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From the Haymarket 8 to the Michigan 8
How the state uses conspiracy charges to crush social movements.
Jul 14, 2026
On the morning of June 10, 2026, the FBI, together with an ensemble of local and state police departments, including the University of Michigan Police Department, conducted a series of simultaneous raids and arrests in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin in spectacular militarized fashion. The operation targeted eight individuals engaged in Palestine solidarity activism at the University of Michigan.
That afternoon, FBI director Kashyap Patel announced that the targeted individuals “engaged in a coordinated campaign of violent, criminal acts seeking to pressure University of Michigan leaders and other businesses in the Eastern District of Michigan to cut off all ties with Israel.” The alleged violent, criminal acts in question? Property damage. The coordinated campaign in question? Per their indictment, “using encrypted messages, social media, and overseas collaboration platforms […] [and] the internet and social media to broadcast their message.”
To be clear, the Michigan Eight are not being charged with property damage or vandalism. Instead, they are facing charges of conspiracy to transmit a threat, conspiracy to tamper with a witness, and destruction of property to prevent seizure. Less than a week after the raids against the Michigan Eight, 15 individuals were similarly indicted in Minnesota on various conspiracy charges for their participation in community activism and mutual aid in the context of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) Operation Metro Surge that saw 2,000 ICE agents deployed in Minnesota, leading to over 3,000 arrests, two protesters shot by ICE agents, and one individual dead in ICE custody. The conspiracy charges faced by the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15 carry a maximum sentence of 5-20 years and, when there are multiple counts of it, defendants face potentially decades in prison. A week after the Minnesota 15 indictments, anti-ICE protesters were sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison after being convicted of various conspiracy charges related to protest activity at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.
These are just three out of several other recent cases involving social movements and conspiracy charges. What links them is not the recurrence of some crime called “conspiracy,” but the conversion of ordinary political association into proof of unlawful intent. Conspiracy charges are among the most common charges brought against social movements precisely because they represent an extremely broad, far-reaching, and powerful tool of the state. You do not need to have taken any action, nor do you need to know the other alleged co-conspirators to be found guilty. Federal prosecutors simply have to establish that at least one alleged conspirator has taken an overt (legal or illegal) act toward the alleged plan. Needless to say, virtually anything can be claimed to be an overt act.
The only conspiracy related to the Michigan Eight or the Minnesota 15 is the one that has been constructed by the federal government.
Aside from formal charges of conspiracy, there is also the more diffuse concept of conspiracy that the prosecution in these cases use more generally to paint activists as dangerous, terroristic individuals engaged in a plot against the state. For example, during the detention hearing on June 12, 2026, for four of the Michigan Eight, one of the federal prosecutors, Margaret M. Smith, assistant United States attorney at the Department of Justice, made several references to the defendants being part of a revolution and a “revolution organization.” This language, as we shall see, has a long association with conspiracy charges. It does more than just describe the alleged beliefs of defendants. It represents the bridge by which belief, affiliation, and collective organization can be made to stand in for actual evidence of particular criminal acts.
But what does the nebulous concept of conspiracy mean and why does the government keep using it and who is it meant to target? The late Michael Parenti once noted that “conspiracy means to collude together in secrecy for what are potentially illegal or immoral ends and [the ruling elites] do this all the time and they talk about the necessity of it and they even give it a name, they call it national security.” Indeed, the only conspiracy related to the Michigan Eight or the Minnesota 15 is the one that has been constructed by the federal government. In fact, across more than a century of American history, the recurring pattern that has shaped the state’s response to dissent and protest has been the tendency to treat collective organization itself as a crime. The First Amendment may protect the freedom of speech and assembly as the very conditions of democratic politics, but conspiracy charges have long made these supposed rights conditional.
The Long History of Conspiracy Charges
The state has a long history of using the concept and charge of conspiracy as a weapon against social movements that have sought to expand democratic freedoms. We must therefore place the particular case of the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15 in a longer history that involves the Haymarket Trial (1886-1887), the Espionage Act (1917), the Smith Act (1940), the Anti-Riot Act (1968), RICO (1970), and more contemporary post-9/11 developments such as the Patriot Act (2001). These historical moments represent the cumulative expansion in what the state can make conspiracy mean: from attributing responsibility for an unidentified act to an entire radical milieu, to treating speech as dangerous, group membership as suspicious, mundane logistical organization as evidence of criminal intent, and decentralized movements as racketeering enterprises. While, in case of the Michigan Eight, the targets are Palestine solidarity activists, and while in the case of the Minnesota 15, the targets are anti-ICE organizers, the tools that have been assembled and are still being expanded and perfected can and will be applied to other groups. What is at stake here is no less than ability to collectively organize to create a better and more just world and to resist oppression.
In 1941, the legal scholar Albert J. Harno wrote that, due to its “elasticity” and “vague boundaries,” the concept of conspiracy “presents serious potential dangers of abuse.” Only, there is nothing “potential” about its dangers. From some of its earliest applications right to the last two weeks, the charge of conspiracy has been the bane of organized labor and other broad social movements that the state has sought to repress. One facet of the seemingly endless elasticity of the concept of conspiracy relates to the category of unindicted conspirators. In the case of the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15, this term is constantly invoked in the indictments. Aside from the fact that unindicted conspirators cannot testify on behalf of the defense, prosecutors can introduce the out-of-court statements of unindicted conspirators in court as evidence against the defendants without these statements considered hearsay. Prosecutors can thus introduce texts, emails, phone calls, et cetera, involving unindicted conspirators as evidence against the defendants even if the defendants were not a direct party to these communications. Moreover, the shadow of not knowing whether one is or is not an unindicted conspirator introduces even more fear into social movements. This uncertainty is a feature of conspiracy law and one of its political effects, thus extending the coercive reach of an indictment beyond the courtroom.
Conspiracy and Labor Repression
Nineteenth-century labor cases show where this logic first acquired its legal form and political function. Labor Studies scholar Risa Lieberwitz notes that the charge of conspiracy has historically “provided a powerful weapon against groups advocating political and social change [and] the labor movement [in particular] was the target of many criminal conspiracy prosecutions during the 19th century, beginning with the Philadelphia Cordwainers’ Case of 1806, which was both the first criminal conspiracy trial in the United States, and the first recorded labor case.” If the Cordwainers’ Case demonstrated that workers coming together to demand higher wages could be a criminal conspiracy, the trial of the Haymarket Eight showed how conspiracy could make an entire political milieu culpable for an act that the state could not directly attribute to any one defendant.
On May 4, 1886, a bomb was thrown during a labor demonstration at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Till this day, no one can say for certain who threw that bomb. During the trial, prosecutors could not prove who threw it nor prove that the defendants had planned the bombing. They could not even, in some cases, prove that they had been present when the bomb was thrown. What they could prove was that the Haymarket Eight had given speeches, written articles, edited newspapers, belonged to radical organizations, and broadly advocated for a social revolution.
The concept of conspiracy was what allowed the prosecution to transform this into evidence of collective responsibility for the bombing. The prosecution did not need to identify the bomber; it only needed to argue that the Haymarket Eight had been part of a conspiracy to create the conditions in which such a bombing became likely. In other words, the defendants were guilty of belonging to and contributing to a radical workers’ milieu that the state had defined as dangerous. Haymarket helped established what would become a recurring pattern where membership in particular groups (whether well-defined or as vague as “antifa”) and speech (like posting messages on social media) and acts (like organizing a meeting or using the internet) can become evidence of a conspiracy.
Conspiracy, Speech, and Political Organizations
Haymarket thus supplied the basic argument that the state would repeatedly adapt: When direct proof of individual action was absent, prosecutors could substitute much fuzzier ideas. World War I expanded this basic framework under the sign of national security. The federal government used the Espionage Act of 1917 against socialists, labor organizers, anti-war activists, and others who opposed conscription or otherwise criticized the war. During this time, the Department of Justice conducted a series of mass raids and arrests, collectively known as the Palmer Raids (1919–1920), in more than 30 cities and towns, targeting thousands of individuals, particularly Italian-American and Jewish-American socialists, the so-called “hyphenated Americans” that President Woodrow Wilson railed against, warning that “any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”
In Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court unanimously held that the First Amendment did not protect Charles Schenck, who had distributed anti-draft and anti-war flyers to draft-age men, from prosecution under the Espionage Act precisely because, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. concluded, "The words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” In other words, the Supreme Court ruled that otherwise lawful speech could be punished if it was thought likely to obstruct or encourage resistance to government aims.
In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court did not expressly overrule Schenck v. United States, but it effectively superseded Schenck's clear-and-present-danger standard and, on the surface, introduced a more expansive interpretation of the First Amendment, holding that advocacy of illegal action cannot be punished unless it is “directed towards inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Yet, the so-called Brandenburg test still reveals the subjective nature of, well, law in general, its interpretation, and its enforcement. In this case, the key subjective terms are “imminent” and “likely.” Whether an action is imminent and whether speech is likely to produce an action requires a level of guesswork that is wholly reminiscent of the trial of the Haymarket Eight.
Described as a “prison for ideas” by the National Committee to Win Amnesty for the Smith Act Victims in 1954, the Smith Act of 1940 would extend this logic within the context of the Cold War. Among other things, the Smith Act criminalized “knowingly or willingly advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing any government in the United States by force or violence.” In the late 1940s and 1950s, communists in particular were prosecuted under the law, not because they had launched an armed insurrection, or even taken material steps toward an armed insurrection, but because they belonged to organizations that taught Marxist theory and advocated for communist revolution.
Like their predecessors in 1886 who did not have to prove that the Haymarket Eight had thrown the bomb, prosecutors in these cases did not have to prove that communists had entered into an agreement to commit a crime (the most basic definition of conspiracy), but that the Communist Party itself was a criminal enterprise. The state did not need to demonstrate that any communists had agreed to carry out a specific unlawful act in the near future. Instead, their membership in the party and their ideological beliefs were sufficient proof of criminal liability. Charisse Burden-Stelly summarizes it well, writing that “membership in the CPUSA automatically meant conspiracy of insurrection.”
Conspiracy and Protest
In the context of popular protests and anti-war mobilization, the Anti-Riot Act of 1968 made it a federal offense to cross state lines or use interstate facilities with the intent to incite, organize, or encourage a riot. If the Smith Act treated membership as evidence of insurrectionary conspiracy, the Anti-Riot Act adapted the same logic to the mass movements of the 1960s by treating travel, communication, planning, and assembly as evidence of an intention to produce disorder. The Chicago Seven would be the first to be prosecuted under the Anti-Riot Act and charged with conspiracy to incite a riot and crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot. Again, we see the danger in the elasticity of the key terms of the act that allowed the federal government to frame lawful activities taken to organize a protest, in this case at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as evidence of unlawful intent, namely, to incite a riot.
On February 18, 1970, seven defendants were acquitted on conspiracy charges, two were acquitted on all charges, and the remaining five were convicted of travelling across state lines with intent to incite a riot and sentenced to five years in prison. Over two years later, those convictions would be overturned by an appeals court panel that found numerous errors made by the judge. Yet, the damage to the defendants’ lives and to the broader public had been done. Even when defendants are acquitted or have their convictions overturned, conspiracy charges succeed in the ideological work for which they are perhaps best designed, leaving behind a public narrative in which dissent and protest are not cornerstones of democracy, but dangerous, hidden plots conducted by shadowy figures.
Even unsuccessful prosecutions impose a real material and mental cost on defendants and, more generally, they impose a heavy cost on the public at large, forcing all of us to consider whether participation in collective protest or forms of dissent may expose us to repression.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act of 1970 would give an even more expansive tool for prosecutors to bind heterogeneous individuals and acts under the label of a single, criminal enterprise. RICO has increasingly been used by federal and state prosecutors to target labor unions and broad social movements. The statute’s breadth gives prosecutors considerable flexibility in defining a criminal enterprise and explaining how otherwise separate acts fit together.
In September 2023, Georgia prosecutors brought a sweeping state RICO indictment against dozens of activists associated with opposition to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, commonly known as Cop City. The indictment alleged that a broad protest movement constituted a criminal enterprise and cited a wide range of activities, including alleged acts of property destruction, distribution of literature, mutual aid, reimbursements, fundraising, communications among activists, and protests and demonstrations.
Prosecutors used the flimsiest of evidence to rope even more people into this “conspiracy” as “co-conspirators.” Signing a petition was enough to get a visit by the police and having mud on one’s shoes in a forest was taken as evidence of participation in alleged acts of property damage at a construction site. The significance of the Stop Cop City case lies less in the specific allegations, but in the indictment’s construction of a broad social movement as a unified, organized criminal enterprise. Social movements are almost by definition heterogenous and decentralized. They always comprise individuals with different goals, tactics, and levels of commitment.
The dismissal of the RICO charges against the defendants in December 2025 does not make this case any less troubling (the state could refile charges or repeal the dismissal). On the contrary, the dismissal sharpens the stakes of indictments like this. While the dismissal shows how weak the charges were in the first place, the state successfully punished the defendants. Even unsuccessful prosecutions impose a real material and mental cost on defendants and, more generally, they impose a heavy cost on the public at large, forcing all of us to consider whether participation in collective protest or forms of dissent may expose us to repression. From this perspective, it does not matter much that a court may eventually reject prosecutorial overreach when the threat of prosecution may shape the way we behave.
Responding to Repression with Trust and Solidarity
One lesson that we can learn from the historical continuity between each of these episodes is that movements for economic and racial justice, movements against wars and imperialism, and anti-fascism as a concept (through the targeting of “antifa”) have all been described, in different moments, as threats to public order. In each case, the state and its prosecutors have been able to portray individuals participating in these movements as public enemies. The language of conspiracy is especially useful in this process because it turns ordinary features of collective life into suspicion. Each of these historical cases has contributed to the ever-expanding use of conspiracy charges in state repression of social movements. Across these cases, the object of prosecution moves further and further away from identifiable unlawful acts to the social relations that make collective action possible. This past should inform our understanding of the recent cases and remind us not to take at face value the charges against the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15.
Like the cases from the past, the present charges are an attack on political speech and, more broadly, all those who seek to collectively work toward a more just and freer future. Isaac Sant, one of the Minnesota 15, has noted that what they are facing is “not a normal criminal trial; this is a political case, this is political repression against organizers.” The long history of conspiracy charges and state repression suggests that political repression cannot be defeated alone in the courtroom. This is because conspiracy cases do not just target the named defendants; the broader targets are concepts like trust, collective organization, and solidarity, that is to say the very bases of social movements.
Like previous generations of workers faced with political repression, we must seize the current crises as an opportunity to revitalize the labor movement from the ground up. That revitalization is not going to come from union leadership, but from you and other rank-and-file worker-organizers. As the veteran labor organizer Daniel Gross recently noted, in Unions of Our Own (2026), “A truly just society with reliable economic security, where we can live freely on a healthy planet, simply cannot happen without organized workers and liberatory unions.”
This moment threatens our very ability to collectively organize for a better world at the same time as it represents an opportunity for workers everywhere to double down on collective organization, whether it is to keep our fellow workers safe from abductions; to organize toward divestment from companies profiting from war and genocide; or to fight the daily struggles of autonomy, respect, and dignity on the shop floor. In all cases, every victory, big or small, is not a concession, but a privilege that workers have wrested from state and capital. The stakes of not meeting this moment could not be heavier.
Correction: The piece has been updated to reflect the fact that Brandenburg v. Ohio superseded, rather than overruled, Schenck v. United States.
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America Works Best When We the People Are in Charge
When ordinary people organize, mobilize, and refuse to accept the dictates of an elite few, America moves forward.
Jul 03, 2026
Two hundred fifty years ago, Americans rejected monarchy. They rejected the idea that power should rest in the hands of one person, one family, or a distant ruling class. Instead, they enshrined an American promise: Legitimate power comes from the people.
Our Constitution opens with three words: “We the People.” As the country marks its 250th anniversary, that promise is worth remembering: In America, the people are supposed to be in charge.
Indeed, every day we see neighbors working together to improve their lives, their communities, and the country.
Earlier this year, hundreds of residents of San Marcos, Texas, packed into public meetings with concerns about a new data center. The Caldwell/Hays Examiner, a local paper, summarized the sentiment: “Electricity bills may soon spike while access to clean water diminishes drastically, given the unfathomably giant data center on its way.”
Do “We the People” govern ourselves, or are we ruled by concentrated power?
The local government rejected the unpopular project, and similar efforts are taking place across the country. In every place the message is clear: The people who live there, not a distant tech company, should be in charge of the community’s resources.
Rural communities are also taking on Big Ag. For example, Grassroots Organizing of Western Wisconsin brought residents together and passed local safeguards that limit threats from factory farms and support family farmers, clean water, and local infrastructure.
Iowans won a big victory against a global pesticide manufacturer. Knowing their state’s unusually high cancer rates, Iowa Farmers Union mobilized from the bottom up and blocked a law that would have shielded a billion-dollar corporation from accountability.
These patriotic efforts help fulfill the promise of “We the People.” They also show what’s possible when people come together to shape the decisions that affect our lives.
Unfortunately, few Americans feel in control right now. We face an unpredictable economy, cuts to healthcare, cruel and reckless Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, and attacks on mail-in ballots. Even that recent win in Iowa is in jeopardy—the Supreme Court just shielded the pesticide company from thousands of lawsuits brought by farmers and families who blame Roundup for their cancer.
These are all symptoms of a single disease: a nation where too much power rests with an elite few rather than with ordinary Americans. That’s exactly what researchers at Topos Partnership found. After listening to nearly 5,000 Americans, we heard one idea emerge: The people are supposed to be in charge.
The real story isn’t Democrats versus Republicans, or newcomers versus citizens, or some fabricated clash of civilizations. The real story—the one that unifies and energizes—is about who decides. Do “We the People” govern ourselves, or are we ruled by concentrated power?
Most Americans in our research recognize that the answer to that question is complicated, but also that being reminded of our defining story could help heal a fractured nation. As one moderate Colorado man expressed: “When everyday people don’t feel in charge, it creates anger, frustration, bitterness. But when everyday people feel like they’re having an impact, it creates a sense of belonging.”
When ordinary people organize, mobilize, and refuse to accept the dictates of an elite few, America moves forward. We’ve seen it in workers establishing safer workplaces and the civil rights movement expanding “who counts” in our country. We decided our nation belonged to us—and acted like it.
Let America’s history and recent successes be the inspiration. This July 4, the most patriotic thing we can do is remember whose hands this country is supposed to be in: ours. When we come together, the people are in charge.
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Mutual Aid and the Governance We Are Already Practicing
Mutual aid as a component of community organizing shows us that governance begins with people: those who know their needs best, build trust with one another, and create systems capable of meeting immediate and long-term challenges.
Jun 29, 2026
Governance is how we hold power responsibly and equitably. Government is just one way we organize it—and what is abundantly clear is that good governance is not always done by a government.
Since congressional Republicans passed the “Big Beautiful Bill,” 3.5 million people have lost benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). That includes more than 800,000 children who are now at risk of going hungry.
It is just one of many ways in which the current administration has either actively harmed or abdicated responsibility for families and communities. This is a precarious moment, but it is not a moment for despair. In communities long abandoned by the public sector, mutual aid networks have emerged as models of resilience that show how people can govern effectively when love and care, rather than hate and scarcity, are placed at the center of how community members care for each other.
A Long Southern Lineage of Necessity and Ingenuity
Mutual aid is a term to describe people helping each other when they cannot depend on the government. More fundamentally, it’s about reciprocal care and collective responsibility, whether or not the government shows up. It can begin as informal acts of kindness and gratitude, and grow to become enduring, formalized systems that support entire communities. The practice has long existed in the United States, especially in the South, where Black communities created their own institutions and parallel infrastructure to serve the people when dominant systems turned them away or caused them harm. From immigrants, to trans folks, to members of Indigenous communities, many marginalized groups have similar histories of using mutual aid as an organizing tool to create systems of self-governance that actually serve them.
The power of mutual aid exists in recognizing that people cannot reach liberated futures while their present needs remain unmet.
Mutual aid is not only a crisis response. It can be a vehicle to facilitate civic engagement in ways big and small, and it is a way for communities to organize to sustain one another and show up as daily stewards of each other’s well-being. Just as governance is not limited to a government, civic engagement isn’t limited to voting or holding elections. Mutual aid is intertwined with social justice movements. It brings people together to meet immediate needs through shared resources, trust, and collective responsibility—work that sustains daily life while building the relationships and political consciousness needed for long-term power.
Governance Is Already in Motion
The power of mutual aid exists in recognizing that people cannot reach liberated futures while their present needs remain unmet, and that those present needs have become politicized by a government that has made it acceptable to deny certain people care, dignity, and respect. Mutual aid is not charity, which maintains a top-down hierarchy of giver and receiver. Mutual aid when done responsibly is horizontal, and undergirded by an implicit politic that we must care for and provide for one another. Mutual aid is about shared struggle, interdependence, and collective well-being
Engaging in care as a political act is how we build collective power.
For example, Project South’s Mutual Aid Liberation Center in Atlanta, Georgia stands as a living testament to the potential of mutual aid networks. The center meets community members’ basic needs while cultivating political consciousness, leadership, and collective power in the local community and for movement work across the US South. Mutual aid doesn’t separate services from organizing. In one instance, when community members came to the Liberation Center for clothes and food, they learned about a plan to install surveillance cameras in places that would disproportionately harm Black and brown folks. The same neighbors who met at the Liberation Center organized, banded together, and spoke out against the proposal at a community meeting, preventing it from becoming law.
Southerners on New Ground (SONG), an LGBTQ-led community organizing group and mutual aid network that functions across the South, is another powerful example of how mutual aid can bring folks from across the political spectrum together. The organization aims to foster real relationships between people by connecting those who need food with those who can offer it. When extreme weather events occur, those same people serve as solidarity squads who keep each other prepared and safe. The work demonstrates how relationships between people are fundamentally more important than political divisions, which become meaningless when the immediate need is a hot meal, a generator, or a safe place to sleep.
Supporting Future Governance
Mutual aid as a component of community organizing shows us that governance begins with people: those who know their needs best, build trust with one another, and create systems capable of meeting immediate and long-term challenges. Yet mutual aid is the work of community organizing that often goes unseen and unfunded.
Mutual aid networks have the ability to become the pathways of just transition toward a more just world. When we put mutual care and concern at that center of how we structure our society, then we can reimagine how we govern our resources, how we provide safety for one another, how we support each other in meeting our material needs, and how we must govern ourselves with the goal of mutual aid at the center. And, as we begin to practice this way of living on a day-to-day basis, then we can begin to establish the practices, principles and values, agreements, and social contracts that are essential for justice and liberation for all.
In this way, mutual aid is the foundation for future governance that is built on relationships between people, not politics.
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Now More Than Ever, Philanthropy Must Back the Groups Fighting Corporate Power
Do not pull back because the political moment got harder; that is precisely when this work needs you most.
Jun 25, 2026
Amazon wanted to build 250 diesel generators in a working-class Minnesota community and skip an environmental review that would have scrutinized emissions and pollution. A local organization decided to fight anyway, banded together with others, and won.
That organization was CURE, a grantee of the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, and last year's fight was about more than a data center. It was about whether Amazon could run 250 diesel generators next to a retiring coal plant in Becker, Minnesota without answering for what it meant for the air and water in a community already in the middle of an energy transition.
Those generators would have produced 600 megawatts of backup power, without the environmental review that would have examined their emissions impact. The community had no interest in absorbing the pollution costs of Amazon's AI ambitions.
I have spent 25 years in this work, first as an organizer and now as someone who helps fund it. What happened in Becker does not surprise me. CURE did not win because it got lucky. It won because someone had invested in that organization years before Amazon showed up, building the staff, the community relationships, and the knowledge of how a state utilities commission actually works. That is how organizing operates. The results are visible. The groundwork is not. And right now, that groundwork is being torn up on purpose. Philanthropy helped build it. Now it needs to decide whether it will defend it.
For many of the organizations we fund at the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, ours is the first climate grant they have ever received. That is not a boast. It is an indictment of how philanthropy has allocated its resources.
I saw what patient investment makes possible in the early 2000s, when I was part of an immigrant women's organization in San Francisco called Mujeres Unidas y Activas. We had four staff members and a big dream. Over the next decade MUA grew to 40 people and became one of the founding members of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which we built alongside a dozen other domestic worker groups who came together in Atlanta and decided to act as one.
The alliance went on to help win legal protections for the nannies, housekeepers, and home aides that federal labor law had excluded since the New Deal. None of that came from a single breakthrough. It came from funders who stayed in it long enough to see something grow.
That infrastructure is being dismantled right now, and the attacks are not accidental. When voter registration drives signed up new voters by the thousands, lawmakers in several states moved to criminalize the groups behind them.
Nick Tilsen founded the NDN Collective to defend Indigenous rights and land sovereignty in the Dakotas, and that work made him a target. He faced aggravated assault charges and the prospect of more than 25 years in prison for monitoring a police encounter in Rapid City before a jury deadlocked and all charges were dropped earlier this year. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked hate groups for more than 50 years, was federally indicted on fraud charges in April. You do not need to ban organizing if you can make it too expensive and too frightening to sustain.
What disappears when this work gets defunded does not make the front page. A permit gets quietly approved. A workplace complaint never gets filed. A hearing happens and no one is there to speak. Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and working-class communities have always been powerful. What they have not always had is the sustained investment they deserve.
For many of the organizations we fund at the Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund, ours is the first climate grant they have ever received. That is not a boast. It is an indictment of how philanthropy has allocated its resources, and it has to change. We call on donors to fund grassroots organizations now.
Fund them for years, not grant cycles. Do not pull back because the political moment got harder. That is precisely when this work needs you most.
Republicans hold complete control of state government in 23 states today, Democrats in 16. That map does not change through advertising. It changes through patient, ground-level organizing in the places the political class has written off, on a timeline of years, not election cycles. Cutting that work now is not fiscal discipline. It is a strategic concession.
Climate, democracy, and economic justice are not separate fights. They are the same fight, and the communities on the frontlines of all three have been saying so for years. “Affordability,” the latest political buzzword, is not new or distinct from these ongoing fights. In Becker, what was at stake was clean air, democratic accountability, and a community's right to shape its own energy future. CURE understood that. The question is whether the people and institutions with the resources to back that kind of work will understand it too, and soon enough to matter.
I still think about those four staff members at MUA, and what became possible because someone believed in the work long before there were results to show for it. Frontline communities are not waiting to be rescued. They are building, organizing, and winning. The question is whether philanthropy will stop watching and start investing.
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This Juneteenth, Remember That Organizing Is Key to Democracy
As corrupt leaders advance efforts to weaken democratic oversight and centralize power, we must activate our own agenda.
Jun 19, 2026
This Juneteenth arrives at a moment when many of the hard-fought gains of the civil rights movement feel undeniably fragile. The Supreme Court’s recent Louisiana v. Callais decision gave state lawmakers the green light to reduce Black voting power by redrawing congressional maps. Meanwhile, the SAVE America Act and other proof-of-citizenship efforts propose new burdens for millions of eligible voters—especially voters of color who are more likely to face difficulty accessing required records.
As Black Americans, this should concern us deeply. For years after the ratification of the 15th Amendment, our ancestors had to overcome poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and constant threats of violence to participate in our democracy. When Fannie Lou Hamer attempted to register to vote in Mississippi, she was fired from her job and forced from her home; Amzie Moore endured years of harassment and retaliation for helping Black Mississippians register to vote and build political power. But despite these hardships, they persevered.
Which is why one question continues to trouble me as a Black pastor and grassroots organizer: How did we move from a generation willing to risk everything for political participation to an overwhelming number of people believing participation doesn't matter?
Research shows that most Americans feel political leaders are out-of-touch with ordinary people, reflecting a deep and widespread sense that politics is reserved for an elite few. But we must remember that politics is simply the process of shaping the world around us—and by that definition, we are all politicians.
Organizing reminds people that change has always come from ordinary people deciding they have a stake in their own future.
At my organization, Live Free Illinois, we embrace our identities as politicians in our own right. For instance, in January, we successfully organized Gov. JB Pritzker to sign the Clean Slate Act, a transformational public safety bill that removes barriers to employment, housing, and education opportunities for people with past convictions. It took nearly five years of tireless organizing, but our bill crossed the finish line—and became a law with $5.6 million in funding to implement it. This victory makes clear that politics does not only belong to some unreachable class of leaders; it belongs to the people willing to organize and demand change.
Our ancestors did not organize because they believed the government was perfect. They organized because they understood that power would not listen unless it was confronted. They built churches, mutual aid networks, civic organizations, and political movements because they knew that liberation required disciplined collective action. That lesson is just as relevant today. The authoritarian forces seeking to diminish our democratic participation are counting on our exhaustion, our cynicism, and our disengagement. We cannot afford to give them any of those things.
That responsibility does not begin and end at the ballot box. It lives in church fellowship halls where neighbors gather to address violence in their communities, in voter registration drives after Sabbath, and in the courage of ordinary people who demand better from those in power. This may not look like the politics we’ve been taught to disdain, but they are among the most powerful political acts we can undertake. It is how our communities can transform shared concerns into lasting change.
I have spoken with many parishioners who have felt overwhelmed by the challenges facing our community. But when I encourage them to organize—to gather their neighbors, advance shared priorities, and demand accountability—something shifts. They begin to recognize that the power they were searching for was already in their hands. Organizing reminds people that change has always come from ordinary people deciding they have a stake in their own future.
Juneteenth is a timely reminder that our democracy demands more than participation; it demands organization. As corrupt leaders advance efforts to weaken democratic oversight and centralize power, we must activate our own agenda—and hold elected officials accountable to it. The future of our communities depends on whether we are willing to embrace that responsibility.
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Juneteenth and the Distance Between Freedom and Meaning
Freedom does not become real simply because it is declared. It becomes real because someone carries it into the world. Someone teaches it. Someone protects it. Someone organizes around it. Someone refuses to let it disappear.
Jun 19, 2026
As Juneteenth approaches, I find myself thinking about anniversaries.
Not because I am particularly sentimental about dates, but because anniversaries reveal something about how societies remember. They tell us which stories we choose to elevate, which contradictions we learn to live with, and which truths we have become comfortable leaving unresolved.
This year, those questions feel particularly urgent.
Communities across the country will gather to celebrate Juneteenth, commemorating the moment enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas learned they were free more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed. At the same time, the nation is preparing to commemorate its 250th anniversary, renewing familiar conversations about liberty, democracy, independence, and freedom. There is something meaningful about those two anniversaries sitting so close together. One asks us to remember the promise of freedom. The other asks us to remember the distance between a promise and its fulfillment.
Every democratic gain we now celebrate exists because ordinary people organized, challenged existing systems, imagined alternatives, and demanded that the nation become more than it was.
For many people, Juneteenth is understood as a story about delayed freedom. That is certainly true. But the older I get, the more I think it is also a story about delayed meaning. The people in Galveston were legally free long before they knew they were free. The law had changed. Their status had changed. On paper, their relationship to the nation had changed.
Yet their lived reality had not. The declaration existed, but the meaning had not yet reached them. That distinction matters because we often talk about freedom as though it becomes real the moment it is declared. We assume that once a law is passed, a court issues a ruling, or a right is recognized, the work is complete. History tells a different story.
Again and again, America has demonstrated that there is often a gap between what institutions proclaim and what people experience. The abolition of slavery did not end racial hierarchy. The passage of the Voting Rights Act did not end voter suppression. Legal victories did not eliminate the need for organizing, education, resistance, or vigilance. Rights may be secured in law, but they must still be carried into communities, institutions, and everyday life. Juneteenth reminds us of that reality. It reminds us that freedom is not simply a legal condition. It is also a social condition, a cultural condition, and a lived condition. It becomes meaningful only when people can actually experience it.
That lesson feels particularly relevant today.
Across the country, we are witnessing renewed debates about democracy, citizenship, rights, belonging, and power. We are watching efforts to restrict voting access, weaken public institutions, narrow how history is taught, and redefine who gets to participate fully in public life. At the same time, many Americans are being encouraged to believe that these concerns are exaggerated, that racism and inequality belong primarily to the past, and that the nation's democratic project is largely complete. What concerns me is not simply the political debate itself. It is the historical amnesia that often accompanies it. Too often, we remember progress while forgetting the struggle that produced it. We celebrate outcomes while ignoring the generations of people who fought to make those outcomes possible. We remember milestones but forget movements. We remember victories but forget the conditions that made those victories necessary in the first place.
In doing so, we begin to mistake progress for permanence. Juneteenth offers a corrective.
It reminds us that democracy has never been self-executing. Freedom has never expanded automatically. Rights have never sustained themselves. Every democratic gain we now celebrate exists because ordinary people organized, challenged existing systems, imagined alternatives, and demanded that the nation become more than it was. That is why I find myself thinking differently about the conversations surrounding America's 250th anniversary. I am less interested in celebrating a polished national mythology than I am in wrestling honestly with the tension at the center of the American story. The United States was founded on extraordinary democratic ideals while simultaneously denying many people access to them. Those contradictions are not incidental to our history. They are central to understanding it.
Yet Juneteenth is not ultimately a story about contradiction. It is a story about persistence. It is a story about Black people who continued reaching for freedom even when freedom arrived late. It is a story about Black people who expanded democracy even when democracy excluded them. It is a story about generations of Black Americans who carried hope, memory, responsibility, and struggle across time so that future generations might inherit possibilities they themselves were denied. That is what I find myself celebrating this year.
Not a perfect nation, completed democracy, or a tidy story of inevitable progress.
I am celebrating the people who carried the work forward anyway. The people who understood that freedom does not become real simply because it is declared. It becomes real because someone carries it into the world. Someone teaches it. Someone protects it. Someone organizes around it. Someone refuses to let it disappear.
The lesson of Juneteenth is not that freedom finally arrived. The lesson is that even after freedom was declared, someone still had to carry the news.
And generations later, someone still has to carry the meaning.
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Washington Won't Save Us; Our Neighbors Might
Why the midterms will be won or lost at the community level—and what that means for how we organize now.
May 22, 2026
A recent political event at a local community center left me smiling. A Latina special educator teacher running for state legislature had gathered a room full of supporters. Labor union members, religious leaders, political activists, family, and friends showed up in the late afternoon this spring to help her launch her campaign. The fundraising pitch was co-led by a very exuberant trans performer and a buttoned-up county prosecutor, filling the space with laughter and donations.
It was just one event, but it reminded me that building grassroots power goes hand in hand with building community. Both will be needed if the upcoming midterm elections are to be the pivot we need. This is the time grassroots power can stop fascism and begin the long but hopeful journey to an inclusive, fair, and sustainable world.
What Has Community Got to Do With It?
We are bombarded by news of the disastrous policies coming out of a billionaire-led administration, following the marching orders of the tech bros; the Heritage Foundation’s corporate agenda; and, according to conjecture, such foreign leaders as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s enough to create chronic panic.
Less often discussed are the victories of the people working together in their neighborhoods and towns to push back on Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns and AI data complexes, to stand up for voting rights, and to fight to get food and healthcare to those cut off from these basic needs. These grassroots groups are also providing essential backing to the elected officials who are standing up to the Trump regime’s worst abuses.
History shows that fascism can overrun a society when people are fractured and isolated. We can counter powerlessness when we act with others where we live.
These victories don’t come from national Democratic Party leaders or celebrities. They come from ordinary people who show up; work together; and build the trust, relationships, and coordination that make further action possible.
The Midterms Pivot
This grassroots power will make the difference in the upcoming midterm elections, which could in turn determine whether fascism strengthens its hold on American life.
Poll after poll is telling us that growing majorities of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s policies, and that his disapproval rating is reaching unprecedented levels. Still, there are strong headwinds for those working for change.
Funding for progressive grassroots work is falling short, according to a recent analysis by the Movement Voters Project. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is rolling out executive orders and court cases that can discourage voting by those who might oppose him, removing citizens from the voting rolls, raising false claims about election integrity, and putting bureaucratic roadblocks in the way of casting a ballot.
And then it got worse. On April 29, 2026, the US Supreme Court ruling in the Louisiana v. Callais case struck a near-fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act. After years of struggle for equal voting rights for African Americans, this case threatens to fracture the power of Black communities, diluting their ability to elect members of Congress and state and local officials who truly represent them. According to Black Voters Matter, the ruling threatens to create an additional 19 entrenched seats for Republicans in Congress, and 191 entrenched Republican legislative seats.
But here is what the ruling also did: It relocated the battle to exactly the terrain where organized communities are strongest—the state and local level. The people with the most power to determine what happens in November are not in Washington. They are wherever you are, deciding whether to show up.
How we organize locally could make the difference.
Building power means inviting in people who have not been active until now. It means building an agenda for a better, more inclusive future, and making political gatherings a time for community building as well as for carrying out effective strategies. It means prioritizing collaboration across races and identities and issues to build power for the common good. Now is the time—during primary season, when we have the most leverage.
Here’s what that looks like:
We Need to Keep Voting Accessible, Safe, and Fair. Restore Voting Rights
Elections are run by state and local officials, not by the federal government. The work varies by region, but wherever you are, you can work with your local, county, and state officials to make district maps fair, to ensure polling stations are secure and that eligible voters have unfettered access to the polls, and that the election process is free from bias and intimidation.
The Callais decision makes this work tougher, but it also is unleashing the unstoppable energy of those who have been excluded too often and for too long.
Organize Sustained Grassroots Power. Candidates Are Not the Whole Story
Elected officials work for us. We have the right to set the agenda, and find and elect candidates who will carry out our priorities. And we have the right to hold incumbents accountable. For the vast majority of us who lack billions of dollars, building power means organizing: creating collaborations among existing groups, creating new groups when needed, affiliating with regional and national organizations when appropriate. It means building connections and power year round, not only during election season.
National groups that are effective in building grassroots power include the Movement Voters Project, which supports grassroots groups building progressive power, especially in swing states, year round, not only during election season. The Working Families Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, which played key roles in organizing and mobilizing the massive grassroots campaign that won the New York mayoral election for Zohran Mamdani. Your local Democratic Party might—or might not—be helpful.
Elect Fighters!
This is the right time, during the primaries, to challenge incumbents to take strong positions supporting voting rights and the interests of all working people in our communities, not the corporations and billionaires. Ask candidates tough questions when they are on home visits or campaigning. Research their voting records. Hold candidates forums.
If the incumbent is caving in to corporate interests or racist gerrymandering, taking money from American Israel Public Affairs Committee or Wall Street PACs, or failing to fight for poor and working class people, support strong candidates who challenge them. In the general election, we may need to support any candidate who will oppose MAGA, but in the primaries, we should press for the leadership that will best serve us.
Spread Stories of Power, Not Just Fear
Many of us live with the daily drama of Trump’s latest impulses. It’s hard to avoid. But we need to remember that there is so much more to our nation’s story. Research and share news about the progressive office holders and community organizing that is making life better for everyday people. What you share on social media makes a difference. Supply your elected officials with tangible examples of successful policies to help them see a path forward. Write an editorial or letter to the editor of your local newspaper or in your group’s newsletter about wins. Mamdani’s recent successes are great examples—offering free day care for 2-year-olds, and increasing the stock of affordable housing with funding proposed through a tax on luxury second homes.
People need to see what grassroots power looks like, and so do our elected representatives. Allowing the outrages of the MAGA Regime to occupy all of our attention makes us think and feel like victims, preparing for the next blow, rather than embodying our rights to be powerful protagonists. We forget that we can get things done and that we deserve better.
Gather With Others
History shows that fascism can overrun a society when people are fractured and isolated. We can counter powerlessness when we act with others where we live. People want to make a difference—many are just waiting for the right invitation. Create spaces that foster belonging, a topic I explore in my recent zine, “Community As Strategy.” Combine the hard work with joy-filled gatherings. Hold dance parties, picnics, or fun runs. Turn protests into parades.
***
We actually do have a path forward. We can defeat fascism before the remaining institutions of American democracy are corrupted and dismembered. We can do that best by joining together locally and finally offering Americans what so many want—universal healthcare, peace, protection for our natural heritage, an economy that works for working people. We have majority support for many of these positions, and the creativity and energy to make them a reality. Together, we have the power when we organize where we live.
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Silence Is Not Solidarity
If we are serious about building a world where women have equal power—economic, political, and personal—then we have to be serious about accountability within our own ranks
May 06, 2026
In the span of a month, two stories have laid bare an uncomfortable truth about progressive politics: Too many people will protect powerful men at the expense of the women they harm, whether to protect a movement, a party, or because they’ve been conditioned to believe this is how power works.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) announced his resignation from Congress last Month after multiple women came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault. March’s revelation by Dolores Huerta that iconic labor leader Cesar Chavez sexually abused girls and women for decades is still reverberating through communities that revered him. In both cases, the pattern is the same: Whisper networks carried warnings for years, but survivors who came forward were silenced or discredited for the sake of the “greater good.”
Why? Because Swalwell was seen as a rising Democratic star, a useful weapon against President Donald Trump. Because Chavez was a civil rights icon whose legacy anchored an entire movement. Because people convinced themselves that exposing the truth would do more damage than burying it.
They were wrong. Silence doesn’t protect movements, it protects oppressors. It tells every woman who has been harassed, groped, or assaulted by a powerful man on “our side” that her pain is an acceptable cost of doing business.
Letting people in power abuse women is never acceptable, regardless of party, regardless of legacy, regardless of how inconvenient the timing might feel.
We have seen this calculation before—the quiet bargain where accountability is sacrificed on the altar of political convenience. It never works. The truth always surfaces. And when it does, the cover-up inflicts its own damage, compounding the harm to survivors and eroding the moral authority these movements depend on.
Consider the moment we’re in. We have a president who was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing a woman, and accused by at least 28 others, and has faced no meaningful consequences for it. A president who has made clear, through word and policy, that he believes powerful men can do whatever they want. His administration is rolling back decades of progress on combatting sexual harassment and assault in workplaces and schools; gutting protections against discrimination; and dismantling the legal infrastructure women depend on for safe, equitable workplaces. The Supreme Court, made up of one-third of Trump appointees, is the first since the 1950s to rule against women and people of color in a majority of civil rights cases.
This is the landscape women are navigating right now. And into this landscape, we are supposed to accept that the men or other abusers on “our side” get a pass? No.
If we are serious about building a world where women have equal power—economic, political, and personal—then we have to be serious about accountability within our own ranks. Not because it’s easy, but because the alternative is corrosive. Every time we look the other way, we tell the next generation that a woman’s safety matters less than a man’s career. We weaken the very movements we claim to be protecting.
The women who came forward about Swalwell, including content creators who had no institutional backing, no legal team—just their own platforms and conviction—showed extraordinary courage. So did the survivors who finally broke decades of silence about Chavez. They did what the political establishment was unwilling to do. They chose the truth.
The lesson here is not that our movements are broken. It’s that they are only as strong as our willingness to hold everyone in them accountable. Letting people in power abuse women is never acceptable, regardless of party, regardless of legacy, regardless of how inconvenient the timing might feel.
We are in a fight for women’s futures in this country. That fight requires moral clarity. It requires us to stop treating accountability as a threat and start treating it as the foundation. Good things, lasting things, come from doing what is right, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
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How Long-Term Organizing Propelled Analilia Mejia to Congress
In an era defined by authoritarian escalation and billionaire consolidation, many ask whether democracy can defend itself. No, it cannot. But organized neighbors can.
May 06, 2026
When I stepped into leadership as co-executive director of Popular Democracy in Action alongside Analilia Mejia in 2021, the central question we both set out to answer was not whether the far-right was consolidating power. That much was obvious. The question, as leaders of the largest progressive networks of base-building organizations in the country, was whether we could scale our power to meet it.
How do you build enough base and narrative power to confront a coordinated, well-funded, disciplined right-wing shift? How do you move beyond reactive mobilization and build durable organizing infrastructure? How do you prepare communities not just to resist authoritarianism, but to win governing power?
For years, our organization invested in answering those questions. We refined our organizing model through practice, experimentation, and hard-earned lessons. So when the opportunity arose last November for one of our own, Analilia Mejía, to run for the open seat in New Jersey’s 11th District left vacant by Mikie Sherrill’s successful gubernatorial bid, I understood it as more than a campaign. It was an opportunity to test our theory of change.
On Monday, as Analilia was sworn into the House of Representatives as New Jersey’s newest congresswoman, there were many reasons to celebrate. She beat her opponent by at least 20 points, running a whopping 12 points ahead of 2024 presidential margins, underscoring the strength of a people-powered campaign. Not only did our movement succeed in sending a champion for the working class to Congress, but we have proven that our organizing model could hold up under today’s political conditions and win.
Building Up Guardians of Democracy
Organizers often inherit an electoral culture built on urgency and amnesia. Consultants arrive late. Mailers flood inboxes. Relentless text and phone calls. Volunteers are recruited weeks before Election Day. Then everyone disappears until the next crisis.
We grew tired of repeating a cycle that left our people feeling mobilized in the moment and abandoned afterward. So we chose a different path.
This victory in NJ-11 required deep relationship building; message discipline; and courage from organizers, volunteers, and voters alike.
We built the Guardians of Democracy program, and through it Popular Democracy in Action and our affiliates invested in leadership development rooted in political education and hyperlocal relational organizing. At its core, Guardians is a civic infrastructure strategy—one that can be replicated, scaled, and paired with other leadership pipelines to deliver material wins for Black, brown, and working-class communities.
Participants ground themselves in a worker-centered history of America—from the Reconstruction Amendments to the Civil Rights Movement—connecting neighborhood organizing to a longer arc of struggle over who counts and who governs. After a series of trainings, they practice organizing where they live. Each participant receives a list of 100 of their closest neighbors, often on their own block. They learn to initiate organizing conversations, sustain relationships, and bring more people into their local campaigns.
The goal is simple and ambitious: Build neighborhood-based leaders during non-election years who could be activated when it matters most.
Over the last few years, we've trained 12,430 leaders across the country. We've mapped strategic geographies and have worked closely with our affiliates to refine the model: Train members deeply, anchor them locally, and maintain consistent outreach long before ballots are even printed.
This is the kind of quiet, patient, disciplined organizing infrastructure that can become an organization’s secret weapon.
Moment of Truth: Organizing to Elect One of Our Own
In a crowded field of 13 candidates in NJ-11, with virtually no district-wide name recognition and a firm commitment to reject corporate PAC money, Analilia entered the race as a clear underdog. From the moment the seat opened, colleagues, movement peers, elected officials, and community leaders urged her to step forward. For me, her candidacy represented a proving ground. Could our organizing infrastructure pass this stress test?
As one of the first races of the 2026 midterm cycle, the outcome in NJ-11 carries significant weight in the broader narrative wars shaping this political moment. Would voters in a district long represented by establishment figures choose a movement candidate running unapologetically on Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and taxing the wealthiest individuals and corporations?
Then there was the question on building power in strategic geographies: Could long-term relational organizing—rooted in political education and neighborhood leadership—overcome the gravitational pull of big money and name recognition?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Success Story: Make the Road Action New Jersey
Analilia’s victory in NJ-11 was powered by more than any single organization. Labor unions, local and national movement organizations, progressive elected leaders, and grassroots networks across the district consolidated quickly and decisively around her candidacy. Organizers who have been fighting for housing, healthcare, immigrant rights, and worker power recognized the stakes of this race and pulled their weight, aligning people and resources behind a shared vision.
But any honest accounting of this victory would be remiss to not center the extraordinary organizing efforts of Make the Road Action New Jersey (MRANJ).
For years, MRANJ has built deep relationships with working-class voters, immigrants, and communities of color across NJ-11. Their members are not seasonal volunteers. They are leaders formed through a common fight for housing, economic, and immigrant justice.
When Analilia’s campaign began, the organizing muscle was already there.
Over the course of the campaign, Make the Road Action NJ led a relentless, people-powered field operation—knocking 25,100 doors in freezing winter and spring sun alike, making 154,430 calls to voters across the district, and organizing 1,078 volunteer canvass shifts. Popular Democracy in Action supported this work by mobilizing our national network, deploying staff to coordinate volunteer operations in the district, hosting national phone banks, and aligning resources with the strategy on the ground. In the lead-up to the primary on February 5, we helped fund targeted outreach, including mobile billboards in key areas and a free party bus to the polls in Belleville to boost turnout.
But numbers alone do not tell the story.
What mattered was that many of the people knocking those doors were Guardians—leaders trained in prior years to organize their own neighborhoods. They were not strangers coming into the turf. They were familiar faces. They were neighbors.
Relational organizing is often dismissed as a buzzword. In practice, it is slow, trust-based work. It means your neighbor opens the door because they know you. It means you can have a conversation about rent hikes, losing your healthcare, or fear of ICE raids because of shared lived realities.
This is what years of investment in people looks like, and it went a long way in this campaign.
Organizing Gets the Goods
This victory in NJ-11 required deep relationship building; message discipline; and courage from organizers, volunteers, and voters alike. It required labor partners, grassroots organizations, and national networks pulling in the same direction. And it required the steady leadership of Make the Road Action New Jersey, whose long-term base building anchored the work on the ground.
During these last few months, I have seen firsthand the unique power of our network.
We proved that investing in hyperlocal leaders during non-election years must come first. We proved that narrative power and base building, developed patiently over time, can withstand the test of a competitive race. Most importantly, we proved that organized people can defeat better-funded opponents without surrendering their values.
In an era defined by authoritarian escalation and billionaire consolidation, many ask whether democracy can defend itself.
No, it cannot.
But organized neighbors can.
Analilia’s victory in NJ-11 is not the end of a story. It is evidence of what becomes possible when movements invest in long-term organizing models. For organizers across the country, the lesson is clear: If we want material gains—universal healthcare, immigrant rights, wages that keep up with inflation—we must invest in leadership, relationships, and narrative power long before the next fight reaches the ballot box.
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Public Service Workers Are Teaching Us a Lesson
This Public Service Recognition Week, we can show our appreciation for their grit and dedication by taking a page out of their book and joining the fight to protect public services and workers’ voices on the job.
May 04, 2026
There is no sector of the workforce more resilient than those who work in public service. As billionaires raise costs for working families and funding for essential services is slashed, these workers are being asked to do more with less.
Every day they go above and beyond to respond to the needs of their community: stepping up during extreme weather events, responding to emergencies, educating the next generation, keeping our streets clean, caring for patients and the elderly, ensuring public safety, and so much more.
This Public Service Recognition Week, we can show our appreciation for their grit and dedication by taking a page out of their book and joining the fight to protect public services and workers’ voices on the job.
Despite the importance of all they do, public service workers are often met with attacks by anti-union politicians, rather than the support they deserve. These attacks include budget cuts that endanger their jobs, staffing crises that jeopardize safety for everyone, and threats to pay and benefits.
The best way to channel our love for this country and commitment to our communities is by getting organized and standing together to make working people’s lives better.
Never giving in, public service workers answer this assault by getting organized.
Nationwide, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) members are using their union voice to demand more for their communities. Since the extremists in Congress and the Trump administration recklessly slashed funding for Medicaid, food assistance, and other programs to give tax breaks to billionaires, AFSCME members have been fighting at the state and local level to protect schools, hospitals, public works projects, and more.
In the courts, AFSCME members have successfully protected funding for museums, libraries, and childcare. And at the bargaining table, they continue to negotiate for fair wages, safe staffing, and respect, all of which ensure public services remain strong for the community.
They don’t do it to get rich or get famous. They keep going—behind the scenes and outside the limelight—because working in public service is their life’s calling.
Their resilience and perseverance teaches all of us an important lesson: The best way to channel our love for this country and commitment to our communities is by getting organized and standing together to make working people’s lives better.
So, this week, remember to stop and show your appreciation for the public service workers who show up every single day by joining them in the fight.
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