What Communities Teach Us About Power and Belonging
📷 credit: RawPixel
For the past year, our nation and sector have been defined by division and fear. But the past month has provided a rare glimpse of renewal and hope. Across the country, grassroots campaigns led by immigrant organizers, first-generation Americans, and working-class coalitions have demonstrated that a politics grounded in dignity and care resonates with people. These communities share a vision for their future, a vision built on belonging rather than fear. This stands in stark contrast to the language and imagery that have permeated our public discourse throughout 2025.
For philanthropy, this moment demands both reflection and action. While communities and organizers have shown us what’s possible, the machinery of exclusion and fear-mongering continues its work.
Military-style deployments within U.S. cities like Chicago and Charlotte are being justified as public safety measures in an effort to intimidate and silence any dissent. Detention centers remain overcrowded and dehumanizing. Thousands of immigrants have gone missing after detention, and families are desperately searching for information on their loved ones. Nonprofits serving immigrant families face legal intimidation for doing what they have always done: provide care and safety where the state has failed. These actions are part of a worldview that defines belonging through punishment and isolation of those it deems other.
Meanwhile, a different vision of the U.S. is being written in real time; one that refuses to mistake cruelty for strength. In that version, leadership doesn’t come from dominance but from solidarity. It’s visible in young people organizing voter drives and mutual aid networks, in immigrant parents showing up at city halls to demand better schools, and in faith communities forming a line of defense with communities. It’s an imperfect but deeply hopeful movement that insists belonging is not something to be earned but part of the basic promises that this country was built on.
“While communities and organizers have shown us what’s possible, the machinery of exclusion and fear-mongering continues its work. ”
Funders are being asked to choose between these two visions. One is the fear-based, punitive, and frankly joyless vision that berates the vulnerable while leaving structural injustice intact. The other is the path forward, still fragile, still forming, where people are building the democracy they’ve been promised but have rarely seen delivered.
The difference between them is not abstract. It’s shaped by what philanthropy chooses to fund, risk, and believe in.
I write this from Florida, where state policies targeting immigrant communities have intensified to the point that schools are losing students, businesses are floundering, and families are fleeing almost overnight. The climate has become so normalized that it shapes daily life in ways that feel increasingly haunting. But even here, it’s clear that these conditions are not inevitable. They are unacceptable, and people across the country are choosing another path, one grounded in dignity, solidarity, and the belief that we can still build a nation where everyone belongs.
Now is not the time for philanthropy to retreat into neutrality or cower in fear. The work of immigrant justice is, at its core, the work of democratic renewal. Funders can stand with community by supporting immigrant- and BIPOC-led organizations not only as crisis responders but as builders of a collective civic imagination—organizations that foster long-term narrative work, develop leadership pipelines, and create the local power-building infrastructure our democracy depends on.
Meeting the Moment
Across the country, our communities are showing up with courage, creativity, and care. They are leaning in to build belonging where others sow division and offering a vision grounded in solidarity rather than fear. Recent electoral victories driven by immigrant organizers and working-class coalitions remind us that this work is not theoretical. It’s reshaping our democracy in real time. It’s time for philanthropy to reflect that same energy of renewal and to deeply invest in the movements already leading us forward.
To do so, funders can look to the immigrant-led networks already building power and care across the country:
National & Pooled Funds: Abundant Futures Fund, Four Freedoms Fund, National Immigration Law Center, Pop Culture Collaborative, and United We Dream.
Narrative & Cultural Strategy: Define American, UndocuBlack Network, The Center for Cultural Power, and Tsuru for Solidarity.
State Coalitions: New York Immigration Coalition, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Siembra North Carolina, Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, and Texas Organizing Project.
Supporting these networks, alongside local mutual aid, legal defense, and organizing, helps build the conditions where belonging is not just imagined but practiced in every community. And so the democracy that immigrant and working-class communities are already revitalizing at the ballot box will continue to take root in every part of public life.