Holding the Line: Looking Back at a Year That Tested Us All

This year asked more of us than most. We have been challenged in ways that are both familiar and frighteningly new. Rights once considered settled came under attack. Voices that had grown stronger were pushed back toward the margins. And the global LGBTI+ community found itself confronting a level of coordinated and resourced hostility we have not seen in years. All precisely at the time when hard-fought-for institutional support has been eroded.

Yet throughout all this, we kept going. I saw many of our friends and partners do so as well. We organised, advocated, showed up for one another where we could, and held our heads high even when the pressure felt unbearable. But resilience does not come without cost. The ability to keep moving while holding fear, uncertainty, or exhaustion in our hearts and minds is not an infinite resource. Even in cases where your physical safety isn’t under threat, the sheer emotional labour of “being fine” when the world is anything but fine leaves its marks, even when unseen and unspoken.

And still, I saw our values carry us throughout the year.

If there is one lesson that has been made painfully clear to me, it is that acting according to our values is not something we do when it is easy. It is something we do because it is hard. When the space to speak shrinks, when saying what is right becomes risky, when public solidarity can cause backlash, that is precisely the moment when we must hold our values closer, not turn our backs on them.

This applies not only in countries where activists face criminalisation or surveillance, but increasingly in places in the global north where once-secure democratic norms are showing cracks. The instinct in hard times is to go quiet, wait for the moment to pass, or assume someone else will step forward. But, as Hannah Arendt reminds us, silence in the face of oppression only allows it to flourish, and the only antidote is to act according to our values. This is why the onus is on all of us, especially those who carry any measure of power, security, or recognition, to speak up when others cannot, and to act when silence would only help those who seek to erase us.

Illiberalism and oppression can only survive when it goes unchallenged. They flourish in the darkness- in the quiet corners of our society where hate outpaces courage. And hate itself is at its strongest when no one names it, disrupts it, and exposes it. Though the forces of regression have undeniably gained ground this year, their momentum is not limitless. The more they overreach, the more fractures will appear. Around the world, we are already seeing resistance deepen, alliances broaden, and communities refuse to be intimidated out of existence. 

At Kaleidoscope Trust, there is a quiet truth that has walked alongside us through this difficult year: hope is not naïve… it is not weakness… it is not a slogan or a distraction. I have hope because it is not a passive belief that things will get better on their own. I have hope because I have seen the work we do together. The conversations we insist on having, the coalitions we continue to build, the truth we keep speaking even when our voices shake. They are all growing stronger and louder this year. Hope can also be found in the cracks I already see forming in even the most confident walls of oppression that have been constructed around us. 

Hope is action shaped by our values and we have this in abundance.

As we close out the year, I do so knowing the challenges ahead remain real. But I also know that we have not faced them empty-handed or alone. We have faced them with a resilience which has been costly at times but nevertheless remains effective and powerful. We have faced them with community. And most importantly, we have faced them with values strong enough to withstand the pressure placed upon them.

Next year will demand courage, clarity, and compassion. But if this year proved anything, it is that our movement has all three and that oppression is never as invincible as it pretends to be. So we will keep showing up and speaking out because that is the only way the light can get in. 

We at Kaleidoscope Trust have been honoured to work alongside many of you this year. 

To our partners and peers, thank you for your steadfastness and trust.

To our allies, thank you for standing with us when it has mattered most.

To our supporters, thank you for believing in this work and investing in its future.

But most importantly, thank you all for the courage you brought into this year. Whether in your advocacy, your partnerships, your leadership, your quiet persistence, your willingness to stand with and for one another. It has all mattered.

Take care of yourselves and each other. Rest and restore what needs restoring. Let’s come back next year with the knowledge that we are all part of something powerful; a global movement that is already reshaping the free, safe, and equal future we are all striving toward.

Be safe, and see you in the new year.