The Importance of Closing Ranks

• The right wing turns certain names — like Soros — into toxic symbols, then makes their toxic brand the story. Too often, progressives absorb that story and act embarrassed and trapped by the very infrastructure that supports our work.
• We can’t fall into this dangerous loop: organizations acting as if their supporters are liabilities, while funders act as if the organizations they support are liabilities.
• That instinct to retreat isn’t strategic: it weakens our ability to defend anyone the right targets next.
• We need to both celebrate and expand our ecosystem – not try to hide it.

Why is the fight between Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green so captivating? It’s not only the trashy, guilty-pleasure nature of watching it play out. It’s also because it’s so… unusual.

The right wing is very good at closing ranks. We’re not used to seeing these big fights. When we attack their worst, they defend their worst. They may run away from someone like Jeffrey Epstein, but they rarely run away from one another: not even from their radical fringes, lying media personalities, corrupt leaders or most controversial, disturbing and out-of-control funders.

When we’re under attack, do we do the same? Should we?

The Power of the Shame Game

When giving interviews to major news outlets over the last several years, I have seen an incredibly challenging pattern play out. I would talk to a reporter for an hour or more, whether it was about criminal justice reform or the broad-based effort to rein in Big Tech corporations. When the article came out, it would refer to Color Of Change as a “Soros-backed” organization.

The reporter hadn’t asked me a single question about our funding, and they never brought up the topic of George Soros (though I would have been happy to talk about his commitment to progressive, pro-democracy causes). But there was that epithet: Soros-backed. Where did it come from? What was its purpose?

I would call up the reporter and ask them to explain why they framed our organization and its work in this way whether or not the Soros foundation, OSF, was even our largest funder at the time. I would point out that Black people didn’t need the permission of any billionaire to fight for justice. And I would follow up by asking if they wanted a list of all our Jewish donors. I didn’t run away from the association with Soros, but I did try to disrupt the way it was being used to undermine us.

I tried to change the game: From ‘shame on us’ to ‘shame on you.’ From defense to offense. From a narrative of Black people as puppets to Black people as powerful.

It’s unclear if these reporters even knew what they were doing, a testament to the effectiveness of the right-wing strategy to undermine progressive organizations by making their funders toxic. They can’t win against us by arguing against our demands for justice, or the evidence those demands are rooted in, and so they try to undermine us by tying us to something inherently problematic—if we get any money from someone they frame as a boogeyman, we must be part of the nightmare.

It’s like jury nullification: You don’t have to win the case by making legitimate arguments if you can simply turn jurors against the other side by associating them with something wicked.

And much like jury nullification was a conscious strategy used by right-wing reactionaries—who got white juries to routinely let those committing violence against Black people off the hook—this kind of “justice nullification” is ultimately doing the same work for the right wing.

Doing the Right Wing’s Work for Them

This mentality has infiltrated our own sector. Instead of closing ranks around those the right wing is trying to make toxic, we accept and internalize right-wing claims of toxicity, even when we know the downstream effects on all of us if we let them get away with it. Instead of fighting, some of us turn away and retreat. As if retreating is safer than fighting.

That’s as true for attacks on Soros as it is for attacks on the NEA teachers union. Right now, we see organizations trying to avoid being associated with certain funders, and we see funders trying to avoid being associated with certain organizations. It’s all one big trap.

How did we let hit pieces in The Washington Examiner, or rigged reports from JD Vance and company, come to define how we see ourselves and who it’s okay to associate with?

(I don’t want to give them the clicks, but I assure you that a list of articles in the Examiner tagged “Soros” would tell you everything you need to know about how the right wing is trying to warp reality: We’re not the elites, you are. We’re not paying protestors, you are. Whatever they do, they accuse us of doing it, and it always traces back to shady, secret origins, motives and people.)

We must realize how we’re being played, and stop playing into the hands of the right wing.

​In a previous newsletter, I talked about how dangerous it is to do the right wing’s work for them: for example, adopting frames about unemployment among Black workers that blame Black workers for being inferior instead of blaming the corporate executives and government decision makers who force Black people into unemployment in highly discriminatory and pernicious ways. This pattern of not standing up and closing ranks behind every part of our ecosystem when it’s under attack, knowing that every part of it is necessary for winning big change, is another example.

It’s a playbook:

→ Manufacture a symbol of toxicity

→ Shame anyone associated with it,

→ Wait for the left to self-retreat,

→ Watch the infrastructure of the left’s success weaken by the minute.

What starts as an attack on a philanthropist or an organization quickly becomes a template for attacks on trans people, DEI, teachers’ unions, and universities.

When we let this cycle repeat, we give the right wing the very tools they use to hunt us down. And it always involves undermining the credibility, authenticity and popularity of our movements—especially Black movements.

Our ecosystem has delivered worker protections, freedoms that once seemed impossible, and many big changes that make our lives better. People should know how that works and not think it got there by historical accident or by magic. We need to explain the value of our wins much better but we also need to explain to people how changes works. People cannot be manipulated by a twisted expose if we’ve already exposed the truth ourselves.

What It Looks Like to Fight Back

Our job now is to resist the reflex to shrink and, instead, speak plainly about our ecosystem. That Includes how it’s built, who supports it, and why that support not only matters, but is a point of pride. And how every day people can be part of it.

To be clear, this is not about romanticizing philanthropy or arguing that billionaires are above scrutiny. But when people are willing to support our movement, we must defend them, too.

Each of us must find ways to fight back. This divide and conquer strategy is only going to get worse, especially if we show that it’s working. We don’t all have to endorse every last view, but we do need to understand each unique value we bring to the ecosystem. Then we need to stand together, and stand up. There are signs that this is happening, and some of you have bravely taken part in it. Several people have stood up against the Soros attacks, and foundations have written a joint letter to come together against corrupt and craven attacks on our ecosystem. We have to keep this up.

It’s also important to build new infrastructure. The other side has studied our weaknesses well. In some cases, it’s hard to turn around and prevent them from exploiting our resources at any given moment. But other new leaders and organizations haven’t yet been pinned down by their weaponization tactics, and we must make sure that we invest in ties that unite our ecosystem while ensuring there are openings in that mesh for new people to tie themselves in and expand the ranks. This is why I’m so excited about my work with innovation grants which is a small but important way of doing that - whether by investing in legacy communities trying to do new things or completely new initiatives that are identifying the right wing’s weaknesses to help us move from defense to offense, some of which I'll be able to tell you more about next year.

Sticking together is hard, and there’s a reason divide and conquer works. I’m here to help, support and counsel anyone making difficult decisions right now about what we should move toward and what to move away from when all directions seem like they make us more vulnerable. We can still move from positions of power, but we can only do it by working together.