How Parallel Institutions Challenge Authoritarianism

What do a public archive of the Centers for Disease Control website, a Los Angeles resident painting a crosswalk, and homelessness hotline in Oregon have in common? How does an emergency medical clinic in Sudan connect to a freedom school in Mississippi? All of these projects are what experts in democracy and peaceful resistance call parallel or alternative institutions, a transformative and effective way to counter autocracy that has been used effectively worldwide.

Parallel institutions are organizations or projects, for and by the people, that provide services and resources that the government should be offering–directly challenging dominant political structures and exposing corruption.

Unlike most civil society institutions, which often represent groups of people with a shared interest, parallel institutions mirror state institutions or societal functions, partially replacing or filling in the role of the main institution that has been eliminated, isn’t performing, or is being misused. By focusing on care and constructive community support, regular people can engage in lower-risk resistance that involves doing profoundly reasonable activities to help their neighbors. To build these institutions, civilians organize projects that provide people with resources, information, or care where the government has fallen short–while providing political education, directly or through deed, to inform participants about the government’s shortcomings, and empower them to interrupt it.

Parallel institutions offer an opportunity in the absence of structural or formal power, and they have been incredibly effective across authoritarian contexts because they show, rather than describe, corruption.

Parallel institutions are often not recognized as protests or noncooperation because they represent a constructive form of peaceful resistance, similar to charity. But, unlike charities, they are by definition political as they reveal and expose the hijacking or underperformance of the state.

Competitive Authoritarianism

Since the start of Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025, political scientists have warned that the US is sliding into competitive authoritarianism. In contrast to traditional authoritarian states such as China, competitive authoritarianism arises when a leader comes to power through a democratic election, only to systematically erode and dismantle the established systems of checks and balances. The leader accomplishes this erosion by filling civil service appointments (such as the judiciary) with loyalists, attacking the mainstream media and nongovernmental organizations, and crucially, finding ways to tilt the playing field in favor of the ruling party. 

Parallel institutions offer an opportunity in the absence of structural or formal power, and they have been incredibly effective across authoritarian contexts because they show, rather than describe, corruption.

Americans have witnessed an abdicated Congress, the purging of federal agencies, threats to voting rights, attacks on migrant rights, undermined access to information, the defiance of court orders, retribution against “enemies” of the administration, and the politicization of the armed forces.

Dozens of nations and their civilians have found themselves in similar positions before and can provide examples of effective resistance. Moreover, people in the US facing oppression from ever-expanding policing and an increasingly gutted safety net have developed creative strategic resistance deeply relevant to present authoritarian conditions. Parallel institutions offer an opportunity in the absence of structural or formal power, and they have been incredibly effective across authoritarian contexts because they show, rather than describe, corruption.

How Parallel Institutions Win 

By revealing the impacts people experience under consolidated authority, rather than simply denouncing it, these projects transform the narrative and bring new people in. Parallel institutions have been effective across geographies for several reasons.

First, parallel institutions offer a lower-risk form of resistance, with fewer barriers to entry. Everyone has skills that they can deploy to help their neighbors: first aid, moving boxes, and cooking mac and cheese can all be essential in a crisis. Not only do these institutions build on a culture of volunteerism that is familiar across political divides, they create structures within which familiar skills can be coordinated and leveraged towards larger goals. In this way, people who can drive a truck, tie a shoe, make chili, or dress a wound are brought together toward a productive goal while engaging in common—usually legal—activities that make them less likely targets than those engaged in direct protests.

…[T]he imagery of a soup kitchen for school lunches or a medical clinic outside a closed rural hospital is well-suited to challenging the fragmentation of the media landscape that has become heavily reliant on vertical video.

In Sudan, the 2019 revolution that ousted former president Omar al-Bashir inspired ordinary citizens to establish Emergency Response Rooms, with parents, nurses, handymen, and others combining their skills to support their communities. Since the outbreak of the Sudanese Civil War in 2023, these volunteer-led networks have continued to organize shelter, distribute food, and coordinate lifesaving assistance for people fleeing violence, often reaching areas that are inaccessible to international humanitarian organizations. They have carried out this work despite the presence of Rapid Support Forces and allied militias linked to the disappearance, torture, and targeted killing of thousands of civilians, as well as chronic shortages of funding and resources. Their effectiveness and resilience earned the Emergency Response Rooms a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025.

Second, and something that makes them so powerful, is parallel institutions’ artful weaving of direct service and political education. Too often, directly addressing basic human needs is artificially separated from the political and policy causes of those problems. Charity without education is just a band-aid, but mutual aid mixed with political education and context can empower.

When President Trump illegally withheld SNAP benefits from millions of Americans during the 2025 government shutdown, food pantries—nervous about the stability of their 501(c)(3) status—distanced themselves from advocacy. They discussed SNAP as an apolitical issue that Washington should focus on administering, even as the Republican Party moved ahead with cuts that took food away from at least three million Americans. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party talked much about Republican folly, but played a very small role in actually helping hungry people who ended up with very limited information.

A parallel institution in this instance would combine getting food in people’s hands while also helping them connect the dots that one entire party is on the record against food stamps—a massive gap that must be closed for anyone interested in reducing hunger in the United States. Successful programs such as the Black Panther Party’s The People’s Food Program provide examples of how these parallel institutions can function. Operating throughout the 1960s and 1970s, The People’s Food Program brought attention to the government’s failure to alleviate food insecurity by feeding children free, nutritious breakfasts before school each morning and putting pressure on state governments to expand its own school food programs in the process. As the Free Breakfast for Children program grew in popularity, the U.S. government increased federal spending on breakfast programs, feeding 1.8 million children breakfast by 1972. 

The third reason building parallel institutions works so well is that they show the problem rather than tell about it, revealing corruption and absurdity by revealing what should be, rather than wringing hands and denouncing injustice. This aspect of parallel institutions helps them reach beyond traditional political divides and tap into widespread interest in storytelling. Moreover, the imagery of a soup kitchen for school lunches or a medical clinic outside a closed rural hospital is well-suited to challenging the fragmentation of the media landscape that has become heavily reliant on vertical video.

In December 2025, Los Angeles pedestrian safety activist Johnathan Hale was arrested for painting crosswalks in compliance with local code after they had faded out. The video showing his arrest for trying to keep neighborhood kids safe resonated widely and went viral, garnering over 1.2 million likes, as people could see the absurdity of underfunded transportation departments for themselves. By conjuring an image, parallel institutions also provide another strength that has been all too limited in the resistance to Trump’s authoritarian project in 2025: alternative visions of what should be.

A Path to the Future

A fourth notable strength of parallel institutions is their contribution to communicating what another path would look like. Authoritarian regimes rely on suppressing imagination by censoring speech and attacking opponents to create a culture of fear. This makes it difficult to picture what we could have.

In 1989, Eugene, Oregon, residents started a program called Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS) after recognizing a gap in public safety. Police were being sent to respond to emergencies related to homelessness and mental health that they weren’t best equipped to handle. What began as a community program to send social workers and other trained professionals to respond to these calls became a central part of the social safety net. The program provided a public service for low-emergency calls police were ill-equipped to handle, rerouting healthcare and homelessness cases to CAHOOTS while police officers focused their attention on core cases. Programs like these eventually led to the passage of $1 billion in federal funding to support related programs.

The fifth strength is the institution-building itself. Building institutions creates momentum and inertia for an expanded safety net, while also preserving institutional memory or developing ongoing community relationships among important bureaucrats and experts. These connections protect the people and ideas that underpin our democracy, better preparing them to survive attacks and rebuild the public systems we need.

When President Donald Trump politicized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website in 2025 and gutted key information for certain populations, a group of federal workers and computer scientists created a copy of the original CDC website hosted on European servers. This allowed people to retain access to crucial public information in the short-term while sealing off the foundation of a department sure to be further gutted and politicized in the months to come. It preserved free access to public health guidance and scientific information, thereby maintaining the continuity of a core function of government despite political interference.

[P]rojects must be taken on with the explicit intent of permanently expanding programs, not creating an organization for its own sake—that intervention, combined with consistent acknowledgement of the inadequacy of civilian volunteerism to fully resolve systemic issues, protects parallel projects from private cooptation.

More durable forms of parallel institution-building can be observed in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava), where local councils have developed decentralized systems of healthcare, education, food distribution, and civil governance operating outside the authority of the Syrian central state. These institutions emerged in response to state collapse and ongoing conflict and have persisted over time as community-administered structures, providing essential services through participatory governance mechanisms.

Building parallel institutions can also result in sustained, long-term services that support people over extended periods. For example, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LABB) uses grassroots organizing to help communities whose health and homes have been impacted by the petrochemical industry. Since 2000, LABB has trained residents to document pollution, conduct community-led air quality monitoring, report environmental violations, and testify at public hearings on proposed industrial projects. By equipping local residents to gather evidence and advocate for stronger environmental protections, LABB has helped pressure government agencies to investigate polluters and challenge permits for new facilities to hold petrochemical companies accountable for environmental and public health harms. 

This year, additional ruptures in the safety net that will gut Medicare, SNAP, and other crucial programs will go into effect, leading to widespread suffering in already underresourced communities. The closures of rural hospitals, reduced access to food stamps, and giveaways to tech billionaires will create fresh opportunities to scale mutual aid and neighborly resistance into sustained parallel institutions.

A small handful of nurses and neighbors setting up regular medical clinics where hospitals have closed in northern Louisiana could save lives and reduce travel times for care.

A kayak flotilla of furloughed FEMA workers could pull Floridians out of dangerous waters when their former agency is unequipped to respond.

A group of young Michigan parents filling potholes and painting sidewalks on weekends would do more for pedestrians than the reality TV star running the Department of Transportation.

The opportunities for regular people to organize to fill the gaps are plentiful and inspiring.

Some skeptics have pointed out the real risk that parallel institutions could demonstrate weaknesses of the public safety net and state services, only to offer an alternative that doesn’t build up sustained public services. To counter this risk, projects must be taken on with the explicit intent of permanently expanding programs, not creating an organization for its own sake—that intervention, combined with consistent acknowledgement of the inadequacy of civilian volunteerism to fully resolve systemic issues, protects parallel projects from private cooptation. Organizations such as Friends of USAID and the Environmental Protection Network illustrate this approach, combining direct community support with sustained advocacy aimed at reshaping public systems.

In 2026, few things are certain, but the continued consolidation of power in Washington and Silicon Valley will certainly come at the expense of people’s daily needs. Many people have concluded that common tactics of marching in the streets and calling elected representatives are important, but are not enough to meet this moment of rapidly rising authoritarianism and state violence. Parallel institutions offer a low-risk pathway to organize to do more, employing already familiar skills in peaceful ways that help keep our neighbors safe.