The last six months have been devastating for these United States. The government has kidnapped students, placing them in detention in states hundreds of miles away from their loved ones and schools. The government has openly questioned long-standing and hard-fought norms: the freedom of speech, the right to legal representation, and citizenship as a right of those of us born here. The government has handed over our most sacred information and resources to billionaires who became that way because the government invested in them and subsidized their fortunes. Now these same people want to pull up the ladder behind them, guaranteeing that nobody else can benefit from a government that supports its people, demonstrating the importance of philanthropic support for movements for justice.

I’ve been proud of my sector, philanthropy. We’ve approached this crisis front-footed and full-throated in our commitment to protect the freedom to give and support movements for justice. It’s been a powerful testament that hundreds of my peers preemptively coordinated and called out our freedom to give, freedom of speech, and freedom to serve communities.

As we enter this next moment, when the boundaries that were once fixed are challenged not by proclamation or executive order, but through the allocation of our tax dollars, we have an opportunity to show that when we are part of movements that protect the most vulnerable among us, we protect ourselves. It is an invitation to remember that our government is not a natural representation of our best selves. Let’s be honest: The best parts of our government are a product of people, overwhelming the poorest and least powerful people, organizing against greed, exploitation, and exclusion. Free public education, Medicaid, and protection from racism and sexism are evidence of what government looks like when movements win for our most treasured resource: our people.

Our commitment to trust, discipline, and love is the best medicine for this moment. We need to transform spaces of dread into spaces where we can join together in solidarity to dream...

Read the full article about philanthropy's role in movements for justice by Carmen Rojas at Common Dreams.