use their name; sources frequently ask for identity protection to share information from within the U.S. government because they know what’s happening is wrong, and they know that there is power in knowledge and in speaking up. These people, too, are goddamn heroes.

Then there are the researchers and experts facing backlash even within their institutions when they speak the truth. They are finding ways to continue communicating with the public even when it threatens their livelihood.

This is what gives me hope: the people who are pushing back against government overreach and misinformation and the intended destruction of what we hold dear.

Yes, there are people who can’t understand the value of other people’s children (or their own).

But there are others who recognize how very wrong that is — and who are willing to risk harassment and retribution for fighting for what’s right.

And those people will win.

Top image: A protester near the U.S. Capitol holds a sign reading, “Got Ebola? No? Thank USAID!”