Courage cannot be canceled.
Tax exempt status is not an identity.
When I worked in Afghanistan we had a literacy program we could not call a literacy program and a school I was told to not call a school.
The school’s student body was primarily made up of widowed grandmothers who brought their grandchildren to learn alongside them. The literacy program was folded into a special income-generation project.
We were allowed to call it work.
(which is kinda funny when you consider how my boss later became the Minister of Education…)
While these hacks were survival strategies, safety practices to safely navigate the hostile environment we were working, our school could not be further from a vision of strife. It was a place where laughter, learning and joy echoed everywhere. I’m proud of that “work.” It was beautiful to witness grandmothers learning alongside their grandchildren. “Work” was a testimony to intergenerational connection, healing and care.
Our work, the real work, was creating pathways to possibility around very real and scary roadblocks.
As the Trump administration takes aim against nonprofit advocacy groups, fear and anxiety has overtaken American civil society sector. If you’re reading this, I know you know this— but the vibes are bad, y’all. I cannot even begin to describe the “What are we gonna doooooooo?” spirals. Authoritarian thrives on a framework of fear and it is working double-time right now. “The framework of fear has led to the traumatization of not just the individuals who have been targeted, dehumanized, and criminalized, but the traumatization of entire communities, unfathomable devastation that will be decades in the reckoning.”
What are we going to do?
Work.
My hope is that this moment accelerates the social change sector to widen it’s aperture and recommit itself in relationship with community, trust and courage.
Growing, scaling and celebrating a culture of courage is the only force that can counter frameworks of fear.
What should we do about all this?
Grow courage. Scale courage. Celebrate courage.
What's it going to take? All of us. "We need to work together to help ensure that when individuals, organizations and groups take courageous stands, risking punishment, they feel strong support and solidarity from the widest and most influential “we” possible."
Our little school “worked” in code until we had built trust. One day at “work” we threw a graduation ceremony, saying and celebrating the quiet part out loud. Anaa means grandmother. I will never forget dancing with an Anaa at “work”, laughing loudly and asking my boss to translate a phrase I couldn’t quite catch, “She said,” repeating for me...
“I am too old to hide.”
I’ve been thinking about our grandmothers so much lately. In calls, Zooms and conversations that all circle around the question, “What are we going to doooo?”
Executive orders, lawsuits and tax exempt status do not change the work.
Our work, the real work, is creating pathways to possibility around very real and scary roadblocks. Yes, we are all tired. But nothing changes the fact that even in these exhausting, precarious times, we cannot hide ourselves from courageous missions of survival, connection, understanding, reimagination, healing, justice and care.
The American social change sector does not have to exist from a place of anticipatory loss. No authoritarian administration can revoke an identity anchored in courage.
We do not have to wait for grief to make us brave.
I know I am not waiting until I’m too old to hide.
Now let's get back to work.
Read
Zach Norris
David Sims
Maria J. Stephan
Recall
Thank you all for the birthday well-wishes.
Sabrina Hersi Issa is a human rights technologist. She is committed to leveraging innovation as a tool to unlock opportunity and dignity for all. She does this through her work in technology, media and philanthropy. This is her personal newsletter.