Move. Care. Have Faith. Organize.

Apathy (a numbness): it’s hard to distinguish from the antagonist because it feels nothing. It doesn’t move to render care in a time of need. Sometimes it even retreats into a false comfort—making excuses for someone else’s predicament: Why was she dressed like that? Why didn’t they leave before the storm hit? Why did she provoke the agent? Why was he carrying a gun?

That’s how apathy becomes an on-ramp to gaslighting traumatized communities. It reduces real harm into “individual bad choices.” It makes cruelty sound like common sense. And in moments like this—when America is evolving its racialized capitalism tactics with more state-sanctioned violence—apathy is not neutral. It’s permission. While they campaigned on the promise of finding and deporting what they termed 'illegal alien rapists and mass murderers,' we are witnessing a starkly different and deeply nefarious reality, exemplified by the recent murders of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

I’m trying to name this carefully because it weighs heavy on my heart when I see people suffering. Maybe it’s how I was raised in a caring community in North Minneapolis. Maybe it’s my Ghanaian heritage where nobody is a stranger. Maybe it’s the enveloping, unapologetic culture of New Orleans I came to adore in the late '90s and early 2000s during my college years; or perhaps it’s the contagious traditions of protest and truth-telling that make DC and Chicago bastions of civic engagement. Regardless, these are all places that make you feel seen and welcomed, like you belong, even when you’re far from home. So when I watch the fascist invasion of my hometown, I feel powerless as an individual—like I did watching my city in 2020, or like I felt in 2005 watching NOLA, or being on the ground in 2011 when a tornado tore through the neighborhood I grew up in - only to depart for DC a few weeks later. That feeling—watching institutions fail people in real time of need—stays with you.

I grew up in faith communities where the lesson was always prayer AND work. Both. Together. And I’ll broaden that because I’m not here to preach one tradition: if you pray—make salat—you should also move to render some form of care. Not perfection. Not heroics. Just care. This care can manifest as feeding activists, sending open letters to politicians, hosting organizers and activists in holy community spaces, or simply locking arms with others marching for justice. Anyone telling you to only pray, and never move, is either misunderstanding the assignment, trying to control you, or shrinking from the responsibility. Faith without care turns into performance. I'm confident God would approve this work.

And the reason this matters is because fear and cynicism feed on isolation. The antidote is solidarity—but not the sanitized, nice version. I’m talking Chairman Fred Hampton solidarity: the kind that sees through the distractions and names the truth—there’s a common enemy, and it thrives by keeping us divided, exhausted, and “neutralized” for a bloodthirsty economic system. As Fred Hampton declared, “We say you don’t fight racism with racism — we’re gonna fight racism with solidarity.” This system buys some of us, hides others, elevates a few, and disposes of the rest. Then it tells us to fight each other about identity while it empties our pockets and our communities. Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale similarly warned, “Racism and ethnic differences allow the power structure to exploit the masses of workers in this country, because that’s the key by which they maintain their control.”

And I’ll say this plainly: if you watch the chaos, the cold-blooded killings, the state violence, and feel nothing… that numbness isn’t strength. It’s captivity. Talking big while doing nothing is seductive. Furthermore, participating in the carnage as a “just doing my job” protagonist is even worse—America has a long history of using workers to exploit other people—other workers—then calling it law & order.

So what do we do?

We struggle together. Collectively. Some people have to be in the streets—and they might pay the ultimate price for doing what’s necessary. Many will do the behind-the-scenes work—mutual aid, legal support, canvassing, organizing meetings, making calls, transporting folks, documenting abuses—and may still catch hell for it. And some will work strategically within the system itself, leveraging their positions to advance the mission—perhaps as 'the spook who sat by the door,' influencing change from the inside. We should be honest about the uneven costs in this country: communities get targeted, livelihoods get disrupted, families get destabilized. That’s not abstract history—it’s lived reality for a lot of people. Folks who carry less risk because of privilege should sit with that—not out of guilt, but out of responsibility—and move accordingly.

Which brings it back to the practical: listen to concerns, organize and educate your community. Have regular, structured conversations about how we improve our conditions. Build local networks that can mobilize fast. Share resources. Protect each other. Learn your rights. Train up new younger leaders. Identify individual risk capacity within your collective. Make it harder for fear to isolate people. This is critical inoculation work. 

And yes—ignore the petty differences when the house is on fire. Race, immigration status, gender identity—these are real lives and real experiences, but the weaponization of these differences into separate camps is how divide-and-conquer stays profitable. The commonality is bigger: most of us are being squeezed, surveilled, lied to, and offered scapegoats instead of solutions.

It’s likely to get worse—desperation plus corrupted power usually does. And we also can’t pretend the courts are going to swoop in and restore sanity. The Supreme Court’s recent immunity decision (and the broader pattern of rulings that shrink accountability) has effectively told powerful people: push the limits, and we’ll sort it out later. That’s how harm compounds—month after month—while communities are left to absorb the damage.

The power is always with the people. Always has been.

So wherever you are—NYC, Philly, California, DC, Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Houston, NOLA, and anywhere in between—connect with folks who’ve been under attack and folks who’ve been organizing through it. Share playbooks. Share lessons. Share courage. The goal isn’t to win an argument online. The goal is to build a united front strong enough to protect our people and dismantle what’s coming for us.

Resist collectively. Organize locally. Love people loudly. And move.

In Solidarity,

Brother Kofi ✊🏾