December 11, 2025
A Note in Solidarity
My son, a high school junior here in Atlanta, is studying AP Calculus. His eyes light up when he talks about mechanical engineering, about designing and building robots with his imagination and expertise. He sees a future of limitless innovation. My daughter, a freshman, is just as passionate about human equity. She’s been reading about the community organizers in New York standing up for their neighbors against federal agents. She sees a future that needs defending, a world that requires solidarity.
As a father, I look at my two teenagers and see the false choice America is presenting us with. One is told to innovate without limits, while the other is told her instinct for solidarity could be labeled a threat. Meanwhile, my wife and I look at our retirement accounts, hear the head of the Federal Reserve describe our economy as “very unusual,” and wonder what that means for the job my son hopes to get or the stability my daughter deserves. It feels like we’re all being pushed into corners, forced to pick a side in a rigged game and the referees are arguing with each other.
Over the past 24 hours, the headlines have only made these tensions clearer. We see a Federal Reserve admitting that official job numbers might be a mirage, overstating growth by tens of thousands of jobs a month, while it remains deeply divided on how to handle an economy squeezed by both inflation and a weakening labor market. We see the federal government preparing to block states from regulating AI, arguing that local safety rules hinder national competitiveness, even as state attorneys general from both parties warn that these same AI tools are producing “delusional outputs” that pose real mental health risks. And we see communities organizing to protect their neighbors from immigration raids, a powerful act of local solidarity that is simultaneously being framed by federal authorities as potential domestic terrorism.
The dominant narrative forces us into binaries: innovation vs. safety, economic growth vs. stability, security vs. privacy, individual freedom vs. collective responsibility. These are false choices. They serve to concentrate power, not solve problems. They’re the product of a top-down, systemic way of thinking that treats our communities and our economy like “things” to be controlled, rather than as responsive processes that emerge from the ongoing interactions of millions of people.
tfp Collective’s Solidarity in Practice framework offers a way to move beyond these binaries. It starts by recognizing that my son’s drive to create and my daughter’s drive to protect are not in opposition. They’re two sides of the same human coin. Authentic individual development and genuine collective empowerment are mutually reinforcing processes. The goal isn’t to find a perfect compromise between them, but to create the conditions where they can both flourish.
This begins with Shared Power. The unprecedented division within the Federal Reserve isn’t a sign of failure; it’s a rare moment of honesty about genuine uncertainty. Instead of demanding a single, confident answer, we should see this as an invitation to a more open conversation about our economy. What if the Fed’s data was supplemented by the lived experience of workers, small business owners, and families without needing a government report that the job market is weaker than it looks? This enriches expertise with the Singularity of each person’s unique perspective.
This isn’t an abstract debate. The vulnerable populations caught in these crosscurrents want stability in a precarious world. Workers want more certainty to navigate a labor market where official data is misleading. Immigrant families want to get their kids to school safely. Parents want to protect their children from the “delusional outputs” of an unregulated AI.
A leader using our framework would start by asking what these communities need to accomplish these things, rather than imposing a top-down solution.
This is a more responsive, participatory approach to our shared challenges. The federal government’s move to block states from regulating AI is the opposite of innovation; it’s an attempt to freeze the very process of experimentation and learning that is our best hope for navigating this new technology. The 38 states that have already passed over 100 AI-related bills are acting as laboratories, generating real-world evidence way faster than a gridlocked Congress. True innovation would be to create ways for this local learning to inform national standards, not to shut it down in the name of a false definition of “competitiveness.”
Proof: Solidarity in Practice
The Hands Off NYC movement is a powerful example of Solidarity as a relational practice. It’s a decentralized network of young activists, elderly grandmothers, and immigrant community members. They don’t share a single ideology, but a practical commitment to mutual protection.
When they learned that ICE was using specific tactics, they adapted. They developed their own counter-surveillance, learning to spot the unmarked vans and patterns of movement. They use modern tools like Signal chats for rapid response. They strategically deploy less vulnerable participants, like elderly white residents, to the front lines to minimize risk for their undocumented neighbors. This is Relational Evolution in action; a living, responsive process through ongoing experimentation and authentic participation.
These volunteers aren’t “protesting.” They’re actively participating in a shadow community safety where the official one has failed. They’re demonstrating that acts like standing in front of an ICE van can scale to collective power. They’re proving that we don’t have to accept the choices handed to us from on high.
We can really do something different. We can participate in communities and institutions that are responsive, adaptive, and grounded in the practical work of helping one another flourish. It starts by rejecting false choices and recognizing the power we have, together, in the responsive processes that govern our lives.