The LinkingLeaders Partnership is a coalition strengthening solidarity for racial justice and equity through a cross-racial, cross-cultural partnership in the Twin Cities. Bringing together more than 5,500 leaders in the region’s Black, Asian, Latinx, and Indigenous communities, LinkingLeaders seeks to identify strategies and best practice models to create connections and strengthen ties amongst leaders of color.
Made up of the Tiwahe Foundation, African American Leadership Forum, Coalition of Asian-American Leaders, and LatinoLEAD, the network approaches the practice of solidarity through a lens of leadership development, movement building, and network weaving. The Mortenson Family Foundation has supported this initiative since 2022.
To get a better understanding of how these groups approach solidarity, we spoke with CAAL’s ThaoMee Xiong and Yer Yang. Xiong is the organization’s executive and network director and Yang is the senior program manager.
This partner story is part of a four-part series featuring the LinkingLeaders Partnership. This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.
When a crisis hits—whether it’s political, social, environmental, or something else—what does solidarity look like in practice? Can you share moments where you’ve had to show up for others, or when others have shown up for you?
A: As an Asian American, especially in a time when our community has faced increased visibility due to anti-Asian hate, we have learned that solidarity isn’t just a feeling. It’s an action that is about showing up consistently in everyday organizing. Solidarity for us in practice means showing up in a shared space with our LinkingLeaders partners and their networks to engage in a collective conversation on building a new future that reflects our diverse communities’ values and contributions. It can be uncomfortable work but when we lean into the uncomfortable conversations, we can start to create a movement across our communities and network. Showing up for others means attending events such as the African Heritage Day at the state capitol to learn and engage in conversations around policy priorities and issues affecting the African community.
Q: Looking back on the work you’ve done together, what are some key lessons or realizations you’ve had through LinkingLeaders? How has this journey shaped the way you think about collaboration, community, or even yourselves?
A: One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned working in collaboration with each other is that solidarity requires humility, deep listening, and a willingness to unlearn. We learned that when you lean into having uncomfortable conversations, you find a deeper connection and friendships that we didn’t think were possible.
Our communities remain relatively siloed and isolated from each other. The idea of building shared power is great in theory but still hard in practice due to the current institutional values that exist and are so ingrained in our everyday life. It is hard to unlearn them and get it right.
Q: How do you show up for each other, not just as individuals but in support of the different communities or movements you’re each connected to? What does mutual support look like across different identities, geographies, or struggles?
A: Showing up for each other means recognizing we’re not just individuals doing this work, but we’re carrying our communities, histories, and futures with us when we show up. It is hard to show up for each other because the world feels so chaotic and there is an emergency daily, if not hourly. Fortunately, we have the LinkingLeaders space to reconnect and share our community challenges and then ask for the kind of support we need.
Mutual support means knowing when to lead, and when to follow. It’s about showing up even when the issue isn’t ours, and holding each other with care when we’re burnt out or grieving. This is hard because this work is both personal and professional. We have some boundaries to set to make sure work gets done. We cannot always just commiserate about our personal and professional struggles but we have to also be clear about our goals and working toward those goals. Building solidarity means understanding that no struggle is isolated. Movements are interconnected and impact the solutions we are all working towards.
The most important thing is to stay in the work despite how messy and frustrating it becomes. It is in working through the challenges that we get to a better place, even if it means that it takes longer and requires more listening. This is not easy, to be in a place of holding fear, frustration, and impatience.
Q: What’s been the most challenging part of this work so far—and what’s been the most energizing or exciting? Are there any moments that stand out as turning points, victories, or big learning curves?
A: There are definitely rewarding moments and really challenging moments. Like any initiative, it’s a bit ugly and messy but the final product is rewarding and well-worth the hard work. We’ve seen that when the LinkingLeaders partners come together and share our expertise to collaborate, like on our leadership panels, we can genuinely feel the collective power we are building together.
However, coordinating schedules, talking points, and decision-making can hold up the process. We could just make decisions unilaterally or by majority vote but that doesn’t get us to building understanding or trust. It speeds up the process but we lose something, too. This is a constant tension between moving quickly to produce more outcomes and moving at the speed of trust to build understanding. This tension is both an internal and external issue because there are high expectations from the community and our funders but there are also important relationships and inclusive-decision making processes to consider.
Building solidarity across different racial and ethnic communities requires a lot of give and take, such as learning practices, accountability skills and productivity measures. We are all still growing in this learning because we still operate within the parameters of the nonprofit-funder-donor dichotomy and while we are trying to create new ways of collaborating, we need to bring our stakeholders along on this learning journey.
