The strongest coalitions are not just built on identical identities, but built when one community recognizes another’s pain—and shows up. In 1950s San Francisco, Chinese immigrant Sinclair Louie was blocked from buying a home in Sea Cliff. A Jewish lawyer, Ben Lehr, understood that exclusion and helped him fight it. Their story became a symbol of the Chinese–Jewish solidarity that helped build America’s Civil Rights coalition. But that coalition fractured when success caused Asian and Jewish Americans to be recast as “privileged”—too successful to deserve protection, even when facing violence. Asian Americans experienced that abandonment during the wave of attacks from 2020–2023. Jewish Americans are experiencing it now amid rising antisemitic violence. In both cases, institutions too often protect a political narrative before they protect actual people. The lesson is not that solidarity was a mistake. It’s that solidarity cannot be conditional on whose suffering is politically convenient. A must-read beautiful and powerful piece by Forrest Liu @notGarryTan : The Merchant and the Lawyer (link 👇) on @garryslist with @garrytan.