“Settle your quarrels, come together, and understand the reality of our situation. Understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying that could be saved, that generations more will live poor, butchered lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

George Jackson wrote these prophetic words more than 50 years ago. At that time, he and his comrades were enduring unimaginable violence inside California’s prisons – a microcosm of the fascism already alive in the United States.

Yet even under those conditions, Jackson refused despair. He called for love, unity and the courage to do what must be done – not for ourselves, not for the preservation of our organizations, but for our people and communities. His message was simple: we can keep fighting each other, or we can fight for one another. We must settle our quarrels – many of them born from the very systems that oppress us – and choose between poverty and premature death, or love and revolution.

Now, in 2026, that call echoes louder than ever. The fascism that Jackson warned about is no longer creeping behind prison walls or appearing only in moments of crisis – it stands before us, undisguised.

The Republican party has openly embraced authoritarianism. And the Democratic party? At best, it has offered a politics of respectability disguised as resistance – timid gestures and symbolic outrage that fall far short of confronting fascism. And we must also confront the truth that many Democrats helped build the very surveillance and militarized infrastructure that Trump is now weaponizing.

But this message isn’t for them. It’s for us – for the movement.

To move forward as a unified resistance, we have to let certain things go.

We cannot survive what’s coming if we don’t confront the fractures within our own house. For too long, white supremacist and capitalist culture have shaped how we move – who gets credit, who owns the work, who gets to speak. So-called leaders’ egos have taken priority over our communities and over our professed purpose. And we don’t say this as outsiders looking in. We are part of these movements too – and we’ve seen how love and good intentions can turn to distrust when the system keeps us fighting for scraps.

These divisions are real, and all of them have made our movements fragile at precisely the moment when the most powerful empire in history is turning its violence inward, consolidating media and corporate power, and expanding fascism. The conditions are brutal. Which means it’s more important than ever to strengthen our relationships, our solidarity and our discipline – so we don’t turn reactionary, making it easier for our enemies to divide and conquer.

Building stronger coalitions will require us to:

• Show up, even when it’s uncomfortable.

• Talk to people whose politics aren’t perfect.

• Work with those still in process because they, too, have revolutionary potential.

• Refuse to turn on the people closest to us and focus on the real enemy.

But it also means doing the difficult work of addressing harm, rather than avoiding it.

This isn’t a call to ignore harm or suppress conflict. We must address harm directly, build structures of accountability that don’t mimic the carceral state and do the slow, principled work of repair.

Over the past three years, our movement has experimented with this commitment through the collective process for healing and solidarity with partners across California. Born out of a reckoning with gender-based harm in 2021, this process brought together organizers, advocates and community leaders to build capacity for confronting patriarchy and engaging in community accountability. Through a series of facilitated sessions – rooted in transformative justice, ritual and embodiment practices – participants learned to unpack personal and ancestral trauma, examine how patriarchy shapes organizational culture, and practice concrete tools for repair. The process didn’t just aim to manage conflict but to transform it, turning moments of harm into opportunities for growth, truth-telling and solidarity.

Alongside the work of healing, our movements have also begun building the infrastructure to prevent conflict before it fractures us. Many coalitions across the state have developed collective agreements that outline how we share decision-making, communicate and stay accountable to one another. These frameworks are more than bureaucratic tools. They are political commitments to practice solidarity in real time and lay out what that actually looks like. They help us navigate disagreement, define expectations and create clear processes for how we respond to harm, opposition and power dynamics. By establishing shared principles, transparent voting processes and communication protocols, these agreements make collaboration sustainable. Solidarity and this type of deep relational work must be built, protected and renewed every day.

The tools are already here. Across the country, healers, educators, and organizers are developing the skills and structures we need to navigate conflict and sustain healthy movements. From culturally rooted healing circles and compassionate accountability trainings to leadership programs grounded in culturally rooted healing and ancestral practice, we are building our collective capacity to face harm without reproducing it. The work of teachers such as Jerry Tello, co-founder of the National Compadres Network, and networks of practitioners that integrate Indigenous wisdom with community healing remind us that people have the ability to heal, let go, and return to their sacred purpose when given the space and support to do so. These trainings, circles and agreements are not optional extras – they are the infrastructure of a revolutionary culture. We just have to make the time to practice them.

People won’t join us just because we’re right. They’ll join if we make them feel that they belong, because we gave them a place to grow, to struggle and to transform. And most importantly, because we are winning tangible things – food, housing, safety, jobs, freedom from police violence – the very things our movements have promised.

So today, right now – do something. Anything. Start reading together. Train together. Stock food. Share supplies. Build local defense and care networks. Learn your neighbor’s name, phone number and emergency contact. Protect one another and practice solidarity like our lives depend on it – because they do.

And to those organizers and people already in the movement, we no longer have the luxury of waiting until we “have our shit together”. We are out of time. But we still have each other – and that means we still have a chance.

What’s giving me hope now

David: During the springtime here in LA, we’re gearing up for our People’s Budget Assembly with Black Lives Matter LA and the People’s Budget LA Coalition. For six years straight, we have surveyed more than 35,000 LA residents, and the answer has remained clear since the Freedom Uprisings in 2020 for George Floyd: divest from punishment and invest in people. Whether I’m talking to middle-aged women who are regular church attenders, or to a group of young people on the street, the answers remain the same. While we are still having to deal with a city government that feels unyielding in its commitment to policing, the people’s moral clarity, across the political spectrum, inspires me every day, and is the reason why, as organizers, it’s so important for us to do as George Jackson said and “settle our quarrels”.

Eric: I recently had the opportunity to travel to Cuba and deliver humanitarian aid to hospitals and schools affected by the US oil blockade. I saw first-hand imperialism – not in theory, but in the material reality it produces – showing up in hospital rooms, in schools, and in whether a child receives life-saving care at all. What’s giving me hope is that, despite these conditions, the Cuban people refuse to be broken. Their fire and commitment to dignity not only gave me hope, but strengthened my own resolve to keep fighting for a world where everyone can live self-determined lives. Hope may ebb and flow, but our responsibility to each other cannot. It’s that responsibility – and the discipline to act on it – that keeps us moving forward, every single day, until we collectively get free.

• Dr David C Turner III is a senior adviser with the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, and an assistant professor of Black life and racial justice in the department of social welfare at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA. Eric Morrison-Smith is the executive director for the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color