The conversation started like so many others. Someone in a leadership position, someone committed to justice and positive change, reached out to talk about the pressure they were facing. A campaign of criticism had begun to circle. The local press had picked up a selective narrative. A few influential figures were stirring doubt about their decisions, their qualifications, and their motives. They asked for advice. Not about messaging or performance metrics, but about something deeper. They knew they were doing the right thing, but the backlash had begun. They were standing in a storm and wondering if they had what it takes to weather it.

What I told them was simple: build your base.

Let’s be honest. Equitable policies and practice is never just about strategy, communication, or institutional benchmarks. It is also about power. And power is never neutral. If you challenge the status quo, whether in a classroom, a nonprofit, a public agency, a hospital, a newsroom, or a corporate boardroom, your work will not simply be evaluated. It will be contested. That means you need more than a résumé, more than a few talking points, and more than a list of polished accomplishments. You need something essential, often invisible, and rarely acknowledged in public: a base.

Not fans. Not followers. Not a room full of polite applause.

A base

A base is a community of people who know your values, trust your actions, and stand with you because they know you are being misrepresented or undermined. A base is not reactive. It is ready. It is the slow, steady foundation you build in the quiet moments long before a public storm. And whether you are a teacher advocating for students in under-resourced classrooms, a program director trying to diversify hiring, or a department chair pushing for inclusive curriculum, that base is your root system. It is what holds you upright when the ground shifts beneath your feet.

If your work prioritizes equity, challenges hierarchy, or disrupts entrenched privilege, you will face opposition. And that opposition is not always fair or transparent. Sometimes it is organized, well-funded, and connected to systems far larger than the space you occupy. It may not even come from those you consider your peers. It may come from decision-makers behind closed doors who never see your daily labor. That is why you don’t just lead. You organize.

If you act on your values, you are already a political figure. You don’t have to hold office or lead an institution. Your values make you visible. They make you legible to those who want change, and to those who want things to stay exactly the same. The question is not whether you are being watched. The question is whether you have built the kind of support that can stand beside you when the pressure starts to mount.

That base is not a list of titles or public endorsements. It is a network of trust. The families and students you showed up for when no one else did. The colleagues who remember how you defended someone quietly when there was nothing in it for you. The community members who saw you name the truth when others were silent. These are the people who will speak your name with clarity when others try to twist it in whispers. This is not about popularity. This is about political survival.

In the early days of any role, people are generous. Smiles are wide. Meetings are productive. You may even feel a sense of safety. It’s a honeymoon. But that period does not last. When you introduce an idea that disrupts business as usual, or when you hold someone accountable in a way that makes power uncomfortable, you will feel the shift. Suddenly, your calls or emails aren’t returned or get picked apart. Rumors start circulating. And the very people who once praised your leadership begin to create distance. In those moments, what matters most is who speaks up when you are not in the room. Who defends your integrity when it costs them something. Who organizes not because you asked, but because they remember how you showed up. If you can’t name those people now, you are leading on borrowed time.

You cannot build your base in crisis. You build it in the quiet hours, in the hallway conversations, in the decisions that no one sees. You build it by being honest even when it hurts. You build it by honoring your word, by mentoring someone others ignore, by choosing principle over expediency. You build it by making justice a habit, not just a hashtag. By showing up. These actions seem small, but they are what people remember when the narratives start to shift. And when you are targeted, when the stories start to twist, the media gets involved, or a closed-door hearing is called without your knowledge, those small decisions become your lifeline. They become the reason someone supports you in a moment you did not see coming.

But here is the hard truth. Sometimes their coalition wins. You can do everything right. You can act with transparency, you can build community, you can stay true to your ethics, and still be forced out of a room. In education and in every other sector, decisions are not always made on the basis of merit. They are made by coalitions of donors, insiders, political actors, and institutional elites. They don’t need to win a debate. They just need to pull the right levers.

Their strategy is simple. Control the narrative. Close the loop. Push you out quietly. Then rewrite your story before your base even knows what happened. If your coalition isn’t ready, or worse, doesn’t know the stakes, you may lose before the resistance even begins.

But even when it doesn’t stop the machinery, community power still matters. Because when you build your base, you are not just defending your job. You are modeling something bigger. You are showing that your work is not a solo performance. It is a collective act. When your values are built into the people you’ve worked with, your work continues even when your position changes. Your ideas and courage echoes. Your colleagues carry on the work.

Build it anyway

Even if it doesn’t save your position. Even if it doesn’t win you the next grant. Even if your workplace politics are too complex to resolve. Build it because isolation is a tool of oppression. And without a base, you are isolated. You will be made a cautionary tale instead of a catalyst. But if you build it, quietly, consistently, without fanfare, it will hold you. And it may even change the game for someone else who comes after you.

Take Steve Jobs. In 1985, he was pushed out of Apple. His own company. He was seen as too disruptive, too intense, too much. They reorganized quietly. He left without fanfare. But he didn’t stop building. He created NeXT. He transformed Pixar. And when Apple floundered, they asked him to return. But he didn’t come back alone. He brought with him a base, engineers, visionaries, culture-shapers, who had been watching, learning, and aligning with his vision. Even outside of formal power, he remained influential. Because he had built something more enduring than position. He had built belief.

This is the paradox. Power can remove you from a room. But it cannot remove you from a movement if your values live in others. And that is why you must organize. Not just for yourself, but for the community that needs to know they are not alone. Because when power moves against you, it rarely does so with a bullhorn like the Colbert firing. It moves quietly. It rebrands the decision. It avoids headlines. It chooses a weekend exit and a carefully worded memo. The goal is to erase, not provoke. To minimize disruption. To control the story.

Dr. King once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But arcs do not bend by chance. They bend because community hands, steady, brave, and unshaken, pull them forward. They bend because people, bound by purpose and fortified by truth, refuse to let them recoil. So build your base now. Build it not in fear, but in faith. Not just for shelter, but for strength. Before the storm gathers. Before the silence swells. Because when the reckoning arrives, it may be the voice left to carry the memory, the mission, and the fire.

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a nationally recognized policy scholar, public intellectual, and civil rights advocate. A trusted voice in public policy, he has testified for state legislatures, the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, while also advising presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. His work has been cited by major outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, and he has appeared on networks from MSNBC and PBS to NPR and DemocracyNow!. He is a recipient of more than 30 honors, including the 2025 NAACP Keeper of the Flame Award, Vasquez Heilig brings both scholarly rigor and grassroots commitment to the fight for equity and justice.