Start at the Solution

A Strategy for Building Trust in an Age of Disinformation

We are flooded with warnings about disinformation, failing systems, rising costs, broken institutions, and threats to democracy that no longer feel distant. And while those alarms are loud, they’re not reaching the people who need to hear them most.

I’ve been in a lot of conversations lately asking: What’s the right message to reach the millions of Americans who chose “none of the above” and sat out the election?

But maybe it’s not about the message at all. Maybe people are overloaded, frustrated, financially squeezed—and deeply wary of anyone who won’t acknowledge what’s broken or who seems more interested in winning an argument than earning trust.

That’s when I started asking a different question: What if the problem isn’t the message but how the messenger shows up?

Connection, Community, and Joy

That’s the question I kept coming back to during my interview with Melissa Ryan on Wide Awake America. Melissa is the creator of Control Alt-Right Delete, a weekly newsletter that has become essential reading for those trying to understand how far-right extremism and online disinformation have taken hold.

What stood out most wasn’t just her expertise. It was how she kept returning to connection, community, and joy as the antidote.

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She described how the right has built a powerful online machine. They’ve created communities that feel like home, full of loyalty, identity, and shared purpose.

Too many people feel abandoned, dismissed, or left to figure things out alone. They don’t want a lecture. They want a flashlight. They want help that meets the moment.

That’s what led me to name the approach I’ve been working on: Start at the Solution.

Trust Is Built in the Storm

This strategy is built to skip the debate and start with preparation. Arguing about why the healthcare system is collapsing won’t help your neighbor when their rural hospital shuts down. But showing them how to access care, how to organize, how to adapt—that builds trust. That opens the door.

We can talk about preventing disaster, or we can start by helping people survive it. When people feel equipped to face what’s coming, they’re more likely to ask why it’s happening—and who’s responsible.

If we can be the ones offering practical, calm, compassionate help, we build trust. We show up with dignity and clarity in the middle of the storm. And when we do that, we earn the right to have deeper conversations about how we got here and what needs to change.

This is not about giving up on organizing. It’s about reclaiming ground lost to cynicism and chaos.

This strategy doesn’t begin with fear. It begins with solutions.

How We Show Up for Each Other

This approach has grown out of conversations with fellow activists, grassroots organizers, and everyday people searching for a path forward that doesn’t feed the right’s machinery of fear, isolation, and division.

One part of that strategy is a series of plainspoken, useful guides called “What To Do When...”

These guides are intended for neighbor-to-neighbor conversations or as topics for local town halls or lobby visits. Each one is designed to meet people where they are with the tone of a neighbor checking on you after the storm. Not performative. Not partisan. Just real help.

Examples:

What to do when your rural hospital closes
Tips for accessing care, organizing telehealth options, and advocating for expanded services.

What to do when AI threatens your job
Retraining resources, career pivot strategies, and how communities are pushing for worker protections.

What to do when your tax bill keeps growing
Understand how tax burdens have shifted, what communities are doing to respond, and how to organize for local accountability.

These guides are being shaped around a simple reminder:
However we got here, we are in this together, and you don't have to face it alone.

They’re not polished, and that’s intentional. This is an idea to be shaped by community wisdom. I want to hear from you if you’ve built bridges with someone across a divide or created community by building unexpected political bridges. Be part of a crowd-sourced brain trust, and add your input to make this better.

I Never Thought...The Leopard Would Eat My Face

Let me confess right here that I write this struggling with my own anger as every day and new cruelty is unleashed on the most vulnerable in ways that make us all less safe. I also get the temptation to "win the argument"—to drop a snarky meme, hashtag #FAFO, or sing that leopard song—is real. I wrestle with that urge daily and give in to snark more often than I’d like.

And to be clear, mockery aimed at dictators has its place. It can puncture the bluster of those in power. It can strip away the illusion of invincibility that authoritarianism depends on. And sometimes, it’s the first laugh that breaks the silence of fear.

But reaching our neighbors, our co-workers, our classmates, even our family members, requires more than a punchline or withering judgment. It requires grace towards ordinary people. Not grace that excuses, but grace that engages. That builds connection instead of deepening the divide..

Extending grace to people who have (even if unwittingly) empowered cruelty and chaos is hard. And it may be the only way forward toward a future that includes us all, the one the wealthy and the powerful are deeply invested in us never visualizing together.

To be clear, mockery has its place in puncturing the grandiosity of dictators and those in power. And I’m not talking about reaching the proudly hateful. I’m talking about the person who voted out of deep fear and frustration and is now losing their healthcare. The bartender betting everything on crypto who never imagined his vote would lead to American-funded gulags in El Salvador. Or the parent who honestly thought school choice meant more and better options, now watching public school disappear amid book bans and censorship.

Those are the people we must reach with openness, not belittlement. People who may not agree on everything but know something’s gone terribly wrong. And who might still be open to a conversation that starts with community, connection, and a way to help themselves and their neighbor.

Community Out Of Chaos

Melissa provides a clear roadmap for how we ended up in this precarious moment. We talked about the collapse of media guardrails, the rise of tech billionaires who act like unelected heads of state, and how extremists flood the zone with lies designed to exhaust the public.

But Melissa also pointed to something else: organizing is happening in small, close-to-home spaces—not just in the streets. It’s taking root in new moms groups, bowling leagues, front porches, and workplace breakrooms. Without swagger but with joy, vulnerability, and connection, these daily acts of solidarity deserve to be respected and emulated. Relationships built in small moments can outlast cruelty.

I’ve seen it firsthand in my work at Equality Florida, where we supported parents of LGBTQ kids targeted by political attacks. We didn’t ask about their politics. We just helped them protect their children. Now, thousands of those same parents are showing up at school board meetings, supporting each other, and making their voices—and votes—count.

Care can be contagious. And it still has the power to build something stronger than fear.

What Do You Think?

This idea is still on the drawing board, and I invite you to help shape it, build on it, and criticize it. I’d love to hear your reactions in the Substack chat or comments—what resonates, what’s missing, and what you’ve tried in your own community.

If there's momentum, we’ll grow it. That could mean more guides, a simple landing page, a toolkit anyone can use, and a collection of stories from people practicing quiet resistance and everyday resilience to inspire. I don’t know what will emerge, but something new has to.

Because the old playbook doesn’t work anymore.

But we can write a new one.

One that starts at the solution.