Dear Friends of FAIR,
This Martin Luther King Jr. Day arrives amid profound disagreements.
ICE raids in Minnesota have sparked fierce debate. The Trump administration’s designation of Venezuelan cartels as terrorist organizations and threats of military action against Iran have divided Americans sharply over questions of sovereignty, security, and American dominance. Social media and cable news reward inflammatory takes and fuel moral blindness on all sides. We isolate ourselves in communities where everyone agrees, making it harder to understand why reasonable people might see things differently.
It’s tempting to invoke Dr. King’s soaring rhetoric and imagine inspiration alone might unite us. But King’s legacy offers something more valuable: a model for engaging across deep differences without abandoning principle.
We remember his “I Have a Dream” speech, and rightfully so. But King spent most days navigating intense disagreements within the civil rights movement itself. He debated Malcolm X over integration versus separatism, wrestled with younger activists who found his nonviolence naive, and faced criticism from moderates who told him to slow down.
King’s genius wasn’t in avoiding conflict, but rather in engaging productively. His Letter from Birmingham Jail stands as perhaps the greatest example of civil discourse in American history. He steel-manned his critics’ arguments, presenting the strongest version before responding. He acknowledged their good intentions while holding firm to principle. He found common ground in shared constitutional values even as he challenged readers to live up to them.
King understood that people with identical values might reach different conclusions based on lived experiences. The question isn’t whether one side is purely righteous; it’s whether we can engage disagreements in ways that move us forward rather than harden divisions.
Americans supporting aggressive immigration enforcement genuinely believe they’re protecting rule of law and national security. Those opposing it genuinely believe they’re protecting human dignity and America’s founding promise. Both arguments rely on constitutional principles.
The pattern repeats in foreign policy. Some see recent shifts on Venezuela and Iran as necessary corrections. Others see dangerous destabilization. Both believe they’re defending American interests.
What would King’s approach look like today? Not pretending disagreements don’t matter, because they matter enormously. Not demanding everyone “be nice,” because genuine civility often means honest, uncomfortable engagement. And certainly not claiming King would have taken one particular side.
Instead, King’s approach asks us to present opponents’ strongest arguments before dismantling them, to acknowledge legitimate concerns while advocating forcefully for our position, and to seek common ground without papering over differences.
The civil rights movement succeeded because King and others built coalitions across differences and made constitutional arguments forcing Americans to confront gaps between stated ideals and actual practices. They practiced “constructive, nonviolent tension” to channel conflict productively.
Today’s challenges require holding principles firmly while engaging those who disagree with intellectual honesty—recognizing that political opponents usually aren’t evil, but operating from different experiences, and seeking solutions that address multiple concerns rather than demanding total victory.
The mountaintop vision matters, but we shouldn’t forget that King spent his time in the valley, patiently doing the work of persuasion and principled engagement. Perhaps the most meaningful way to honor his legacy is to commit to the democratic citizenship he devoted his life to: articulating our opponents’ best arguments, identifying shared values beneath our disagreements, and practicing civil discourse that makes democracy possible.
With gratitude,
Monica Harris
Executive Director
The Body-Mind Connection: How Physiology Is Often Overlooked in Mental Health Care
Emerging research suggests profound connections between diet, mood, and mental wellness. Yet medical orthodoxy has largely sidelined these conversations, even as rates of anxiety and depression, especially among young people, reach unprecedented levels. Why aren’t we having more robust discussions about whether nutrition might be part of the picture? What happens when legitimate scientific inquiry gets dismissed because it challenges established protocols? This first webinar will focus on adults, with a second conversation for adolescents coming soon. These aren’t anti-medicine questions; they’re pro-inquiry questions.
Beyond Race: Addressing Multiracial Identity in Modern America
This conversation will directly support FAIR’s American Experience curriculum, which embraces the experiences of multiracial Americans in our national dialogue about identity and belonging. The fastest-growing demographic category in recent census data is Americans of “two or more races.” Yet our racial discourse, especially in DEI frameworks, often forces multiracial Americans into boxes that don’t reflect their reality. How do you navigate belonging when society demands you choose? How do multiracial families help their children develop strong identities in a culture that insists on singular categorization? FAIR Advisors Eli Steele and Greg Thomas will explore how multiracial Americans aren’t just navigating existing categories; they’re actively shaping what it means to be American in the 21st century.
FAIR Educator Alliance 2025-2026
FAIR is launching the Educators Alliance for the 2025–2026 school year to equip PK–12 educators with the knowledge, strategies, and community support they need to foster schools that are more enriching and free from bias for students and educators.
Each monthly gathering will open with updates and presentations from FAIR staff, fellows, Chapter Leaders, and occasional guest speakers. Together, we’ll explore strategies for supporting educators, communities, and local chapters—and for advancing positive change at the local, regional, and national levels. Following presentations, participants will have space for open forum discussions to connect, seek advice, and coordinate on pressing issues in their schools. Breakout rooms will be divided into PK-6 and 7-12 grade levels with experienced teachers facilitating those conversations.
Meetings: First Thursday of each month at 7 PM ET via Zoom
Duration: 1 hour
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"We must learn to livr together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools":
Just a shout out for unity. Happy friday to all from sea to shining sea!
The person down the street who votes differently than you is not your enemy. They are your neighbor. They worry about the same things you worry about. They want their kids to be safe and their bills to be paid and their country to be a place worth living in. They have been manipulated just like you have been manipulated, fed a different flavor of the same poison, sorted into a different tribe by the same algorithm, pointed at you as the enemy by the same people who point you at them.
The working class Republican and the working class Democrat have more in common with each other than either of them has with the billionaire class that funds both parties.
You share the same struggles. You face the same rigged systems. You are being crushed by the same economic forces that have transferred more wealth upward in the last fifty years than at any point in human history. And instead of uniting against the people doing this to you, you are screaming at each other on the internet about pronouns and flags and whatever fresh outrage the algorithm served up this morning.
This is exactly what they want. A nation at war with itself cannot resist a takeover. A people consumed by mutual hatred will accept any authority that promises to protect them from the manufactured enemy. Every empire that fell was divided before it was conquered. Every free people who lost their freedom were set against each other first.
The red versus blue war is not real. It is a show put on by people who own both teams. It is professional wrestling and you think it is a real fight. The wrestlers go backstage after the match and laugh together while you are still screaming at the guy in the other section who was rooting for the wrong character.
This Is Our Country Not Theirs
This nation belongs to the people who live here and work here and raise families here and will be buried here. It does not belong to billionaires who hold citizenship in three countries and will flee to their bunkers the moment things get bad. It does not belong to tech oligarchs who view democracy as an obstacle to efficiency. It does not belong to foreign interests who have purchased so much influence that they might as well be writing our laws themselves.
We have to stop letting them divide us. We have to start seeing each other as fellow Americans again instead of enemy combatants in a culture war that was manufactured to keep us weak. We have to remember that the person screaming at us online is also a victim of the same manipulation, and maybe if we stopped screaming back and started talking, we might realize we have been fighting the wrong enemy this entire time.
Turn off the television. It is not informing you. It is programming you. Question everything, including the sources you trust, especially the sources you trust. Talk to people who disagree with you and do it without trying to win. Listen to why they believe what they believe. You might discover that the monster you have been told to hate is actually just another person trying to make sense of a confusing world with imperfect information, exactly like you.
Remember who you are. You are an American. Your ancestors came to this land or were brought to this land or were already on this land, and regardless of how they got here, they built something together that was supposed to be different from the old world’s tyrannies and aristocracies. That project is not finished. Every generation has to fight to keep it alive against the forces that want to drag us back to a world where a handful of rulers own everything and everyone else serves at their pleasure.
The billionaires are building robot armies because they know what is coming. They know that eventually the population will wake up and realize what has been done to them. They are preparing for that day. The question is whether we wake up before they finish building, or after.
Stop letting them divide you. Your enemies are not your neighbors. Your enemies are the people who profit from your division and are building machines to replace you the moment you are no longer useful.
Start acting like it before it is too late". —The Wise Wolf
While some might look to the Constitution for guidance or ponder what is morally righteous, for millions of us, tens of millions, we simply don't want to lose our jobs, or work for half pay. We have families with kids to support. We have no fall back. We can't go to work at a different NGO. We are roofers, trim crews, framers, flatworkers, etc. All of the hard dangerous disagreeable jobs that used to be able to support a family.
You see those people holding up a sign, begging at the entrance to the interstate? We don't want to be them. When 10 million more low wage workers enter the country in a very short time it kills wages, destroys families.