SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
police
Blueprint For Solidarity: Community Organizations Build the Public Good
In the shadow of federal failure, there’s a hopeful truth emerging in cities and states across our country: When communities act in solidarity, they can reclaim government and transform it to serve the people.
Feb 27, 2026
Our government should make life better for all people. Local and federal elected leaders should ensure we all have enough to eat, a roof over our heads, the opportunity to learn and grow, and access to care when needed.
Instead, Congress cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid and nearly $200 billion from food assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while committing a staggering $85 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This administration has chosen to fund fear over food, detention over dignity, and the interests of billionaires over the well-being of working people.
In the shadow of this federal failure, there’s a hopeful truth emerging in cities and states across our country: When communities act in solidarity, they can reclaim government and transform it to serve the people.
This is evident in the work of countless community organizations, including Chicago-based Equity and Transformation (EAT). EAT creates space for working people across race and language to take action to advance collective worker safety and justice.
Housing, public transportation, public schools, healthcare, and food are the foundations of a dignified life, and must be guaranteed for all.
Thanks in large part to EAT’s community organizing, Cook County has established permanent funding for guaranteed income. This vital work can serve as a protective non-carceral form of community support that addresses some of the economic harm and exclusion EAT’s members face. Especially for communities disproportionately harmed by the violence of policing, a basic guaranteed income can provide material stability that helps ensure essential needs, healthcare, housing, and food are not trade-offs, and that acts as a buffer against criminalization and the trauma of overpolicing.
Now, EAT is scaling its Cook County win, leading a statewide campaign for a permanent guaranteed income program that would support all SNAP-eligible households. The Illinois Future Fund Act would direct 25% of cannabis tax revenue toward direct cash assistance of $500 per month to SNAP-eligible residents in communities disproportionately impacted by decades of drug war policing. If passed, this legislation would be a step toward progress and show Illinois's commitment to using public resources to make people’s lives better.
A Blueprint for a Government That Works for All of Us
We are clear about what's at stake at this moment and what leaders are being asked to do. Leaders of community organizing groups are being asked to meet the pressing needs of their members as services and benefits are cut, fight government overreach as police and ICE target their neighbors, and continue demonstrating that solidarity is central to building the country we want.
Marguerite Casey Foundation is committed to staying in lockstep with grant recipients like EAT and remaining clear about the role of funders supporting grassroots leadership as their communities create a new blueprint for how the government should work.
So, how can we scale this solidarity through the work of community organizing groups and ensure policy choices improve the lives of residents?
1. Create a universe of public goods that belong to all of us. Housing, public transportation, public schools, healthcare, and food are the foundations of a dignified life, and must be guaranteed for all. We have seen global proof that access to public goods reduces poverty and precarity. It’s time our public dollars are used for the public good across our country.
2. Hold corporations and lawmakers that are exploiting our communities accountable. Those who make policies that starve our schools, close our hospitals, and detain our loved ones always find another billion dollars for corporate subsidies and surveillance giveaways. We must create penalties for those who are stealing from the poorest and whose fortunes are built on systems of harm.
3. Continuously practice a politics of solidarity. For Marguerite Casey Foundation, acting in solidarity means using our endowment to surge funds to frontline groups like EAT. Philanthropy’s resources are meant for moments like this. For EAT, it means organizing not just for services but for the power to define and deliver on solutions.
How to Help Build Solidarity Through Community Organizing
If you are a funder, building real solidarity means moving beyond transactional grantmaking. Funders must support bold and creative actions, not only by funding larger efforts but by standing with our partners when they take risks to protect their communities. Solidarity also requires us to bring more than money to the table. We should leverage all of our resources, from our extensive networks to our role as institutional investors, and be intentional about activating those assets in ways that generate momentum to meet the urgency of this moment.
If you are a nonprofit leader, ask for what you need and refuse to settle. Urge funders to meet this moment with courage and capital to fuel the bold experimentation needed. Can they give more, commit to multiyear grants, frontload payments, reduce reporting hurdles, provide no-interest loans, or organize pooled funds with their colleagues in philanthropy to raise the resources needed to fully fund your initiatives?
And if you’re not a funder or nonprofit leader, find an organization to support with your money, time, and talent.
Local organizations building community power are mapping a new way forward in these dark times. They are proving that the government can and must keep its promise to improve people’s lives—to be a means to collective thriving. Nonprofits, funders, and community members, acting in solidarity, can make this promise real.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'It Has to Stop': Minnesota Police Chief Says Off-Duty Cops Racially Profiled by ICE
"Every one of these individuals is a person of color," said Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley—whose own department has been criticized for racial policing.
Jan 20, 2026
A Minnesota police chief said Tuesday that off-duty officers are being racially profiled by federal immigration agents deployed as part of US President Donald Trump's deadly anti-immigrant blitz targeting Democrat-led cities.
"Immigration enforcement is necessary for national security and for local security," Brooklyn Park Police Chief Mark Bruley told reporters while flanked by other area police chiefs. "But how it's done is extremely important."
Bruley said that his department has "a long history of working exceptionally well" with "federal partners" including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
"With that said, recently, these last two weeks, we, the law enforcement community, have been receiving endless complaints about civil rights violations in our streets from US citizens," Bruley continued. "What we're hearing is they're being stopped in traffic stops or on the street with no cause."
"We started hearing from our police officers the same complaints as they fell victim to this while off duty," the chief said. "Every one of these individuals is a person of color."
"In Brooklyn Park, one particular officer who shared her story with me was stopped as she passed ICE going down the roadway," Bruley continued. "They demanded her paperwork, [but] she is a US citizen, and clearly would not have any paperwork. When she became concerned about the rhetoric and the way she was being treated she pulled out her phone in an attempt to record the incident. The phone was knocked out of her hands."
The ICE agent "had their gun drawn during this interaction, and after the officer became so concerned, they were forced to identify themself as a Brooklyn Park police officer in hopes of... deescalating the incident," he said. "The agents then immediately left after hearing this."
"I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident," Bruley added. "In fact, many of the chiefs standing behind me have similar incidents with their off-duty officers."
"We know that our officers know what the Constitution is, they know what right and wrong is, and they know when people are being targeted," the chief claimed. "It has to stop."
A 2021 report prepared for the city of Brooklyn Park found serious concerns about racial disparities in traffic stops and other police interactions.
"Overall, some residents have had experiences in which police treated them with respect and dignity, and effectively deescalated stressful situations," the report states. "Others have had the opposite experience and have been threatened or intimidated by police. Themes also emerged about racial profiling and wrongful arrest that point to concerns of racism in the department."
Approximately 10 miles south of Brooklyn Park in Minneapolis, a US Department of Justice probe following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis Police Department officer Derek Chauvin found a "pattern or practice of conduct in violation of the US Constitution and federal law" among MPD personnel.
This included excessive force, violation of protesters' First Amendment rights, and illegal discrimination against Black and Indigenous people. A 2022 Minnesota Department of Human Rights investigation also concluded that MPD engaged in a pattern of "discriminatory, race-based policing."
Bruley's remarks came as the Trump administration continued its deadly crackdown on undocumented immigrants and others suspected of being in the United States without authorization.
Last week, the ACLU filed a class action lawsuit aimed at ending “a startling pattern of abuse spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security that is fundamentally altering civic life in the Twin Cities and the state of Minnesota.”
As public outrage over ICE's heavy-handed tactics mounts after an agent shot and killed Renee Good earlier this month in Minneapolis, Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, and the Department of Defense has placed 1,500 active duty military troops on standby for possible deployment to Minnesota.
Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey—who famously told ICE to "get the fuck out" of the city after Good's killing and is among state and local officials subpoenaed by the DOJ Tuesday—said Sunday that Trump's threats are "clearly designed to intimidate."
"We're not going to be intimidated," Frey added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Michigan Organizer Speaks After Being Arrested Live on Camera for Protesting Trump Venezuela Attack
Jessica Plichta told a reporter that it is "the duty of us the people to stand against the Trump regime" just before she was arrested.
Jan 06, 2026
A 22-year-old woman who was detained for several hours by police in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Saturday after speaking out against President Donald Trump's invasion of Venezuela had allegedly "obstructed a roadway" and failed to obey officers—but she described an arrest in which the authorities appeared to be suspicious of her for protesting at all.
Jessica Plichta, a preschool teacher and organizer, told Zeteo on Monday that police officers repeatedly asked her why she was at a protest in Grand Rapids' Rosa Parks Circle, where hundreds of demonstrators spoke out against the US military's abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—a violation of international law that has garnered worldwide condemnation.
Plichta had just finished speaking to a reporter with local ABC News affiliate WZZM about her opposition to the US invasion of Venezuela when two city police officers came up behind her and placed her under arrest.
It is "the duty of us the people to stand against the Trump regime, the Trump administration, that are committing crimes both here in the US and against people in Venezuela," said Plichta just before the officers appeared on camera behind her.
Grand Rapids police arrest an antiwar activist live on air while taking an interview denouncing US military aggression in Venezuela pic.twitter.com/Zm16aFRDxq
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) January 5, 2026
Plichta told Zeteo, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as soon as I finished an interview speaking on Venezuela, I was arrested—the only person arrested out of 200 people."
She told the officers she was "not resisting arrest" as they led her toward a police car. A bystander approached and asked the police what Plichta was being detained for.
The officers replied that she had been "obstructing a roadway" and was accused of "failure to obey a lawful command from a police officer."
BREAKING: IN GRAND RAPIDS MICHIGAN, at approximately 5:30pm today, GRPD arrested local organizer Jessica Plichta on camera during a post-march press interview.
Plichta was sought out and targeted specifically by
GRPD for helping lead a U.S. Out Of Venezuela rally at Rosa Parks… pic.twitter.com/Uj6fLVba80
— Private IcedC81 Politics (@PvtIcedC81Pol) January 3, 2026
Plichta told Zeteo that the police drove her away from WZZM's cameras and then took her out of the car, patted her down, and confiscated her belongings. The officers told her she had been "making a scene" and asked her about her involvement in the protest: whether she was Venezuelan, "what she had to do with Venezuela," and what she was doing at the protest.
She also told Zeteo that the police asked her for the names of other demonstrators.
She was asked again what her connection to Venezuela was after she was taken to Kent County Correctional Facility, where she was held for about three hours and released after outcry from her fellow organizers.
"We are so accustomed to, and used to, repression when we speak out on anti-war topics,” Plichta told the outlet. “When we speak out for Venezuela, when we speak out for Palestine, we expect the police to want to shut that down.”
A spokesperson for the Grand Rapids Police Department told Zeteo that protesters had "refused lawful orders to move this free speech event to the sidewalk and instead began blocking intersections until the march ended," and said Plichta "was positively identified by officers," allowing for her arrest.
Though Plichta remained calm when she was arrested and suggested that she had taken her detention relatively in stride, supporters expressed shock that she had been targeted for speaking out against Trump's attack on Venezuela—which is broadly unpopular across the United States.
"What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids?" asked Brandon Friedman, a former Obama administration official.
Friedman pointed out that among elected Democrats, there appeared to be little if any outcry over Plichta's arrest for participating in a peaceful protest.
If this happened to a conservative organizer, Republicans would make her a hero, a household name and a congressional candidate.Elected Democrats just pretend it isn't happening.
— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) January 5, 2026 at 11:29 AM
“Protesting in this country is sacred," Plichta told Zeteo, "and so it is important that our rights are protected and that we are not criminalized for peacefully protesting in a world full of escalating violence."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular