By Bacardi Jackson, Executive Director, ACLU of Florida

What we are witnessing right now demands courage of a different order.

Not the symbolic kind. Not the retrospective kind we like to celebrate once the danger has passed. But the kind of courage that is required when authoritarianism is no longer theoretical, when it is actively testing the limits of our institutions, our communities, and our willingness to resist.

People are being killed, and immigration enforcement is swelling into something unchecked and unaccountable. Peaceful protests are being met with escalation instead of restraint. Detention centers are being proposed and built with little transparency, as if its quiet speed of construction might dull public concern.

This is what authoritarianism looks like in real time: a system that expands its reach, demands obedience, and punishes dissent – while insisting it is doing so in the name of “order.” It is the Orwellian bargain we are being asked to accept: that safety requires silence, that state violence is “protection,” and that the public’s right to question power is the real threat.

When plans for a new detention center in Orlando emerged, more than 300 community members organized, mobilized, and refused to be sidelined. When communities in Minnesota took to the streets to demand dignity and accountability, they reminded the nation that protest is not disorder, but one of democracy’s most essential tools. When ICE overreach becomes normalized, it is ordinary people, advocates, and local leaders who step forward to say: this is not who we are, and this is not acceptable.

These moments matter because authoritarianism does not arrive all at once. It advances through small permissions. Through the normalization of cruelty. Through the quiet hope that people will decide it is safer to stay home than to stand up.

Courage interrupts that strategy.

We must understand this moment through a clear-eyed framework. First, we must work to slow it. We fight back in the courts, in legislatures, and in the public square, using every tool available to disrupt harm and expose abuse of power. Second, we must work to stop it. We prepare our communities, strengthen coalitions, and plan for multiple scenarios, knowing that resilience requires foresight, not reaction. And third, we must work to reverse it and rebuild better. Because resisting authoritarianism is not enough if we do not also commit to building systems that are fair, accountable, and rooted in dignity for everyone.

This is where courage becomes contagious. It moves from protest to power-building. From defense to imagination. From survival to transformation.

History teaches us that authoritarian movements depend on isolation. They fracture communities and convince people they are alone. Our response must be the opposite. Collective. Relentless. Grounded in the belief that democracy is not self-sustaining; it is upheld by people who are willing to act, even when the outcome is uncertain.

We are living through a moment that future generations will study. They will ask who spoke up, who organized, who refused to accept the erosion of rights as inevitable. The answer is still being written.

We must stand with every person who chooses courage over comfort, solidarity over silence, and action over fear. The road ahead is difficult, but it is not uncharted. Others have faced moments like this before and prevailed, not because they were unafraid, but because they understood that courage is a discipline, practiced together.

We are not merely resisting what is wrong. We are laying the groundwork for what must come next. And in this moment, that work has never been more urgent.

Together, we prove that democracy, when defended by courageous people, is stronger than fear.

In solidarity,
Bacardi L. Jackson
Executive Director, ACLU of Florida