Eating Our Own
How Movements for Social Change Lost Their Way and Became Unsafe Spaces
I have never attended a Trump rally. Nor have I been to Mississippi or Texas to confront the lawmakers who worked diligently to strip away the reproductive rights and freedom of millions of women. Maybe you haven’t either.
Candidly, Trump rallies scare me. They don’t feel safe. The chants, the signs, the cheers, and the jeers on the issues I care deeply about let me know I don’t belong and am unprotected in the space. I wish I were braver and more steely in my resolve to confront those actively seeking to harm me and the communities I care about, but I am not.
Instead, I spend most of my time in a movement cosmos comprised of progressives, organizers, donors, brainiacs, queers, women, men, liberals, and others who think and believe like me. From all of the feminist theory and history I’ve read, these communities and these movements are where I am supposed to feel the safest and feel seen and heard, yet I don’t—especially now.
Social change and progressive movements are no longer safe spaces. They have become consumed with infighting, power plays, “righteous” takedowns and callouts, and existential navel-gazing about the right strategy, issues, or leaders. Internal critique, the processing of “harms,” and the churning out of statements and articles have become the work. To be clear, this is not the work of social change. It’s a distraction.
Funders, leaders, and organizations are walking on eggshells, afraid to say the quiet part out loud: We are losing, and our take-down politics are partly to blame.
Dog Whistles All Our Own
The rhetorical currency of social change movements is justice, equality, equity, and fairness. These four words are seeded throughout most organizational mission statements and drive our energy and efforts. We also seek to speak truth to power, challenge systems and institutions, and hold the powerful to account. This is right and why I chose social change as my life’s work.
What’s not right, however, is how these words and the project of social change have been weaponized within progressive movements when there are disagreements about strategy, priorities, or resource allocation.
Don’t agree with leadership decisions or the leadership structure within an organization; call it unjust or white supremacist culture.
Believe you deserve more funding or support but don’t receive it; label the organizations that receive support as elitist or all-powerful.
Words like elite, powerful, oppressed, marginalized, and silenced have become potent dog whistles in social change and progressive movements. When we hear or read about them in relation to our organizations and leaders, our default is to believe the messengers and move immediately to restore and mitigate harm. We shouldn’t be so quick.
In my decades of organizing and engaging in social change work, I've learned that not everyone is here for the same reason or shares the same political or social values—even if it appears as if they do.
For some, it is just a job; they will find the “man” in any situation. For some, it’s about power and climbing a career ladder. For others, it’s about agitating and making waves. Some are looking for a place to heal and belong. For some, it is about something more meaningful and purpose-driven. And that’s OK. Movements are made up of all kinds of people.
What is often lacking, however, is a clear understanding that the work is bigger than any one of us and a discussion of how best to mobilize our emotional, relational, and other resources toward our common and collective goals.
When an organization or individual spends most of its time and resources on takedowns and internal agitation, it is not fulfilling its mission.
This is not to say there are not racist, classist, and elitist shenanigans happening in progressive movements because there most certainly are; it is to say we should be more mindful and more deliberate in our actions and responses in instances where we feel slighted or unheard.
Contextually, one organization may be perceived as having more power or say within a movement, but they are not the powerful or the ones seeking to rip away our rights, silence us, or cause us harm. It’s just not the case. And power is not inherently toxic or unjust. We must act as if we are all here for the same reason: to realize a more just and equitable world for everyone, even if we disagree on the best way to get there.
It is easier to take apart than to build
In graduate school, I learned to rip an argument apart with precision. I gleefully poked holes in an author’s logic, quickly figured out who they had left out in telling their story, and often slammed their conclusions as inadequate. I was pretty good at it. What was more challenging, though, was to craft a vision of my own, to put myself out there with a new argument, or to articulate what I believed to be the right path forward.
The same is true for social change movements. In recent years, it has been far easier to stake out and tear apart our movements, leaders, and organizations than to consistently train our focus on the organizations, public policies, and people who seek to harm us or to articulate a vision for change. This is because it is hard. And it has also gotten harder over time—especially with our recent losses.
But as reproductive rights activist Lourdes Rivera says, we need to go to the hardest places first. The hardest places sharpen us and allow us to remember our goals, purpose, and who is on our side. And often, innovation, clarity, and effectiveness emerge from crisis–when things are hardest.
The most difficult parts of social change work are building and creating: building coalitions, consensus, purpose-based compromise, and trust, articulating a bold vision and strategy, and creating space for others who have historically had less power or say while allowing those who have more power to stay at the table.
Purity for what?!
Purity politics are ruining social change movements. No one organization (especially legacy organizations), movement, or leader can get it right 100 percent of the time. And no organizations or their leaders should be expected to serve all of the emotional, political, and spiritual needs of their employees and partners– an expectation that is commonly held of social change organizations and their (predominantly female and BIPOC) leaders.
Yet, we often insist they do, even if there are few models of how to build effective social organizations that can stand the test of rapidly evolving socio-political dynamics or do this work well over time. R.I.P. Time’s Up, I wish you were still around.
Social change is messy, and organizations and leaders are imperfect. No magic theory of change, executive leadership course, training, or retreat will inoculate us from missteps or mistakes. The key is being willing to change, evolve, make amends, correct course, and be more generous with our organizations and leaders.
The Doing of the Work
Lastly, there is the doing—the doing of the work. The work of social change is varied and consists of multiple strategies. It includes research and writing, organizing, policy-making, advocacy, leading, litigating, service providing, philanthropy, narrative change, and teaching, among other things. If you are good at any of these things, do that thing and do it in a way that helps us to reach our collective goal of peace, justice, equality, and freedom.
When we are focused on the work--we become the powerful and have little time for the things that have begun to rot our movements from the inside out.