I am not suggesting that there is no room for negotiation. That is the job of our elected lawmakers — Senator Chuck Schumer; Representative Nancy Pelosi; Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader; and Paul Ryan, the House speaker — whose responsibility it is to minimize harm and maximize concessions on the way to compromise.

But private sector and nonprofit leaders must no longer take the bait. To work with this administration in any capacity is to normalize it, and all of the hate and bigotry it represents. That is the very real danger we face as the months drag into years, and each successive outrage fades from memory. We will all be tempted — by lucrative contracts, federal grant dollars or flashy ribbon cuttings — to seek a middle ground that does not exist. At times, it will be easier to give an inch than to stand firm.

In those moments, we would be wise to remember the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who, in “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” lamented that “the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

There is an undeniable appeal to the benefits that could come with having an audience with any president, and conventional wisdom about our divided politics has long suggested that the way to make change is to find common ground. Still, I believe Girls Who Code sends a more powerful message — to the young women we aim to empower, to other organizations making strategic choices and to President Trump himself — by refusing to engage.

Resistance is not futile. Those who have recently taken a knee on the football field showed us — by the national attention they drew back to the issue of racialized police violence and the value of peaceful protest — the power of citizens who refuse to cooperate with injustice. As long as extremists and open bigots inhabit the White House, there is no common ground nor common purpose to be found. We are at war for the soul of our nation, and that is why we must say no, on behalf of our fellow Americans who deserve nothing less than equality. We must not be stumbling blocks. We must draw the line. We must do it here and now.