“DEI is under attack, what do we do” shouted Reverend Ron, a lead organizer for the National Action Network at yesterday’s 10th weekly protest of billionaire Bill Ackman’s midtown Manhattan office.

A crowd of roughly 50 demonstrators walked the picket line, many veterans of racial justice battles going back to the late 1960s, yelled in reply, “Stand up, fight back!” A few I recognized from my Harlem days running the Schomburg Center.

Reverend Al Sharpton started ‘DEI Thursdays’ in January, a few days after the forced resignation of Harvard president Claudine Gay to protest Ackman’s call for an end to DEI for promoting hate. Ackman’s claims are part of a disinformation campaign and political movement coordinated by anti-antiracist conservatives and Republican leaders.

Given the pervasive fear about the risks of standing up to these attacks that I’ve witnessed on Harvard’s campus and have heard among friends who are scared about losing their corporate jobs if they speak up in defense of DEI, I wanted to see for myself one of the few signs of resistance in the country right now.

The National Action Network appears to be the only civil rights organization leading demonstrations against the onslaught of legislation, litigation, court decisions, and private sector policy changes to dismantle the entire infrastructure of racial equity and racial justice in the United States.

Christopher Rufo, a leader in the anti-CRT movement in K-12 education for the past three years, has recenlty escalated the war on truth, equity and justice by attacking DEI in higher education and beyond.

“Abolish the DEI bureaucracy in every American institution,” he wrote on X earlier this month. “Terminate the position of every DEI commissar.”

There’s no doubt Rufo and Republicans are winning. Eighty anti-DEI bills have been introduced in 28 states, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s anti-DEI legislation tracker. Eight bills have become law.

No Democrats in the federal government are coming to save DEI or racial equity programs from these attacks, because they have little jurisdiction over what the states are doing. The legislative and judicial destruction of the tools required to identify racial disparities, to study and educate others about their impact, and to implement policies to reverse them — whether in higher education or the private sector — has proceeded over the span of Biden’s presidency and a divided Congress.

And if Biden should happen to win the 2024 Presidential race and Democrats hold the Senate and take back the House, all three outcomes an unlikely scenario, these assaults are not likely to be reversed. People have to mobilize at the state level.

This is why the National Acton Network’s show of courage and commitment to fighting back is so critical at this time. People need to see what resistance looks like and begin to organize and join in this fight.

It isn’t too late. But the damage worsens by the day.

As the hourlong rally ended, a woman wearing a bright orange spring jacket, hair in a salt’n’pepper bun, holding a sign calling for “peaceful people” in defense of democracy and DEI, whispered in my ear with the biggest smile, “You know we are going to win.”

I needed to hear that.