It’s hard not to be utterly depressed by the state of national politics and media coverage of the Presidential race.

Too often issues are ignored for easier, sexier stories about the clashes, contests and controversies of the election season. All of this plays into the national narrative that everything is going to hell.

What to do?

Yes… as Reed suggests, get involved. Harnessing the power of social media, it’s surprising what consumers can do. Anger erupted recently over the 6x price increase of EpiPen and the response on social media quickly led to changes.

Local action can lead to new school board policies and city zoning rules. On our “How Do We Fix It?” podcast, we spoke with Gretchen Dahlkemper of Moms Clean Air Force, about the creative and successful work they are doing to reduce toxins. They reach out to conservative evangelicals as well as liberals.

“I think the more that we connect the average citizen with their elected officials, the better off our entire system is going to be,” says Gretchen. “That to me is one of the key solutions to eliminating this huge partisan divide that we’re seeing in the country right now.”

We also spoke with Brownsville, Texas Commissioner Rose Gowen about her city’s impressive public health initiative to reduce very high rates of obesity and diabetes.

On the national stage, a relatively small but growing group of transpartisan activists are looking at ways to speak across thr political chasm. They include Pluribus Project, Bridge Alliance, Living Room Conversations and the folks at Allsides.com who post left/right and center links to news — showing how coverage of the same story can vary greatly, even on legitimate media sites.

Solutions Journalism Network is another creative and positive response to the crisis our democracy is facing. This group works with journalists, who are trained to report the who, what, when, where, why of news — but not the “now what?”

In the words of a former President: a thousand points of light.