17 Oct How We Hold It…Together

By Larry Kleinman

October 14, 2025

How we hold it.
How we hold it together.
How we hold it, together.

These five words encapsulate three overlapping challenges that figure centrally in our collective condition, nine months into the chaos, cruelty and corruption of an administration set on domination like no other in U.S. history. We rightly assume that we’ll be fighting back with everything we have for years to come.

We. Must. Hold. It. Together. That requires keeping our bearings.

This essay offers some ideas and framing, building on a previous essay in June:

Shake, Rattle, and Roll: Holding Our Own in an Era of Earthquakes

Ideas key to that essay included:

• The value of formulating “right-sized expectations”; for example, if we expect to liberate a sizable portion of ICE detainees, we may demoralize ourselves into inaction.
• The strategic essentiality of identifying the intersection of “their vulnerabilities, our strengths”. Despite the obscene and shock-inducing appropriation of $170,000,000,000 for immigration enforcement, detention capacities and transportation logistics will remain a chronic bottleneck for ICE. In fact, detention capacity is projected to increase two-fold, not ten-fold as some might assume, given the funding tsunami. Our collective protests, litigation and regulatory pushback on facilities and conditions can make the bottlenecks more consequential, a de facto limit on accelerated removals, branded as “mass deportation.”
• The recognition that, in a time of scant hope, resolve stands in. “Our community will outlast Trump” and “we fight alongside those who choose to fight and that encourages others to fight” are two expressions of resolve. We adjust our bearings to keep pace with fast-changing conditions. Even so, some dynamics also emerge as constants.

Dynamics in this Environment

We do well to consider these five phenomena as salient to holding our grasp:

1. Trump has proven stubbornly resilient as grievance-avatar and relentless extortionist, holding his base while inflicting psychological damage at mass scale. Around the corner, we can anticipate more frequent and larger ICE raids, millions losing health care and safety net support, and the economy stalls and/or prices inflate. This combination of material impacts at scale could galvanize a breakout moment.
2. Trump opponents have a tendency—a confirmation bias—to see the array of cruelties and aggressions as aggregating and thereby catalyzing a mega-crisis. This misses that they may have offsetting outcomes, a kind of equilibrium which blunts crisis. For example, immigrant worker fear, expulsion and constriction reduces the workforce. But if other conditions depress commerce, that reduces demand for labor. Las Vegas offers a case in point. Trump’s verbal and trade assaults prompted a precipitous drop in Canadian tourism. Casinos and hotels needed fewer workers just as the immigrant workforce shrank. Lower revenues and profits may bite—eventually. But, meanwhile, the effects are muted.
3. As we continue to probe for the tipping point of contagion which shifts fear to resolve (necessary to power mass action), it seems apparent that the demand of “rule of law: not ruler’s law” motivates an insufficient number of people. “Red lines” that are materially felt will likely prove more consequential. The material injury of Medicaid cutoff may take on extra potency via the insult of casting the former recipient as a “waste(r), fraud(ster) or abuse(r)”. Virtually no Medicaid recipients would accept that identity.
4. We also contend with what I call “evergreen dilemmas”:
   • As we combat ICE, most everything we do to raise public alarm and outrage also elevates fear in immigrant communities—something ICE’s brash cruelty openly seeks to engender.
   • Right-sizing our assessment of threats (e.g., focusing on how threats are operationalized rather than how they feel to us) can normalize and reduce alarm.
   • Opposing all immigration enforcement can feed the politics of draconian enforcement.

   Unlike “problems” which we have the power to “solve,” we manage dilemmas and we can derive strength from how we choose to manage them.

5. Finally, as we coalesce the “offs”—namely, the laid off, cut off, ripped off, pissed off, put off, or worse off—the “offs” coalition will endure if the alternatives we offer resonate as effective. Categorical opposition will likely fall short.

Personal Bearings

We’re never “done” but we often reach the point of “all we can reasonably do now”. Staying in the fight means repeatedly moving on or beginning anew. Some among us may draw strength from seeing ourselves as “crime fighters”. Though we don’t have the powers and resources of those conventionally in that role, crime fighters uphold public safety, search out the facts and proof, and cope with the toll of frequently encountering trauma. Others among us might adopt a firefighters’ mindset, especially around team work and incident response.

Inevitably, we all face situations that loosen our grip…

• …when we encounter MAGA-ites in our midst, especially in our families. Who’s intolerable…or persuadable? What’s their issue or metric, if they even have one? What’s the toll from engaging…or the fallout from ghosting?..when ever-fewer immigrants trust applying for status or citizenship despite being clearly eligible, fearing that it’s a trap.
• …when folks sound out—or act on—departure (formerly known as “self-deportation”) and we experience it as surrender.
• …when we “other” soldiers deployed to our streets, though we know that not all agree with their leaders or with the mission of intimidation and suppression.

The “How”

In the end, the ideas and descriptions in this essay aren’t nearly as central as finding your people, choosing your preferred mode of engagement, and embracing a practice…

…that works for you personally,

…that coalesces or resets your teams, and

…that encircles you in an embrace of support and protection.

Así Se Puede!