#4 Beyond No: Building YES Coalitions for What Comes Next

In this episode of Flourish in Times of Struggle, Michael C. Patterson explores the difference between NO coalitions and YES coalitions—and why democratic renewal requires both. Drawing on contemporary activism and movement strategy, the episode examines how resistance to harmful policies must be paired with a shared vision of what comes next. 

Saying no can stop injustice. Saying yes helps us imagine and build a more just, humane, and durable future.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:09 No Coalitions
• 3:37 YES Coalitions
• 5:34 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney Speaks Out
• 8:18 The "Overton Window"
• 10:03 Shifting the Overton Window
• 11:30 Conclusion

Transcript

BEYOND NO: BUILDING YES COALITIONS FOR WHAT COMES NEXT.

Hi. This is Michael C. Patterson. Welcome to the 2026 version of the Flourish As You Age podcast.I’m calling this series Flourish in Times of Struggle. 

“Each episode of this series is an invitation to think together about how to stay steady, compassionate, and engaged in a time when cruelty, corruption, and division have become increasingly normalized. This series focuses on what helps us—and the people we love—flourish even when the social and political landscape feels unstable. 

My hope is that we can prepare ourselves for the hard, necessary conversations and actions this moment requires. Together, we can begin to envision—and work toward—a future in which we, our children and grandchildren can flourish with dignity and purpose.”

This episode speaks to the importance of building strong coalitions to achieve two broad aims. We need to develop No Coalitions that forcefully resist cruelty and oppression. And, at the same time, we need to develop YES Coalitions that propel us towards a better future.

Beyond No: Building YES Coalitions for What Comes Next

At a recent weekly Zoom conversation about “What’s Next?” on the activist agenda, Leah Klein, co-founder of INDIVISIBLE, made an observation that has stayed with me. She said there are two kinds of coalitions that activists tend to build: NO coalitions and YES coalitions.

A NO coalition forms around opposition—around outrage, alarm, and refusal. It’s the collective instinct to say: 

This cannot stand.
This is not who we are.
This is not acceptable. This is not tolerable.

No! We will no be intimidated. We will not be silenced.

NO coalitions are often sparked by cruelty, lawlessness, or injustice that is so visible and so morally offensive that people feel compelled to respond. They arise quickly and powerfully because they are rooted in shared disgust and shared fear.

We’ve seen this again and again. After the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent, and again with the images of a five-year-old child in a blue bunny hat being used as leverage by immigration authorities. When a second person, Alex Pretti was shot by Ice agents, with ten bullets in his back— people in Minnesota poured into the streets to say: Not in our city. And others across the country echoed that message: Not in our state. Not in our country.

Leah’s point was that NO coalitions are often easier to build, especially in moments like this. When cruelty becomes blatant and norms are violated openly, resistance feels natural. Many of us know how to say no and we agree on what we are saying NO to.

But NO coalitions do more than register dissent. They mobilize people to delay, dilute, and defeat an authoritarian agenda—to block unjust policies, defend institutions and communities, and stop further harm. A NO coalition is how a society interrupts an abusive trajectory and refuses to normalize it.

Then Leah made a second, equally important point: a strong NO coalition must be amplified and sustained by a strong YES coalition.

A YES coalition is not organized around what we reject, but around what we want to create. It asks a different set of questions: What are we saying yes to? What kind of society are we trying to build once we stop the immediate harm?

As we work to block, delay, and defeat unlawful and immoral policies, we also have to confront a deeper challenge. It is not enough to remove a leader or roll back a policy if the flawed systems that produced harmful leaders and policies remain intact. Simply going back to the way things were before is not a plan—especially when those systems were already failing large portions of the population and helped create the conditions we are now resisting.

A YES coalition is built around imagining—and beginning to construct—systems that are more just, more humane, and more durable. Systems that allow people to put food on the table, keep a roof over their heads, get a good education, access healthcare, and find dignity in meaningful work. These are not radical demands. But meeting them requires imagination, coordination, and sustained commitment.

And this is where things get difficult.

It is easier to agree on what we oppose than on what we are for. We can unite around This must stop long before we agree on This is what comes next.

That challenge is not unique to the United States. It’s global.

In a recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described what he called a “rupture in world order.” He argued that we are entering a period in which geopolitical power is increasingly unconstrained, and in which weaker actors are often pressured to comply in the hope that accommodation will bring safety.

Carney rejected that logic. He argued that countries that are not superpowers—what he called “middle powers”—are not powerless. They can act together to build new institutions and agreements rooted in human rights, sustainability, solidarity, and mutual respect.

And then he said something striking: “The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.”

What does that honesty require?

Carney argued that powerful and unjust systems are sustained not only by force, but by participation—by people going along with arrangements they privately know are unjust. He quoted Václav Havel’s phrase, “living within a lie,” to describe how ordinary compliance props up systems that benefit the few at the expense of the many.

Canada, Carney admitted, had long prospered within a global system it knew to be flawed and unfair. But that bargain, he said, no longer works.

Now, it’s important to pause here—because this idea of “middle powers” doesn’t only apply to nations.

In a different sense, many ordinary Americans occupy a similar position. We are not destitute. Many of us live relatively comfortable lives. And yet our influence over the economic and political systems that shape those lives is often diffuse, indirect, and fragile. Decisions about labor, housing, healthcare, media, and the environment are increasingly made far from public scrutiny, by actors with disproportionate wealth and access.

This is not a claim that ordinary people have no agency at all—but that power has become increasingly concentrated, and that participation in existing systems often feels disconnected from real influence.

And this brings us back to the challenge of building a YES coalition.

One way to think about this is through something called the Overton Window.

The Overton Window describes the range of ideas that a society considers acceptable or “thinkable” at any given moment. Policies that fall inside the window are debated seriously. Ideas outside it are dismissed as unrealistic or extreme.

Here’s the key point: before laws and policies change, the window has to shift.
Before reforms are possible, people have to be able to imagine them.

NO coalitions are excellent at blocking harm. They can stop bad policies, expose injustice, and force accountability. But YES coalitions are what move the Overton Window. They expand what people believe is possible. They normalize ideas that once seemed unrealistic. They create the conditions under which new institutions can actually be built.

This is why YES coalitions are harder—and why they matter so much.

They require us not only to resist cruelty, but to tell a credible story about a better future. Not a perfect one. Not a utopia. But one that is meaningfully more just and more humane than what we have now.

At the international level, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney argues that middle powers must act together—because, as he put it bluntly, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

At the domestic level, the same insight applies. When ordinary people are not meaningfully represented in decision-making, they often bear the costs of systems they did not design and do not control. A YES coalition works upstream of policy—building consensus around shared values, widening the horizon of what people believe is possible, and shifting the boundaries of what society thinks can and should be done. It is not a blueprint or a policy platform, but the shared work of clarifying values, expanding collective imagination, and building the resolve needed to turn that vision into reality.

This is not a choice between resistance and reconstruction. In moments like this, we need both at the same time.

NO coalitions give voice to moral refusal. They draw clear lines, halt abuses, and make injustice impossible to ignore. They are how societies say, This far, and no further.

YES coalitions do different—but equally essential—work. They help us articulate what we are for, expand the collective imagination of what is possible, and build the shared resolve needed to move in that direction.

In periods of rupture—when old arrangements are breaking down or actively being destroyed, and the future is genuinely up for grabs—NO coalitions clarify what must be resisted and overcome, and YES coalitions propel us toward what might come next. We need both to resist harm and to shape a future worth sustaining.

Thanks for listening and for being committed to making it possible for everyone to flourish - even in times of struggle.,