When They Come For One: Building Solidarity Through Quiet Resistance

What happens when a coworker is punished for standing up? How do we respond — not just with sympathy, but solidarity?

Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers, and the power of professional conscience. What will your papers be?

"Courage is contagious. You can’t wait until you’re sure you’ll win. You act when you know it’s right."

— Daniel Ellsberg

"If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority."

— Barbara Jordan

When Fear Comes for Your Coworker

Monday night, our organizing call started with a different kind of question. A harder one.

"If someone in your workplace is punished for resisting, how will you stand with them?"

This wasn’t theoretical. A few attendees had just lost their jobs. Funding cuts, quiet terminations. Silent weapons of repression. And the question hung heavy on our screens.

How do we stand together in a culture of isolation?
How do we turn courage into collective power?

Because if fear moves quickly, solidarity must move quicker.

The Currency of Tyranny

These questions might sound abstract, but they aren't. Just days ago, we saw news break of the Trump administration secretly discussing payments to governments willing to accept deportees. Rwanda, thousands of miles away, has confirmed talks with the U.S. to take in people who may have never stepped foot on African soil. Lives turned upside down, people treated like commodities in a global trade in human suffering. Texas quietly collects bail money from desperate immigrant families who can't appear in court because they've been deported. In Kinney County, Texas alone, families forfeited millions. This isn't immigration policy — this is a financial industry built on suffering.

It’s tyranny. And tyranny always makes someone rich.

These stories hit hard. They're about immigrant communities now, yes. But the machinery of oppression perfected on immigrants is being tested against us all. That machinery is already humming in your workplace. And it profits from our silence.

On Monday, we rejected silence. Instead, we strategized.

A Quiet Hero Named Ellsberg

Educators spoke about Daniel Ellsberg — whose name deserves a moment of explanation. Ellsberg was an analyst at the Pentagon during the Vietnam War, a man whose profession demanded obedience, secrecy, silence. Instead, he risked everything to leak the Pentagon Papers, exposing decades of government lies that cost thousands of lives. He didn’t take to the streets. He didn't shout slogans. He weaponized his privilege, his position, his profession. He took a quiet truth from inside power and gave it to the people. A profound, strategic act of professional courage.

"Where," we all might ask, "is our Ellsberg?" Could it be the professor who discreetly keeps truth alive in a classroom, despite pressure to sanitize curriculum? Could it be the teacher who quietly informs a student of their rights before ICE knocks on the school door? Could it be you?

Education: Courage in Quiet Conversations

Educators realized solidarity isn't always loud. Sometimes it's quietly checking in, documenting pressures, protecting colleagues, students. Acts small in isolation, powerful in combination.

Lawyers: The Law as Weapon and Shield

In the Legal Hub, lawyers felt pressure mounting. Fast-tracked cases. Denied counsel. Sudden procedural changes. But they reminded each other: the law has always been both weapon and shield. They strategized on documenting abuses quietly, sharing resources securely, and leveraging collective knowledge to resist misuse of the law. Solidarity, they concluded, is an evidence-based strategy. Quiet refusal coupled with careful documentation can build the case we need to dismantle injustice.

Healthcare: Protecting Patients is Resistance

Healthcare workers saw patients becoming targets, their medical records coveted by enforcement agencies. They discussed subtle refusals — everyday acts of protecting patient privacy, documenting unlawful data requests, discreetly instructing colleagues. Solidarity in a clinic isn't grand gestures; it's quiet dignity. It's medical ethics becoming resistance.

Technology: Coding Against Tyranny

Tech professionals spoke urgently about how the regime builds oppression into the code we write. Quietly disabling surveillance features, meticulously documenting unethical requests, securely sharing warnings with colleagues — these are acts of quiet defiance. They imagined solidarity encoded in the digital infrastructure of our daily lives.

Media: Truth in the Age of Propaganda

Media professionals described the narrative war we're in. One side profits from outrage, hate, division. Our side counters with facts, but we struggle against propaganda machines designed to obscure truth. Quiet solidarity, they realized, involves journalists documenting pressures from above to bury or distort stories, sharing quietly, building collective knowledge — resisting by refusing to abandon truth.

Nonprofits: Resisting Silence with Quiet Action

Nonprofit leaders confronted funding as weaponized silence. Quiet solidarity meant discreetly documenting when funding comes with strings meant to silence, privately mobilizing alternative resources, quietly refusing compliance that turns a mission of justice into a performance of neutrality.

Your Profession, Your Pledge

In each sector, we imagined professional rights cards — simple tools we could discreetly carry, reminding us how to quietly refuse, document, and report injustices. But the cards aren't just tools. They represent a shared promise:

I will stand with you.
Quietly if I must. Loudly if I can.

These cards aren’t yet finalized. They belong to you. Your voice, your courage, your insight will shape them. Solidarity isn’t handed down from above — it grows from our workplaces, our small acts. Acts like Ellsberg's. Acts that build collective power.

So ask yourself: If the colleague beside you is punished, how will you show up? Who will stand beside you when it's your turn? The quiet resistance you start today becomes the powerful resistance we build tomorrow.

Join us next Monday as we continue this conversation. Come ready to share, ready to listen, ready to build a resistance rooted not in slogans but in our professions, our dignity, our quiet acts of solidarity.

Fear moves fast, yes. But solidarity moves faster.

And in that quiet speed lies our strength.

Solidarity Starts Quietly…But Never Stays Quiet

Join The Firewall's Next Organizing Call
Monday, May 12, 2025 — 7:00 PM ET | 6:00 PM CT | 4:00 PM PT