The Firewall is Forming

Inside the growing resistance that’s preparing to defy the regime from the inside — not with slogans, but with strategy.

Apr 16, 2025

“Resistance to the organized mass can be effected only by [one] who is as well organized in [their] individuality as the mass itself.”

— Carl Jung

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people all remark
We have done it ourselves.”

— Lao-Tzu

From Breakout Rooms to a Real Network

There was a moment near the end of Monday’s Firewall organizing call that hit me hard — and hasn’t left my mind since.

A Muslim tech executive from Texas spoke about what it’s like to live in a community under siege. She shared how her community, her faith, and even her mere presence have come under scrutiny and attack. She didn’t deliver a speech. She offered something more powerful: a window into the kind of fear that’s already a daily reality for many — and that is rapidly spreading.

What struck me wasn’t just what she said. It was what it revealed: that this regime’s violence isn’t theoretical. It’s personal. It’s happening now. And if we don’t confront it with seriousness and strategy, that fear will metastasize into every corner of American life.

Because that’s how authoritarianism works — it expands its reach by recycling old tactics. And in this country, those tactics have been refined over generations.

We’ve seen them before. In the criminalization of Black and Brown lives. In the erasure of Native sovereignty. In the internment of Japanese Americans. In the surveillance of Muslim communities. In the family separations and asylum bans. The danger now is that the regime has learned how to apply those tactics faster, more broadly, and with less resistance — because too many people are still convinced it won’t reach them.

But it will. Because a government that has the power to strip rights from one group will always find another. And another. Until no one is left untouched.

Monday’s call — the third in our organizing series — felt like a turning point. Not because it was perfect or polished. But because we stopped simply reacting, and started coordinating.

We didn’t meet to vent. We met to map a plan.

Professionals across law, healthcare, tech, media, education, and beyond came together not just to talk about what’s wrong — but to name the systems we’re embedded in, the pressures those systems are facing, and what it might look like to push back from inside.

The Firewall is no longer just an idea.

It’s a network. It’s beginning to move.

A Regime That’s Everywhere Demands Resistance That’s Embedded

On Monday night, we didn’t just brainstorm. We mapped a frontline.

Not the kind drawn on paper. Not the kind visible from above. The kind you feel beneath your feet — inside the institutions you walk through every day. Inside the ones that used to feel safe.

In every breakout room’s report, you could hear it: the shift. This isn’t about some looming danger off in the distance. It’s already here. It’s already reshaping the way people work, speak, hire, fire, teach, report, heal, pray, refuse. The repression isn’t episodic — it’s systemic. And it’s adapting faster than we are.

In law and human resources, people raised alarms about the erosion of DEI and the deep dependence on federal funding. That funding doesn’t come without strings — and we know what happens when authoritarianism gets to hold the strings.

In tech, the discussion focused on AI — not as a novelty, but as a weapon. Tools that summarize news articles, robbing independent publishers of their souls. Algorithms that reinforce existing power. DOGE replacing our federal workforce with automation. Search functions suppressing dissent. And at the core of it all: a culture of silence. Organizing is punished. NDAs are weaponized. Those who speak up are fired, ridiculed, buried.

Healthcare workers talked about vanished data systems. Public reporting protocols wiped out. Programs for refugees and the most vulnerable quietly defunded or allowed to rot. Foreign-born staff who kept clinics running are being pushed out — because suddenly, they’re no longer “ours.”

Educators listed off attacks with grim precision: book bans, speech codes, the death of DEI protections, ICE looming on campuses, school voucher schemes draining rural schools dry, the brain drain of international students who no longer come — and can’t stay if they do.

From faith communities, the pattern was unmistakable. Authoritarianism is being tested and refined in red states, then exported nationwide. Texas is an incubator. Orders to ask patients their immigration status. Proposals to criminalize nonprofits serving immigrants. A campaign to gut Plyler v. Doe. And who gets targeted first? The same faith-based organizations that fill the gaps our government refuses to. That’s not an accident. It’s a purge.

In journalism, the conversation turned to complicity. When reporters can’t name what’s happening — when publishers dodge the truth in favor of “balance” — the regime wins. Newsrooms still chasing clicks are ignoring the slow death of the Fourth Estate. The silence is louder than any spin. And no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room: our birth rate is plummeting. Immigrants are the future — but we’re erasing them, dead-listing them, deporting them, denying them space to breathe.

Every group had its own language, its own pain points. But the melody was the same.

They are inside the institutions. Already.

They don’t need to storm the gates if we leave them open.

And if we don’t resist from the inside, the resistance never touches them at all.

This Is What the Firewall Actually Is

Let me say this clearly:

The Firewall isn’t this newsletter. It’s you.

It’s the lawyer who refuses to look away when the court assigns her a case that shouldn’t exist.
It’s the public health worker who quietly documents the data her department erased.
It’s the HR manager who pushes back when the word “diversity” is scrubbed from the job description.
It’s the government employee who refuses to process a living person as if they were dead.

This isn’t theory. This is already happening. People inside institutions — some of them reading this right now — are making choices. Some small. Some bold. Some visible. Many invisible.

The Firewall isn’t a metaphor. It’s a living infrastructure. It’s professionals, embedded in the very systems being bent toward repression, making the deliberate choice not to bend with them. Not in isolation. Not as martyrs. But in coordination — with each other, across sectors, behind the scenes.

That’s the core of what we’re building now: sector-based Hubs based on where we show up in the world — our professions, institutions, spheres of influence. Tech. Law. Education. Faith. Medicine. Journalism. Nonprofit. Government. International. This is just the start; we’d like to see more. Each Hub is a space for people on the inside to find one another, compare notes, coordinate resistance, and refuse to let their fields become instruments of repression.

These aren’t activist silos. They’re the scaffolding of something stronger: a cross-sector movement with roots in every place where power is wielded. This isn’t about heroism. It’s about refusal. Quiet, coordinated refusal. The kind that says: not here. Not with my signature. Not in my name.

The authoritarian machine depends on professionals complying at every step of the process. One rubber stamp. One deportation flight. One deleted paragraph. One new AI summary.

So what happens when the professionals stop?

Between Vision and Action

Let’s be honest with ourselves: the Firewall isn’t yet what it needs to become.

Not yet.

What exists right now is a structure in formation. A network of thoughtful, principled professionals scattered across sectors who’ve seen enough to know something is coming — and who are asking the right questions about how to meet it.

The Monday calls are growing. The conversations are sharpening. We’re identifying the fault lines inside our own institutions. We’re beginning to see how professional complicity gets manufactured — and how it might be interrupted.

But that’s not a movement. Not yet. That’s groundwork. And that distinction matters.

Because the next phase isn’t about being right. It’s about being ready.

I’m proud of what we’ve surfaced here. That I could look at the Kilmar case in its earliest moments and say aloud: this is what they’re trying to do. This is the trap they’ve set. This is the response that will be required. And now, two weeks later, as a U.S. senator flies to El Salvador, that call looks a lot more like foresight than noise.

But prediction is only useful if it helps us organize. And the truth is, no matter how accurate we are, there is no cavalry coming.

Which means we have to become the response we’re waiting for.

This is the task ahead: to move from insight to infrastructure. To go from asking hard questions in breakout rooms to building organized Hubs that can act. To connect the dots between what we know and what we’re prepared to do — together, strategically, at scale.

It’s not enough to be early.

We have to be equipped.

From Observation to Organizing

Next Monday, we meet again. And this time, we won’t just be mapping threats — we’ll start mapping the resistance.

The last call was a turning point. For the first time, professionals from education, tech, law, medicine, faith, journalism, and more gathered not to observe what’s happening from a distance, but to name what it feels like inside. The erosion of DEI. The silencing of protest. The quiet normalization of policies that would have once sparked outrage. We heard it across every sector: the same authoritarian pressure, applied through different institutional valves.

Now comes the harder part. The move from awareness to alignment.

What would it mean for professionals inside a sector to begin coordinating — not just talking? To design pressure campaigns from within? To signal to those in power that the people working closest to the gears will not be silent while they’re turned toward authoritarian ends?

At Monday’s meeting, we’ll begin answering those questions. Each Hub will be invited to go deeper: not just to name the dangers, but to propose one or two actions — small or large — that could become the starting points of resistance from within.

That might mean:

– Designing a “first move” from each Hub — something simple, symbolic, and sector-specific to break the ice of inaction.

– Surfacing concrete examples of institutional complicity and brainstorming responses.

– Starting to sketch what mutual protection and professional solidarity look like across sectors.

– Laying the groundwork for a cross-Hub campaign or joint action in the near future.

These aren't just thought experiments. This is how you build a structure strong enough to hold the weight of what's coming.

Because the Firewall isn’t built on headlines. It’s built in the quiet moments of connection between people who understand that they are not just employees or citizens or experts — but witnesses.

And that witnessing alone is not enough.

Monday is a chance to begin building the tools that match the urgency of this moment. Not with abstract ideals, but with real-world tactics rooted in the lives we actually live, the workplaces we actually move through, and the power we still carry — if we’re willing to use it.

And if you’ve been waiting for the right time to step in, this is it.

What This Moment Asks of You

By now, you’ve probably felt it. That tightening in the chest. The growing awareness that something’s happening — something big enough to make you wonder where this all leads. And what your role in it has to be.

Maybe you’ve watched in horror as the Supreme Court gave this regime legal room to vanish a man. Maybe you saw the president of El Salvador joke in the Oval Office about “smuggling a terrorist” while a man named Kilmar sleeps in a concrete box.

Maybe you’ve looked around your own workplace — your newsroom, your nonprofit, your university, your bank — and seen the early signs of compliance. HR policies quietly rewritten. DEI work buried. Budgets pulled. Coworkers silenced.

And maybe you’ve asked yourself what so many people are asking right now:
What can I do?

Here’s what I’ll tell you:

You don’t need permission to begin.

You don’t need to wait for a formal announcement, or a famous leader, or a set of perfect instructions. You don’t need to have it all figured out.

You just need to look at the space you already occupy — the role you already play — and ask:
Who is being harmed here? Who is being erased? And what would it look like to refuse?

That’s how every movement begins. With one person choosing to break the silence. Then another. Then another.

The Firewall isn’t built out of hot takes or hashtags. It’s built by people like you — nurses, engineers, teachers, lawyers, designers, researchers, editors — who decide that the lines they draw at work will echo far beyond it.

If you’re ready to do more than watch this moment unfold, then I invite you into something deeper. Into something harder — and more honest.

The Firewall is forming.
Not as theory. Not as commentary.
As people. As choices. As refusal.