The Forge: Organizing Strategy and Practice

Wealth redistribution, as a relational practice rooted in accountability, has the potential to spiritually transform a person, as shared here by redistribution organizers Brittany Koteles and Morgan Curtis. Koteles, Executive Director of Land Justice Futures, an organization that supports Catholic nuns in engaging in land return, and Curtis, who offers one-on-one coaching for inheritors of generational wealth, both maintain a committed approach to the “how” of land and resource return.

July 2, 2026 Today’s immigration and child welfare systems are the same colonial machinery that ran boarding schools and slave patrols, and no amount of privilege will shield you when that machinery decides you are next. Indigenous, Black, and other communities of color across North America know all too well how quickly civil rights and community safety can be stripped away and violated.

In a country where land has historically been central to wealth and power-building, we must carefully consider how we want to work together towards land reclamation. Kailea Loften in conversation with Nick Tilsen and Brea Baker At the start of 2026, Brea Baker, author of Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft in the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership, sat down for a conversation with NDN Collective’s founder, Nick Tilsen, and Guest Editor, Kailea Loften.

July 2, 2026 We are living in fascist times, which means we must remember history to help us understand the possibilities of our futures. Do we want to subjugate ourselves to the tyranny of a dictatorial leader? Or do we want to struggle for the future that can encompass us all, free of the shackles of racism and colonialism, free from the unequal yoke of living in the heart of empire while our tax dollars fund genocides and conflicts around the world?

July 2, 2026 Where did the concept of American democracy come from? And are we living up to its core values? As we mark 250 years of America, these are pertinent questions to consider. In this conversation, Claire Maracle, Executive Director of Words of the People, and Baratunde Thurston, storyteller and author of How to Be Black, excavate the origins of American democracy to expand and reshape our political imagination. It turns out we’ve been dreaming too small.

If we’re going to work to bring diverse groups of people into conversation and ultimately solidarity, we will need an updated politics of togetherness capable of bringing nuance to intersectionality.

All social movements need infrastructure capable of sustaining across multi-generational fights. But how do we build this infrastructure and ensure that we lower the cost of onboarding new people into our movements so they can grow? As Judith LeBlanc, Executive Director of Native Organizers Alliance, and community organizer Jawanza Williams reflect to Guest Editor Kailea Loften, continuing to recognize that our power exists in the collective is the starting point.

Trevor Smith in conversation with Anne Price and Jhumpa Bhattacharya of The Maven Collaborative. The racial wealth gap is not a product of individual behavior but of policy design. Because of this, we must create new frameworks for wealth, inheritance, and family security that sidestep outdated ideas of individualism. At the Maven Collaborative, Anne Price and Jhumpa Bhattacharya are dedicated to using research, advocacy, and narrative to build towards a collective economy that works for all.

The American Dream was built on stolen land and enslaved labor, so true freedom means rejecting it and building a Liberation Economy rooted in repair and abundance. You and I will always sit at a crossroads, surveying our options at the intersection of ancestral decisions and descendants’ possibilities. Fortunately, we decide our journey. We inherited many stories about the U.S.: that we are united because all men are created equal. That the land is made for you and me.

The abolitionist movement transformed America from a slaveholders’ republic into a multiracial democracy in just decades, proving that organized people are the engine of real change. As America turns 250, social movements can look back on where we’ve been to learn how to transform this country for the future.