We are living through a defining moment in our country—one marked by accelerating harm, deepening fear, and a deliberate effort to divide us from one another.
Across the nation, we are witnessing intensified actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including raids and detentions that tear families apart and destabilize entire communities. At the same time, the President has publicly claimed that civil rights protections harm white people—an assertion that fundamentally distorts the purpose of civil rights and attempts to pit us against one another along false lines of scarcity and resentment.
These developments do not exist in isolation.
Dr. King warned us about what he called the giant triplets: racism, militarism, and economic exploitation—not as separate forces, but as a single machine. A machine that must constantly justify harm, concentrate power, and silence dissent to survive. History teaches us that this machine ultimately does not care who stands in its way. It will crush anyone who disrupts its order.
Race itself has always been a social construct designed to sort people, assign value, and determine how populations are governed. But when people challenge that arrangement—when they protest, organize, tell the truth, or refuse to comply—they become expendable, regardless of how they are classified.
This is why the moment we are in feels so disorienting for many.
We are seeing stories circulate, especially around the killing of white people, where the narrative being spun directly contradicts what our eyes can see. For Black communities, this is not new. From before Emmett Till to today, we have long understood how narratives are twisted to protect power, justify violence, and obscure accountability. What is different now is that more people are recognizing the pattern and realizing it does not stop with one group.
We are also seeing federal support stripped from suicide prevention programs for Native youth. We are watching LGBTQ+ rights rolled back after decades of hard-won progress. Immigrants and Latino Americans are being targeted and dehumanized. Medicaid, which provides essential health care services and supports for families with low income and people with disabilities, is being cut. Books are banned. History is erased. Language meant to protect is weaponized to exclude.
The list continues, and so does the impact.
What unites these actions is not policy nuance, but a familiar strategy: isolate a group, distort their story, question their humanity, and normalize harm. This is why solidarity matters now more than ever—not because our experiences are identical, but because the system that produces them is shared.
The Seattle Office for Civil Rights rejects state-sanctioned violence against any people. We reject the idea that safety must be purchased at someone else’s expense. And we refuse the lie that some lives must be sacrificed for others to feel secure.
The challenges we’re facing highlight an urgent need for coalition building. Peace and justice aren’t passive—they will require coordinated strategies and long-term participation. In response, our office is gearing up to host a storytelling showcase and community summit to build momentum on racial, social, and economic justice through practical organizing principles. These events wont simply be panels that end in applause. Instead, they will bring communities together to share their stories, find common ground, and organize on issues they care about. Community-authored policy briefs will also emerge to amplify priorities and demands shaped by those most impacted.
History reminds us that no group is targeted last. Any one of us could be next. And the truth remains now as ever that none of us is free until all of us are free.
