Editor’s Note: The quotes in this article are all excerpted from the first episode of the Real Solutions podcast, which launched in fall 2025. The episode focuses on a conversation among the podcast’s partners—all leaders advancing people-centered policy across the country. Each of the six subsequent episodes centers on a specific policy proposal, starting with baby bonds and community crisis response programs.
There are a lot of false solutions being peddled these days.
We hear things like: Your rent is too high, so the government should deport immigrants. Your wages aren’t enough, so billionaires should get lower taxes. You’re worried about your kids’ future, so trans kids should lose their rights. These are real problems paired with false solutions.
Real problems deserve real solutions.
Sure, that’s obvious, but are we ready to have the conversations that point to real solutions to high rent, low wages, our children’s futures, and other pressing issues beyond our usual focus?
Carving out a future where belonging is real requires a collective effort with a coherent vision across varied issue areas and communities organizing for change.
In Real Solutions, a podcast series the Othering and Belonging Institute launched in partnership with 10 organizations, we are lifting up bold policy solutions, explained by people with deep knowledge about them, for audiences that don’t know much about the issue or policy design. The solutions include community crisis response programs, baby bonds, a wealth tax, social housing, climate resilience home insurance, public financing of campaigns, and others.
Tony Samara, associate director of political strategy at Right to the City, described the need for discussing real solutions amid the onslaught of attacks on communities and public institutions this way:
Defense alone risks reinforcing institutions and practices that are part of the problem….Voting is under attack, so we want to defend voting and voting rights. But we know those have been insufficient and that that insufficiency has contributed to the populism that the Right is now manipulating. Science is under attack, so we want to defend it. But we know the many ways science has failed to serve us, for example, in the capture of so much scientific research by the market.
Similarly, in his recent article “Fighting Forward: Free Speech, Due Process, and Belonging in a Time of Fear,” john a. powell wrote, “To fight forward means to defend rights not simply to preserve the past, but to carve out a future where belonging is real.”
What Holds Real Solutions Together?
Carving out a future where belonging is real requires a collective effort with a coherent vision across varied issue areas and communities organizing for change. As Irene Kao, executive director of Courage California pointed out, “We need to be a lot stronger about how we are identifying and connecting across issues and across how we identify, and a lot of that is through our shared values. We need to be a lot clearer what those shared values are and be really consistent, especially as we talk about policies.”
What are the values that are shared broadly and can unify diverse coalitions and anchor the systems of the future? Gordon Mar, labor leader and elected member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, offered a set of values and how they apply to policy:
Real solutions must go beyond quick fixes and defense, and they must transform the system to reflect our deepest values: equity, shared prosperity, and human dignity….Equity means everyone, rich or poor, urban or rural, deserves the same high-quality care—including immigrants, people of color, and transgender community members—with no exceptions. Democracy means healthcare policy should be shaped by working people and affected communities, not corporate lobbyists and insurance executives. And solidarity means recognizing that our health is bound together. None of us are well unless all of us are cared for.
Values are the connective tissue between the defensive organizing that is protecting people from the current attacks and the policies that would provide a real solution to long-standing problems. Lucas Grindley, executive director of Next City, sees solidarity as a solution now and for the future we need, saying that “we need to focus on solidarity right now and the examples of defense that bring people together, because that…becomes lasting coalitions, lasting organizations, and the things that bring about this next version of the world.”
“A chrysalis is not just about things falling apart, it’s about things being knit together. Which means that right now is the opportunity to fight for what comes next.”
In moments like these, people new to taking a political stance are coming out, creating opportunities for new consciousness, connections, and commitments—“welcome to the movement” moments that extend and deepen people power.
This Era Is a Chrysalis for New Systems
Many organizers see this era in history as a unique opening for transformative change. Christina Livingston, statewide executive director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Institute, shared a metaphor she adapted from a speech by organizer and women’s rights advocate Ai-jen Poo:
A lot of folks have been referring to this moment by talking about the three Earths….Earth One is an Earth that many of our institutions were built for. It’s an Earth that…for all of its faults, had a system that we understood, but it actually no longer exists. Earth One is gone. We’re currently in Earth Two, and Earth Two is a contestation.
Earth Two is actually a sort of chrysalis. It’s a place where lots of things are falling apart. And, if we think about it, [many of us] can celebrate some of what is falling apart that has been hurting us for a long time. But only if we can replace it with something that will benefit us in the future, not something that makes it worse.
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A chrysalis is not just about things falling apart, it’s about things being knit together. Which means that right now is the opportunity to fight for what comes next. We cannot wait until the attacks are over. We cannot wait until the dust has settled. By then a new world will have emerged and we will have had nothing to say about it.
So, what are we “knitting together”? Local campaigns and bold policies adopted around the country, as Ivan Luevanos-Elms, executive director of Local Progress, sees it, provide proof of a possible future:
We really need to be showing the alternatives, showing how democracy can work for people, but also knowing that at the local level, these are the laboratories for offensive strategy. That’s where we can actually show it and demonstrate proof of concept that these ideas are not that radical and actually the majority of our people want this.
There are many inspiring examples of bold policies breaking new ground around the country, and several are covered in the podcast series. Baby bonds programs, for instance, provide publicly funded trust accounts for newborn babies that grow and become available to them as young adults to invest in things like education, starting a business, or buying a home. Baby bonds (the focus of the second episode of Real Solutions) can transform intergenerational poverty and are now being implemented from Georgia to Connecticut to California. Community crisis response programs, the focus of the third episode, provide a care-based approach to emergency response in over 100 communities around the country.
Zach Lou, coalition director at California Green New Deal, sees real solutions as being a direct response to the broadly and deeply felt needs of today, while advancing new structures for a transformed economy in the long term:
This is about a vision for the future that responds to the conditions that people are experiencing right now. We can move away from fossil fuels that pollute our communities and go to cheaper and cleaner renewable energy sources. We can create a stronger social safety net so that everyone can thrive during that transition. And we can make our community safer and more resilient and more affordable by making big investments in infrastructure like transit and housing.
Zohran Mamdani’s plan for fast and free buses in New York City is an example, providing an immediate benefit to transit riders today while also investing in a future public transportation essential to an economy that works for all and prevents climate disasters.
False Solutions Will Fail, and Othering Will be the Distraction
One of the key weaknesses of the authoritarian agenda is that its false solutions will fail to deliver broad, meaningful benefits. The playbook—massive cuts to systems of care, handouts to wealthy corporations and individuals, raiding public assets, and scapegoating marginalized communities—does not make housing more affordable, schools safer, food cheaper, or wages livable.
When these material benefits fail to appear, promoters of false solutions will double down on othering. They pick a pain point—like the fentanyl crisis—and shift blame onto immigrants, trans youth, or DEI initiatives.
This isn’t new. In his 1935 book, Black Reconstruction in America, W.E.B. Du Bois described how poor White workers were given a “psychological wage of whiteness”—a perception of superiority over Black people—to distract from the fact that their material conditions weren’t improving and prevent any solidarity from forming between the two groups. But now the strategy has expanded to offer the psychological wages of othering beyond lines of race to assert an even broader hierarchy of who is worthy of care and honor.
Belonging is offered based on othering of women, Muslims, people of the Global South, liberals and progressives, LGBTQ+ people—an ever-expanding list. The message is: You matter more because they matter less. Our work is exposing false solutions and rejecting othering, while insisting on real solutions and belonging for all.
“We need people to imagine what it feels like to live in a better world where they’re not straining under debt or unaffordable bills, getting sick, or unable to afford their home insurance.”
Real Solutions Build Power for the Future People Deserve
In the face of this othering, it can be tempting to advocate for a simple “return to normal.” But too many people were already suffering before Trump, before the pandemic, before the current wave of authoritarianism. A narrative that says “let’s go back” cannot resonate in a country where millions were already struggling to pay rent, find healthcare, or put food on the table.
The “burn it all down” anti-establishment mood is strong—and not unfounded. People want more than a return to old inequalities and persistent problems. We need to affirm the real pain people feel while also pointing to solutions that would actually deliver broad, meaningful benefits.
Sara Hudson, interim CEO and editor in chief at Nonprofit Quarterly, sees real solutions as part of how we tell a new story about who ‘we’ are and what we deserve: “We’re often trapped in narratives that only know what’s broken, not what we’re building towards. And real solutions are as much about narrative power as policy power.”
The narrative power of real solutions is part of what Anat Shenker-Osorio, communications strategist, calls a Magnetism approach to our communications—in which “you meet people at the place of their broadly shared values…and bring them with you toward your desired policies and the candidates who will enact them.”
Compelling visions of a possible future, reflecting shared values, have to be part of narratives that show how proposed policies can lead to a change that’s worth fighting for. According to Rithika Ramamurthy, communications director at the Climate & Community Institute, “We need people to imagine what it feels like to live in a better world where they’re not straining under debt or unaffordable bills, getting sick, or unable to afford their home insurance. Instead, we want people to envision a neighborhood where green spaces, beautiful green schools, and affordable and healthy food are in abundance.”
To tell these stories that build power for real solutions, we need to develop broad understanding of the living proof around the country and the world where real solutions are already being envisioned and implemented. The Real Solutions podcast series is a rich resource for this learning and strategy.
