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This article introduces Black Food Sovereignty: Stories from the Field, a series co-produced by Frontline Solutions and NPQ. This series features stories from a group of Black food sovereignty leaders who are working to transform the food system at the local level. It explores how these leaders are addressing critical issues at the intersection of food sovereignty, racial and economic justice, and community.

It’s a little before 7am, and the hum of the airplane’s engine is interrupted by the sound of the plane’s wheels deploying. I’m on my way to visit Soul Fire Farm in Petersburg, New York (a small town about 30 miles east of the state capitol of Albany). The farm is a member organization of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, where I work. Before the plane touches down, I gaze out the window at a sea of lights that weave through the changing landscapes and line the highways that connect large stretches of farmland to urbanized areas.

What I really see, I note, is not just lights but a story about power. Before my eyes stretches a masterfully engineered network of infrastructure built on wealth acquired through the dispossession of Indigenous people and extraction from both the land and the people who labored on it. Many of these laborers were Black, and they were prevented from accumulating the wealth they created, segregated, and denied access to resources. For example, during the Great Depression and the decades that followed, in a process called redlining, the government-sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board systematically denied loans to Black and Brown folks, excluding them from home ownership.

This exclusion had consequences not just for the posterity of Black families, but for Black health. Black people who couldn’t access federal loans to buy homes in the suburbs were often relegated to industrialized areas, where exposure to toxic waste and other environmental hazards is unavoidable. In Louisiana, for example, 45,000 people live in a region known as “cancer alley.” As a 2021 United Nations report condemning environmental racism in the United States noted, most of these people are Black.

Of the farmland that remains tilled in the United States, 846 million acres are held by white farmers, compared to less than 60 million acres farmed by Indigenous families and less than five million acres by Black families.

As the country moved to a corporatized food system, and as chain grocery stores became the only point of access to fresh and healthy foods, such chains avoided redlined communities in major urban centers. These communities still live under food apartheid. The reservations to which Native Americans were relegated have some of the poorest soil in the United States.  Meanwhile, Black-owned farmland has almost disappeared over the past century, taken by overt force, predatory lending, and lack of access to financial resources.

Of the farmland that remains tilled in the United States, 846 million acres are held by white farmers, compared to less than 60 million acres farmed by Indigenous families and less than five million acres by Black families. In other words, Black farmers hold an estimated 0.52 percent of all US farmland. In 1900, Black farmers made up 14 percent of all US farmers; today, their share of the farming population is 1.4 percent. As we’ve seen with the year-long battle to include debt relief for Black farmers in the American Rescue Plan Act, Black farmers continue to face insurmountable odds.

Food insecurity and malnutrition are rising rapidly due to rising food costs. Water infrastructure in Jackson, Mississippi, a predominantly Black community, is failing. Climate catastrophes are becoming more frequent and deadlier. While Black and Brown folks on the frontlines often feel crises like the climate emergency first, these systems are not just failing Black people; they are failing everyone. No one living today is responsible for the systems on which this country was founded. However, we are all responsible for creating just, sustainable solutions to the problems we face.

Learning from History

History teaches us that solutions to social problems are most likely to come from communities that have been excluded from the social good.

For instance, in 1969, two Black cooperative models were established in response to the racial violence and lack of access to resources and opportunity that Black people continued to endure during the civil rights and Black power movements. Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunshine County, Mississippi, was created after Fannie Lou Hamer was fired and evicted for registering to vote as a sharecropper. The cooperative, which sought Black self-sufficiency, offered affordable housing, entrepreneurial opportunities, and education to tenant farmers, as well as a pig bank and access to fresh produce to feed families living in poverty.

That same year, the first community land trust, New Communities, established by a collective of civil rights and land activists, including Charles and Shirley Sherrod, took 5,700 acres off the speculative market to be stewarded by Black farmers to feed their rural South Georgian community and protect the ecosystem through regenerative agricultural practices.

Soon after, the Black Panther Party established free medical clinics as well as a free breakfast program. Adopted by the federal government in 1975, the program still feeds 14.5 million school-aged children every day. From cooperative land models to free programs and mutual aid, we have the ability to imagine beyond racial capitalism and achieve the resilience that comes with working collectively in our communities and families.

The Struggle for Food Sovereignty Today

Today, in Baltimore, the Black Church Food Security Network is creating systems to distribute fresh, healthy foods from Black growers to churches up and down the Eastern seaboard. Grow Greater Englewood is revitalizing Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood by developing food enterprises and supporting community ownership of land in a historically underserved community.

The Resource Commons, a member-led initiative of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA), is working to liberate land from the speculative market and secure it for sound ecological, social, and financial stewardship by Black farmers, foresters, and community gardeners. Over 100 acres were transferred this year. NBFJA also launched the Lola Hampton-Frank Pinder Center for Agroecology at Florida A&M University, a research and training center that seeks to steer the next generation of farmers and land stewards towards practices that will heal the earth and our communities and mitigate climate catastrophes.

Then there are the inspiring stories of the people featured in this series on Black food sovereignty. In Camden, New Jersey, the Camden Dream Center is developing a new vision for urban agriculture, utilizing vertical hydroponic farming to advance food justice for the city’s majority Black community. In the Raleigh-Durham region of North Carolina, the Black Farmers’ Market is supporting Black farmers and building community, while the Black Farmers’ Hub provides a retail outlet. Meanwhile, at Tugaloo College—a historically Black college in Jackson, Mississippi—the newly formed Reuben V. Anderson Center for Justice has launched the Tougaloo Agri-Growth Initiative, which is backing a network of worker-owned cooperative farms.    

Many of these efforts are small, but together they constitute a larger emergent movement.

Envisioning Our Movement’s Future

Ensuring a route towards Black food sovereignty is necessary to addressing all that lies at the intersection of food and land justice.

Back in my airplane, as it descends, I ask myself: “What would Black food sovereignty look, feel, and taste like?” What would the array of lights out my window look like in a world where Black and Brown people self-determine and build systems that support the health and stability of Black and Brown communities? Ensuring a route towards Black food sovereignty is necessary to addressing all that lies at the intersection of food and land justice. It has implications for labor rights, immigrant rights, economic justice, and gender equity. It can help lead us towards a climate resilient future.

As Fannie Lou Hamer said, “There’s got to be a change—not only for Mississippi, not only for the people in the United States, but people all over the world.” The grassroots organizations that make up the National Black Food and Justice Alliance and the people featured here give me hope for what’s possible on the other side of the horizon.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

The following is a transcript of the video above, from our virtual magazine roundtable “Owning Our Economy, Owning Our Future.”

We’re in a moment where there’s a lot of conversation right now in society around democracy writ large. But how we define democracy continues to be political democracy and not economic democracy. And even when we talk about economic democracy, we only ever talk about it in these very narrow ways. One of the things that Erica Smiley and I, in our book, really tried to do is say, “In the context of worker power, worker voice, bargaining power, if we know in workplaces collective bargaining can work, why can’t it apply to all the different ways that workers interact with the economy?” How we build on that and play on that notion of redefining and reframing democracy to be broader than what the mainstream public thinks of as democracy feels really important at a moment now when our democracy is so fragile. People are talking about the fragility, but again, leaving the economy out of the conversation in a profound way.

[…]

Finally, just to continue to push forward on the system change work and examples, and very specifically, this idea of helping readers think about the tools beyond what we are trained to think about as the way to create change. In my work at Ford, we’ve been really trying to say, the policy arena cannot be the only arena by which we make change. Is it an important arena? Yes. But there are all these other ways.

If we’re going to talk about the financialization of our economy and the role of capital in our political systems, then we have to play in the world of capital too, in figuring out how we relate and engage and hold accountable. What’s the power, how do we leverage power in that context? Continuing to help broaden and show the examples of everything from ownership to capital strategies to many of the different models…is helpful to continue to help people reimagine strategies and approaches in this moment.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

The following is a transcript of the video above, from our virtual magazine roundtable, “Owning Our Economy, Owning Our Future.”

Adria Powell: What’s particularly striking for me is being part of Cooperative Home Care and having this dual identity of both a home care agency and a worker-owned cooperative. There was much appreciation and accolades in the worker co-op community around the writing in the magazine, and virtually silence on the home care side. And in that vein, and I think it comes from living in a sort of traditionally fractured system. It demonstrates the invisibility of the recognition that home care doesn’t have to be this traditionally extractive kind of business, that there is another way, and that the workforce needs to be recognized. And that’s not necessarily inherent in our sector. It’s really striking to me that I haven’t had more feedback, although it shouldn’t be a surprise—because on the home care side, much of the way that the system operates isn’t challenged by sort of traditional home care providers and healthcare organizations.

I don’t say that lightly. I can think about an experience when the Fair Labor Standards Act was being brought forth for home care workers, and being at an association meeting for home care where there were tons of providers. We found out that the case that was being brought forth to really launch those Fair Labor Standards Acts, under a woman named Evelyn Koch—she was the home care worker who had brought the suit, saying that she had worked overtime without overtime protections, she wasn’t paid overtime. The case was dismissed, and the room erupted. Providers were thrilled because it would have meant paying people a fairer wage. I just remember feeling so alone in that space, because we were the exact opposite of that. From the start of Cooperative Home Care, we paid overtime, or time and a half of base wage. It just felt like, wow, we’re really different, and we have to figure out how to shift this paradigm. But it’s really difficult when you’re but one player.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

In late October, UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute (OBI) launched its Climate Justice webinar series. The first webinar featured panelists who spoke about how the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) came to be, what it’s missing, and how communities can take advantage of the opportunities the act presents.

The first speaker was Johanna Bozuwa, executive director of the Climate and Community Project, a policy think tank developing research at the intersections of inequality and climate. Bozuwa provided an overview of the policies and movements that led to the IRA’s passage, beginning with the Green New Deal and the November 2018 sit-in of Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office, led by young activists from the Sunrise Movement and backed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Green New Deal helped the nation and lawmakers imagine something that was expansive by connecting climate policy, justice, and industrial policy for the first time. “It created this re-engagement and excitement around climate policy,” said Bozuwa.

The Green New Deal also coincided with publication of the 2019 UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special IPCC report. The IPCC publishes these comprehensive reports every 6-7 years to provide policy makers with socio-economic, technical, and scientific knowledge about climate change to help inform rulemaking on the issue. This special report provided policy makers with a warning that limiting global warming to 1.5°C was crucial to slowing sea level rise and other potentially irreversible climate impacts. The most recent report, published earlier this year, was the Sixth Assessment Report, which focused on adaptation and vulnerability. Shortly after release of the 2019 report, youth from 150 countries came together for a global demonstration to protest the inaction of governments across the world on climate change. In early 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic hit, bringing to light various compounding inequities, including health inequities and the widening wealth gap as frontline workers were tasked with being our nation’s lifelines. “We need to build back from the COVID crisis, but also integrate that with a climate perspective, “said Bozuwa.

At the beginning of 2021, newly elected President Biden was settling in, and one of his first efforts was the Build Back Better (BBB) bill. BBB was smaller than the Green New Deal but took certain elements from it. It earmarked money for public housing retrofits, had a decarbonization plan, and integrated medical justice. However, the bill did not pass Congress; instead, elements of it were integrated into the Inflation Reduction Act. Though the act has a much smaller scope than the Build Back Better bill, it includes unprecedented, historic climate spending.

How we can influence the IRA

The IRA includes various provisions intended to help marginalized communities and will offer grants and other incentives to state and local governments to reach them. For example, it sets aside $2.85 billion for underserved farmers, foresters, and ranchers. Tribal governments can access such funds to reduce air pollution. The act also institutes high labor standards that communities can utilize as a pathway to green jobs and includes climate finance mechanisms like the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which has carve outs for environmental justice communities.

There is ample opportunity to mold the IRA’s funding landscape as funding guidelines are currently being set, but community organizations and local government must take advantage of public engagement opportunities. For example, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund hosted listening sessions earlier this month, and its request for information is open until December 5. Various public dockets of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are calling for input. “There are also real opportunities to work with labor organizations, to work with community groups, to build really powerful community benefits agreements,” said Bozuwa.

“There’s work to be done and opportunities here, but it takes organizing,” said John A. Powell, executive director of the OBI and the next speaker on the webinar. “That organizing looks like commenting on the ranks of rulemaking, creativity, and organization.” Other pieces of legislation, like the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, were not readily accessible to marginalized communities despite being touted as so, Powell points out. The 2009 act raised the national debt and did little to help the unemployment rate. Learning from these lessons, the IRA instead provides tools that communities can use to address environmental justice, climate challenge, economic development, and wealth disparities. For example, tools like the climate justice block grants, which total $2.8 billion, aim to help community-based organizations overcome persistent environmental challenges.

Another positive impact that the IRA will have on communities is equitable solar deployment. Energy efficiency rebates for low- and moderate-income homeowners can be a powerful economic development tool, as Joe Recchie, CEO of Praxia Partners and another webinar speaker, points out. The IRA includes tax credits for investments in energy storage, reducing the capital cost of installing solar panels, which, according to Recchie, has dropped “by 85 percent, almost 90 percent in the last 12 years,” making it possible to deliver cheaper, reliable solar power to consumers around the country. Importantly, the tax credit operates without a cap—meaning there is no upward limit to how much money can be utilized in the form of tax credits over the next 10 years. For Congress to pass this measure, they had to calculate the tax revenue that would be lost through the use of these credits. However, these IRA credits are just one base level of resources that can help marginalized communities. To further expand the resources that marginalized communities can access, private investment can play a key role. Recchie points out, “there’s the ability to expand significantly from the original contours of the Inflation Reduction Act to meet the requirements of communities and especially those environmental justice communities.”

There is also an opportunity to bring private investment to the table, helping to amplify and accelerate the act’s legislative commitments and create living wage jobs. Recchie uses Cleveland Ohio as an example. Using statistics assessed and developed by Ohio University and the EPA’s co-benefits risk assessment model, he explains that if the city deployed 100 megawatts of equitable solar development, it would not only reduce carbon emissions, but also create 1,500 living wage jobs, $292 million in local economic impact, and $419 million of health benefits for the region. “100 megawatts is just a placeholder—it could be a hundred times that in communities around the country,” said Recchie. “The IRA has embedded tools that permit [it] to punch way above its weight.”

One key feature of the IRA is that it is a reconciliation bill, meaning that everything stemming from the bill must be attached to funds or supported by private investment. However, the act creates ways to connect incentives. For example, an energy company can’t access the full amount of renewable energy incentives if it doesn’t pay its workers a prevailing wage or invest in an environmental justice community.

Although state governments can reject IRA funding, which would be detrimental to communities that need it most, the act has some work arounds. (In Republican-led states, IRA rejection is prevalent.) In particular, subsidies can flow directly to nonprofits, corporations, or local governments. “So, it means that we’ll have to leverage and mobilize our communities to use what is available while also doing the political organizing that’s necessary,” said Bozuwa.

Centering climate justice wisdom in IRA implementation

The IRA earmarks funding for Indigenous nations—specifically for light rail, rural electrification, and solar. The act also earmarks funding for forest management and can provide a pathway to incorporating traditional ecological knowledge into this area. State and local governments can play a big role in securing funding to create intergovernmental partnerships with Indigenous nations.

Sarita Turner, Senior Fellow at Prosperity Now, pointed out that the clean energy job sector is steadily outpacing the traditional energy sector. However, “data collection on the climate economy, including the participation for Black- and Brown-owned businesses, is almost non-existent,” said Turner.

As IRA funding gets dispersed, it remains crucial to understand who is benefiting from these funds, as disparities exist. For example, the Small Business Association has dispersed nearly $40 billion in disaster loans in racially inequitable ways since 2001, an E&E analysis concludes. White-majority areas received billions more dollars to rebuild than majority Black areas after natural disasters. “This landmark legislation offers an opportunity to engage Black and Brown communities in the economic benefits of the climate economy,” said Turner. She goes on to say, “The EPA needs to carefully think about how it can commit to working with entities like the African American Alliance and the [newly formed NALCAB initiative] National Alliance of Latino CDFI Executives.”

Ann Pratt, senior strategist of the People’s Action Network, was the webinar’s last speaker. The organization builds the power of poor and working people in urban, rural, and suburban areas to win change through issue fights and elections. Pratt shared the network’s views on establishing programs based on communities’ needs, and how they could potentially go about seeking funding for such programs from the IRA. For example, the network is working on an overland flooding initiative in Ohio that has accessed funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and is seeking opportunities to access IRA funds. A partnership between local government and PA Stands Up, the Pennsylvania-based Whole Home Repair Program, used American Rescue Plan Act funds to provide homeowners and small landlords with money to upgrade their homes. The program’s success was credited to a commitment to long-term development and co-governance. It offers a framework that can be applied when tapping into IRA funds. “Who leads, how they lead, and what they’re leading is hugely significant,” said Pratt. Such issues can make or break the success of attempts to use IRA dollars in local communities.

The series wrapped up by sharing a resources page, which includes NPQ’s latest climate justice magazine. The IRA is a critical piece of legislation that provides a variety of pathways toward environmental justice. Organizing around public engagement opportunities, tapping into private investment, and aligning with key leadership are some of the strongest ways that communities can access all that the IRA has to offer.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

This article is co-published by NPQ, The Forge, and Convergence. Because these are cross-movement challenges, we are publishing the article across our platforms to amplify this urgent conversation.

Click here to listen to Maurice Mitchell read this article. Haga clic aquí para leer el artículo en Español.

Executives in professional social justice institutions, grassroots activists in local movements, and fiery young radicals on protest lines are all advancing urgent concerns about the internal workings of progressive spaces. The themes arising are surprisingly consistent. Many claim that our spaces are “toxic” or “problematic,” often sharing compelling and troubling personal anecdotes as evidence of this. People in leadership are finding their roles untenable, claiming it is “impossible” to execute campaigns or saying they are in organizations that are “stuck.”

A growing group of new organizers and activists are becoming cynical or dropping out altogether. Most read their experiences as interpersonal conflict gone awry, the exceptional dynamics of a broken environment or a movement that’s lost its way. A “bad supervisor,” a “toxic workplace,” a “messy movement space,” or a “problematic person with privilege” are just some of the refrains echoed from all corners of our movements. Individuals are pointing fingers at other individuals; battle lines are being drawn. Identity and position are misused to create a doom loop that can lead to unnecessary ruptures of our political vehicles and the shuttering of vital movement spaces.

Movements on the Left are driven by the same political and social contradictions we strive to overcome. We fight against racism, classism, and sexism yet battle inequity and oppression inside our movements. Although we struggle for freedom and democracy, we also suffer from tendencies toward abuse and domination. We promote leadership and courage by individuals, but media exposure, social media fame, and access to resources compromise activists. We draw from the courage of radical traditions but often lack the strategy or conviction to challenge the status quo. The radical demands that we do make are so regularly disregarded that it can feel as if we are shouting into the wind. Many of us are working harder than ever but feeling that we have less power and impact.

There are things we can and must do to shift movements for justice toward a powerful posture of joy and victory. Such a metamorphosis is not inevitable, but it is essential. This essay describes the problems our movements face, identifies underlying causes, analyzes symptoms of the core problems, and proposes some concrete solutions to reset our course.

Roots of the Crisis

This moment is one of multiple, overlapping crises: a global pandemic, rising authoritarianism, climate emergency, political violence, unprecedented economic inequality, and general precarity all exacerbate interpersonal tension points. Like the rest of society, our movements exist within a general climate of anxiety, despair, and anger without the necessary support to process such massive emotions, individually or in community. Recognizing the challenging terrain on which we struggle and grow can allow for more compassion for our comrades as well as clarity about the urgent mandate at hand.

Our current movement is ideologically underdeveloped and uneven. History can help us understand why. There has been a one-sided, often government-initiated effort to defang movements for justice: the brutal terrorism following Reconstruction, the Red Scare following the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the dismantling of Pan-African nationalist movements in the 1920s, McCarthyism in the ’50s, COINTELPRO in the ’60s, and the war on militant Black liberation organizations well into the early ’80s. Leaders have been jailed, killed, or co-opted; organizations have been invaded, dismantled, or neutralized. We have inherited this traumatic and often bloody legacy.

As a result of this rupture, over the past 50 years, many of our leaders have prioritized hard skills and pragmatism over developing their ideological orientation or running transformative campaigns. Other organizations have an ideological analysis but lack the skills to develop an effective strategy and execute a campaign in a way that builds large bases.

Current conditions also contribute to the organizational tensions under which we operate. These include but are not limited to:

• A crisis of institutional legitimacy after 40 years of neoliberalism
• A reckoning with institutional power and cultural privilege shaped by social movements like the #MeToo Movement and the Movement for Black Lives
• The structural and ideological limitations of 501(c)3 non-profits in terms of their subservience to funding sources and resulting incompatibility with power building
• The expansion of corporate and billionaire power, popularization of ethnonationalist ideologies, and election of right-wing governments, all of which create severe economic volatility for working class and poor people
• The occupation of leadership roles by Black people, people of color, immigrants, women, queer and gender non-conforming people, or people who come from non-elite backgrounds without sufficient institutional support
• The elevation of leaders to their positions based on exceptional oratory and organizing ability rather than management skills
• The lack of management philosophy, theory of organizational design, or model of collective labor in both non-profits and informal spaces

Common Trends

Here are some common tendencies that flow from the larger conditions we find ourselves in and the fallacies underlying those tendencies.

   I. Neoliberal Identity

Definition

Using one’s identity or personal experience as a justification for a political position. You may hear someone argue, “As a working-class, first-generation American, Southern woman…I say we have to vote no.” What’s implied is that one’s identity is a comprehensive validator of one’s political strategy—that identity is evidence of some intrinsic ideological or strategic legitimacy. Marginalized identity is deployed as a conveyor of a strategic truth that must simply be accepted. Likewise, historically privileged identities are essentialized, flattened, and frequently—for better or worse— dismissed.

Fallacies

To be clear, personal identity and individual experience are important. And while it is true that the “personal is political,” the personal cannot trump strategy nor should it overwhelm the collective interest. Identity is too broad a container to predict one’s politics or the validity of a particular position. There are over 40 million Black folk in the US. Some have great politics, some do not. One’s racial or gender identity, sex, or membership in any marginalized community is, in and of itself, insufficient information to position someone in leadership or mandate that their perspective be adopted.

People with marginal identities, as human beings, suffer all the frailties, inconsistencies, and failings of any other human. Genuflecting to individuals solely based on their socialized identities or personal stories deprives them of the conditions that sharpen arguments, develop skills, and win debates. We infantilize members of historically marginalized or oppressed groups by seeking to placate or pander instead of being in a right relationship, which requires struggle, debate, disagreement, and hard work. This type of false solidarity is a form of charity that weakens the individual and the collective. Finding authentic alignment and solidarity among diverse voices is serious labor. After all, “steel sharpens steel.”

Neoliberal identity politics strips from identity politics a focus on collective power or a political project and demand. What’s left is a narrow tool used as a personal cudgel or, as Barbara Smith has said, “It’s like they’ve taken the identity and left the politics on the floor.” It should be noted that we have already seen this tactic used against us on the Left and the Right in the fight for racial and economic justice. Identity in this context reaffirms the individualistic principles of neoliberalism instead of challenging them.

   II. Maximalism

Definition

Considering anything less than the most idealistic position as a betrayal of core values and evidence of corruption, cowardice, lack of commitment, or vision. Relatedly, a righteous refusal to engage with people who do not already share our views and values.

Maximalist arguments may present themselves as debates around principles, tactics, and language or as the performance of solidarity with individuals, identity groups, and other movements. Maximalism demands that allies embrace certain tactics or positions as a test of alignment.

Fallacies

Maximalism ignores the fact that the value of any tactic  — or the appropriateness of any demand — must be evaluated within a larger strategy grounded in a power analysis. Sometimes tactics and demands help build power and sometimes they don’t. Taken alone, they are not an adequate tool to test for alignment.

The simple reason is that there are not enough people who are already 100% aligned. Our organizations and movements need to grow. Holding on to tactics and overly idealistic demands that keep us small but pure ignores the basic strategic imperative of building power. We should of course be skeptical of those who demand too little and tell our movements to set their sights too low. But we should not mistake putting forward anything less than our most ambitious aspirations for an act of cowardice. In fact, it might reflect a sober assessment of our own power or advance a longer term strategy.

Maximalist thinking is particularly pernicious when it is used to justify not doing the basic work of organizing: talking to lots of different kinds of people on the doors, in their homes, and in their workplaces. We need to meet people where they are, build relationships, and move them into action. The work of organizing and base building also disciplines our tactics by grounding them in the needs and demands of our people.

Our opponents are formidable and dangerous. We must assess the power we actually have at all times and in every circumstance so that we don’t either leave power on the table or overreach and come up empty. Sometimes, our assessment will reveal the need for us to build tactical and strategic coalitions that share broad — though not identical — goals to fight our opponents. That requires us to sharpen our skills at debate and internal democracy so that we are in a position to lead a united front against rising authoritarianism. When we organize and win material change with and for our people, we expand our base and create more power. In this way, the demands we make tomorrow can be more ambitious than the ones we make today.

   III. Anti-Leadership Attitudes

Definition

Holding skepticism of leadership as a rule. Questioning the authority, legitimacy, and competence of those with positional, perceived, or other forms of power. Therefore, all decisions made by leadership are subject to broad-based skepticism and mistrust. Valuing expertise and experience is challenged as potentially elitist. Professionalization is cited as a problematic aspect of how leadership and power are meted out. Anti-intellectualism is promoted as an egalitarian appreciation of more informal forms of skill or knowledge. This is not to be confused with a healthy skepticism of authority and leadership, including within movement spaces.

Fallacies

To be clear, abuse of authority, corruption, and the arbitrary concentration of power are real problems that have gone unexamined in years past. We should credit those people—many of them newer and younger to the work—who are shining a light on systemic issues and the deep harm they cause to individuals and the power we seek. However, a reflexively anti-leadership orientation is an overcorrection that doesn’t make room for the existence of principled, responsive, accountable, and democratic leadership or for the ability of anyone in a leadership position to build strong movements, organizations, or workplaces.

Social change work requires experience, rigor, and study. It can take years of development to grow into a skillful organizer, strategist, communicator, campaign manager, or facilitator. Although talented people can rapidly develop skills, many capacities only develop over time. For example, judgment, relationship building, emotional maturity, and landscape awareness (including the knowledge of what you don’t know) deepen with experience.

“Professionalization” and experience are two different things that should not be conflated. Most organizers historically and globally have not been developed through professional pipelines. However, all skilled organizers—professional or otherwise—have rigorously honed those skills over time through study and practice.

Pretending formal leadership doesn’t exist can obscure hierarchies and create centers of informal power. Formal leadership, when healthy, provides clarity and transparency, which leads to greater accountability. This in turn fosters more avenues for support to develop new leadership.

Finally, there is a very real intellectual component to this work. The idea that working people do not or cannot engage in intellectual work is truly elitist and has not been my experience.

   IV. Anti-Institutional Sentiment

Definition

Reflexively disdaining institutions and organizations as inherently oppressive and antiquated, including the institution one may be associated with. This point of view casts institutions themselves as the problem, even those with a social change mission.

Fallacies

We all have examples of bloated, aimless, top-heavy, or simply irrelevant institutions that take space, hoard power, and demonstrate little impact. Even institutions that begin as disruptors of the status quo can slow-walk toward conservatism, disconnection, bureaucracy, irrelevance, and inefficiency. In fact, given the system of capitalism our institutions are navigating, if we are not mindful of these realities, we risk falling into them.

Despite those common pitfalls, we need institutions for a powerful and durable movement. Organizations and institutions are political vehicles. They are also spaces where individuals develop skills, connection, and ideological alignment. Institutions transmit knowledge, hold strategy, and cultivate power. Atomized individuals that loosely assemble cannot do this at the scale needed to take on entrenched power.

Arguing for doing away with political vehicles without offering a viable replacement demonstrates a lack of a power analysis. The most organized forces can leverage crisis, so how can our movements win in moments of crisis if we relinquish our organized vehicles? When our opposition possesses disciplined and organized institutions at the ready to fill power vacuums, what does it mean to unilaterally disarm?

Instead, movement institutions should have a self-aware practice of mitigating the worst impulses of institutional drift while maximizing the strengths of people-focused infrastructure.

   V. Cherry-Picking Arguments

Definition

Using incoherent or decontextualized arguments and perspectives to add perceived legitimacy to a position or oneself.

For example, using the term “intersectionality” to, let’s say, defend edits to a press statement. Or employing the Audre Lorde quote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence…,” to give gravitas to a desire to stay home from an action or take off time that you’ve earned and deserve as a worker. Or arming yourself with the concept “small is all” from adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy framework—outside of its global fractal context—to resist taking responsibility for a larger scale intervention or growing your community group into a mass organization.

This tendency presents itself in language as well. Certain phases and words carry cultural currency and cachet. We often find words like “revolutionary” employed non-ironically in the service of bourgeois individualistic demands. Decontextualized or uncritical use of intellectual material, like the Tema Okun essay on white supremacy culture, has at times served to challenge accountability around metrics and timeliness or the use of written language. Yet metrics and timeliness—and the ability to communicate in writing—are not in and of themselves examples of white supremacy.

Fallacies

It’s easier to use language and cultural references that signify an ideological inclination than to actually study and practice a particular framework. However, such loose ideological signaling can lead to incoherence. This practice can devolve legitimate frameworks, concepts, and language into tools for individuals to virtue signal or provide weight to an argument that does not stand on its own premises. It should be noted that it is popular to borrow catchphrases and quotes from Black feminists, theorists, thinkers, and collectives in particular. This is especially pernicious when the arguments those thinkers developed are hijacked and flattened by those seeking  personal benefit or legitimacy.

The profligate and unexamined use of social media has amplified this particular trend. These platforms—owned and controlled by megacorporations—reward us for our ability to articulate or reshare the sharpest, pithiest, pettiest, most polemic, or most engaging “content.” There is no premium on nuance, accuracy, and context. There is little room for low-ego information sharing or curious and grounded political education. These platforms are ideal for, and give immediate reward to, uninformed cherry-picking, self-aggrandizement, competition, and conflict.

We are learning the damaging lesson that the performance of profundity can supercharge our arguments and points of view while obscuring scrutiny or accountability. In the worst cases, such practices weaken our work. At the same time, the instinct to reach for a high-minded theory when a simple request will do can overlook the power we have to set personal boundaries. For example, “I need to take personal time” is a complete and worthy statement. We are enough, and our desires and boundaries matter on their own.

   VI. Glass Houses

Definition

Insisting that change on an interpersonal or organizational level must occur before it is sought or practiced on a larger scale.

Fallacies
This point of view does not adequately consider the possibility that internal contradictions are the byproduct of external forces or that efforts to address internal and external challenges can run concurrently rather than sequentially. Both/and thinking is key here.

A glass houses approach prioritizes perfection (usually of a small group of people) over progress (on a societal level) by establishing unattainable tests that can consume individuals and organizations in a journey toward personal or organizational perfection at the detriment of broad and urgent change. This fixation with small utopianism can be both frustrating and unfulfilling. I would argue that “doing the work” should be viewed as ongoing day-to-day practice. This requires deep commitment to sharpening internal practices and culture as well as to improving and evaluating on a continuum.

   VII. The Small War

Definition

Elevating the power dynamics at play among actors internal to a movement over the larger power dynamics in society. In nonprofits or social justice organizations, this often takes the shape of focusing on tensions playing out between junior staff and leadership. In social movements, it may show up as conflicts between movement formations, sectarian ideological groupings, or movement leaders.

In prioritizing the small war, one accepts the notion that all sites of struggle are equal and that “making change wherever you are” includes addressing the demands placed on you as a functionary of a small nonprofit or a local activist in a community group. Refusal to wage the small war may therefore be seen as shirking a vital responsibility to maintain egalitarian power relations. Because proximity becomes the most important factor in deciding where to take action, this thinking often lacks a structural and systemic analysis of oppression and can feed or be fed by disproportionality (or the inability to identify the scale of the problem, further defined below). Small war thinking draws false equivalencies and teaches misassessments of power. The small war puts the “glass houses” framework into action.

Fallacies

The most accessible and manageable action is by no means the most consequential. A key part of strategy is assessing the relative impact of an intervention. The small war ignores that crucial step and can therefore lead organizers to prioritize a relatively small internal quarrel over, say, a corporate campaign or structural power fight. Some may even halt a structural power play by a movement or organization to pursue an internal power struggle.

These battles can implode and rupture institutions, leaving constituencies with less institutional power to wage the broader struggle.

Both/and is again a key concept here. We can address issues and challenges close to us while prioritizing the larger fight. This means making a commitment to broader objectives and the viability of the political vehicle even as you critique and improve that vehicle.

To be clear, we must not ignore problems or conflict simply because they are small, internal, or relatively parochial. In fact, I would argue that fighting for larger change is the most compelling reason to advance shifts to the internal workings of an organization. Small problems become large when unattended or dismissed. However, we must put them in proper context and stay focused on our north star. In other words, engaging in small internal debates for the larger fight.

The principled struggle framework, beautifully articulated by N’Tanya Lee of Leftroots, is a more productive approach to managing internal differences. Grounded in a shared power analysis, north star, and commitment to a political project, we can sweat the small stuff in ways that maintain focus on the larger constituencies we’re accountable to.

In short, we should seek to steadfastly protect the viability of our organizational vehicles and courageously confront internal challenges in ways that allow us to wage the fights we need to wage.

   VIII. Unanchored Care

Definition

Assuming one’s mental, physical, and spiritual health is the responsibility of the organization or collective space. The onus is on the organization to deal with the harm, burnout, or psychological stress one may experience through the work. An organization or movement should prioritize addressing individuals’ feelings and healing any harm they encounter. Collective projects, campaigns, and efforts can and should be interrupted in service of this priority.

Additionally, the scope of care a movement space, organization, or group is responsible for is sprawling—potentially addressing all or most personal triggers and traumas experienced in and outside the work.

Fallacies

Discerning what is yours to hold and what is the collective’s is an essential life skill and fundamental to organizational work, collaboration, and meaningful engagement of others. Organizations generally do not have the specialized skills to provide emotional or spiritual healing. Workplaces can provide a salary, benefits, paid time off, and other resources to help individuals access the support and care they require. Workplaces can also promote a culture of care and encourage individuals to care for themselves. Workplaces and colleagues cannot replace medical professionals, spiritual supports, or other devoted spaces of care.

This is also true for non-professional spaces. Your comrades can provide support, foster a caring environment, or help you out when you’re in distress. They cannot heal you or salve long-standing traumas. It is natural for us to turn to those closest when we’re in pain. It is an indictment of the larger systems in our society that abundant mental health and healing resources are not available to most of us. There are several groups now filling that void in a culturally competent manner, such as Nqttcn.com, beam.org, fireweedcollective.org, generativesomatics.org, and sinsinvalid.org.

Emotional intelligence is a capacity an organization can and should embody. But no organization can take on the emotional labor that is squarely in the domain of the individual. This distinction is critical. Additionally, discomfort is part of the human condition and a prerequisite for learning. Violence and oppression are to be avoided but not discomfort. The ability to discern the difference is a form of emotional maturity we should encourage.

   IX. Disproportionality

Definition

Being unable to interpret the scale of a problem. For example, discomfort is not only unacceptable but “violent.” Any mistake committed by the organization or an individual is an example of failure or corruption.

Fallacies

Disproportionality can be a byproduct of uneven training on concepts like power and power analysis as well as a misunderstanding of strategy. This tendency ultimately weakens meaning, dulls analysis, and robs us of the ability to acknowledge and process instances of violence and oppression. If everything is “violent,” nothing really is. If every slight is “oppression,” nothing is.

   X. Activist Culture

Definition

Acting on individual and personal impulses rather than the mandate laid out by one’s role or organization. Desire to elevate one’s individual brand or cultural cachet as a function of one’s work. A desire to make an organization or movement visible in a manner that either disregards or undermines process, protocol, or culture.

Fallacies

Although it may be personally fulfilling and individually empowering to do and say the things you desire when you desire, institution- and organization-building requires the discipline to advance a collective strategy. That often means sublimating your impulse or ego for the greater good and leveraging your personal capacities for collective goals. This flies in the face of activist culture.

At its very worst, activism absent the disciplining force of accountability to the whole or a guiding ideology is a dangerous venue for narcissism shrouded in “Left speak.” It can become the performance of principle without the headache of accountability.

We all have a role to play if we are to transcend these tendencies. Leaders of institutions -having more positional power- hold responsibility for their own behavior, the stewardship of their organizations, and a broader duty to facilitate movement-wide progress. At the same time, we cannot hold out for saviors in these roles. One leader or even a group of dynamic leaders cannot solve something that is very much “in the water” everywhere. It would be inconsistent for me to diagnose a problem as structural while pointing to solutions that can be executed only by a handful of individuals. We must adopt a more comprehensive understanding of leadership that recognizes that leaders and leadership exist at all levels of our organizations and movements. And importantly, the mass leadership of the working class -while unrealized- is a form of leadership with the potential to mitigate some of the tendencies outlined above, keeping our focus outward and on the main struggle.

All of us — union stewards, field managers, text bank leaders, cultural workers, political educators, neighborhood block captains, members, donors — have opportunities to lead and choices to make about our behavior. Concretely, that looks like each of us wrestling with the ways we exhibit some of these destructive tendencies and making corrections. It could also look like a large group of leaders, across a number of organizations and sectors, joining forces to advance a collective shift in our practices.

From Problem to Solution

What can we learn from our errors and our attempts to correct these errors in service of sustainable solutions? How can we shift from a posture that simply analyzes the problems into one that is working to solve them?

Rather than reacting to myriad symptoms, we must build resilient organizations that can weather internal conflict and external crises. Resilient organizations are structurally sound, ideologically coherent, strategically grounded, and emotionally mature. The dimensions of resilient organizations include:

• Structural: The organizational form, roles, and mission. What kind of vehicle are we?
• Ideological: The organizational vision for the world. Where are we going?
• Strategic: The organizational plan to advance toward this vision. How do we get there?
• Emotional: The organization’s expectations of its people and people’s expectations of the organization in matters of emotional, physical, and spiritual care and well-being. How do we behave on the journey?

Structural

• Managers should support and recognize unionization efforts inside movement organizations as a reflection of our values. There is great potential for internal staff unions to strengthen our workplaces, including by inoculating against or mitigating the tendencies outlined here. Organizing and contract negotiations can sharpen the skills of—and connections among—non-managerial staff as well as deepen management’s awareness of problems and the organization’s overall health. Collective bargaining agreements can increase clarity, promote equity, foster accountability, and provide a common language across an organization. And, most importantly, healthy labor/management relations can bridge gaps and serve as an ongoing resource for managers and unit members to tend to collective goals. No process, including unionization, can be a panacea to all our institutional woes. When done with enthusiastic, upfront support from managers and a bargaining unit committed to the organizational mission and vehicle, unionization can mitigate glass house/small war/anti-leadership tendencies rather than feed them.
• Leaders should be clearer and more transparent about where hierarchies exist, why they exist, and where and how decision making lives. This requires formal, clear, and understandable decision making and leadership structures. This also means up-front validation of those structures in relation to the organizational mission in contexts like onboarding and recruitment. Additionally, people should understand their place in these structures as well as opportunities for their leadership development and advancement.

Various tools exist to help clarify decision making, including DARCI, MOCHA, and Interaction Institute’s decision making framework. No one tool is ideal for all contexts. However, having one is critical.

• Organizations should promote a “pro-leadership” culture. Such a culture does not elevate individual leaders or place them beyond reproach. It does define and practice a form of leadership that moves us away from neoliberal individualism toward collective power and accountability. In the context of a grassroots or base-building organization, this looks like rooting leadership in the working-class base. In staffed organizations that are grassroots and community-based, this means ensuring that non-staff leadership is pronounced and real and staff leadership is accountable, clear, and experienced. This also requires rigorous training, practice, and intentional development of a culture that elevates the leadership of working people.
• Hierarchy, commitment to leadership—including leadership development—and other pro-leadership ideas cannot be assumed and are not self-evident. They must complement and be justified by the organization’s mission and theory of change.
• Efforts should be made to minimize bureaucratic structures. In staffed organizations, managers should be trained to affirm how and where staff can raise concerns, ask informed questions, experiment, lead, and be creative. In such a culture, seniority is not fetishized for seniority’s sake. Instead, there is a matter-of-fact recognition that, with experience, one tends to grow in judgment and has a clearer understanding of what one does not know. This must be supported by the actual organizational culture of leadership development so more senior leaders are tasked with training and supporting less experienced people to execute, learn, and become leaders themselves.
• There should be regular evaluation of decisions and campaigns. Leaders and decision makers should also be regularly evaluated—not just by other leaders and decision makers but also by people who report to them. Their strategies should also be regularly evaluated based on the organizational theory of change.
• In staffed organizations, serious effort should be made to diversify the organization across all dimensions of identity. This is not for the sake of token representation but because true diversity yields the most relevant and community-reflective structures. Take the time to find quality fits for staff roles and ensure that diversity takes place on all levels of the organization.
• If we value experience, emotional maturity, and diversity, we must get serious about staff retention—developing the systems, practices, and culture that create workplaces where people stay and thrive long term.

Ideological

• Organizations should be trained and retrained in their own ideological location and destination. Staff should be fluent in the ideological underpinnings of the organization.
• Some re/unlearning and philosophical clarity is necessary. Postmodern philosophies have broad value in helping us perceive and challenge grand narratives and socially constructed hierarchies. However, some postmodernist relativism can collide directly with the entire enterprise of power building, which rests on materialist principles. We seek to understand, deconstruct, and interpret the world only to serve the goal of changing it, not simply to further the production of knowledge. That is arguably the role of the academy and organic intellectuals, not social change agents. Marx says on this point, “…philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” We should take this to heart.
• Continuing political education should be a cultural norm for all. Ideological education should be offered and promoted movement-wide so that there is a common movement vocabulary.

Strategic

• Leaders should ensure that the organizational strategy is clear and understood across the board. Invest in training all stakeholders on how the strategy was developed, what hypotheses are operating underneath the strategy, and how to measure the strategy’s effectiveness.
• Strategy and theory of change should be the ultimate arbiter of which tactics to employ and demands to make as well as how to assess inevitable compromises in a situation where we have limited power. Develop a practical expression of the organization’s strategy and theory of change and work with it regularly in planning and decision-making sessions.
• The organization and its senior leaders should invest serious time in presenting the full and complex strategic landscape to more junior, less experienced, and newer people. There are, of course, times when details are so sensitive that they cannot be shared widely. We should push to make those cases exceptions and, even in these instances, provide a rationale for the secure nature of the information. We should tend toward strategic transparency. This is an opportunity to build strategic trust and sophistication across an organization.
• Organizations should note where they are in their life cycle, and efforts should be made to evaluate this from time to time. This will validate a commitment to affirm, strengthen, and grow the political project. Also, if the organization has satisfied its objectives or is rendered unable to satisfy them, it can set the stage for a careful and responsible wind down.

Emotional

• See as a center of your work the establishment and re-establishment of connection, meaning, and belonging.
• Make the celebration of the individual and collective contributions of your people a rigorous practice. Help your teams cultivate a practice of finding the lessons, the steps of success, the moments of laughter and camaraderie, the times that are special. Build a culture of celebration.
• The organization should always endeavor to have the best possible impact on the emotional well-being of its people. Toward that end, the organization should be clear and consistent about its responsibilities in relation to the emotional, mental, and general well-being of the people in its orbit. This requires the organization to generate clear boundaries.
• While it’s not possible or advisable for an organization to protect its people from discomfort, unnecessary discomfort should be avoided where possible through clarity around roles, accessible avenues of redress for grievances, and encouraging and providing support for skills like effectively engaging in conflict with others.
• Experience matters. In a staffed and non-staffed organization, invest in and take the time to recruit more experienced and emotionally mature people. Non-staffed movement orgs should seek out members with longer memories and the emotional elasticity to resolve conflict, engage differences to bring a collective together, and elevate the importance of protecting the political vehicle.
• Less experienced leaders or staff should have clarity as to where they are expected to collaborate, contribute, follow, learn, or lead.
• Less experienced leaders or staff should be developed emotionally, strategically, and ideologically. Spend the resources to coach, support, onboard, and train them. They are a special responsibility.
• Don’t recruit too many less experienced people at once. Less experienced people need more time, mentorship, and training to excel. Effectively providing such support requires much more time and labor than we typically allow.
• Hire slowly, always. Unintentional scale is an enemy to solid culture. A healthy organizational culture should be prioritized over sheer scale. Take time in establishing and reestablishing culture as you hire.
• In staffed organizations, emotional maturity should be evaluated before hiring, elevated as a key value during onboarding, and reinforced through regular performance evaluations. In non-staffed spaces, emotional maturity must be considered when giving people roles and elevating people in leadership and responsibility.
• There is a training gap for managers and staff in identifying and dealing with trauma—we must confront this and build up both internal and movement-wide resources to support our folks working to change a traumatizing world.
• Resist artifacts from professional culture that either denigrate joy, celebration, pleasure, and expression or put them in a box. Free them from those boxes and allow them to flow throughout your organization. This means organizing with all five senses. Food, visual art, music, movement, and culture should be expressed in all corners of the organization to humanize our practice and develop more emotionally dynamic spaces. Normalize the idea that rigor, seriousness, and excellent work should coexist with fun and joy.

A Vision of Joy, Power, and Victory

In this paper, I have laid out a diagnosis of our current predicament and sketched out some ways forward. Building the movement of our dreams can at times feel like a utopian fantasy. Our myriad problems and conflicts can make that project feel like an impossible puzzle to piece together. This framework and my recommendations are designed so that our freedom dream can begin to translate into a practical and urgent charge of our day.

I believe our people deserve mass movements that exude joy, build power, and secure critical victories for the masses of working people. Such movements would be irresistible. People associated with these change projects would themselves exhibit liberatory values, including the practice of radical compassion and humility. They would work from a grounded understanding of power. Leaders would invite accountability, act with rigor, and speak with clarity. Problems and contradictions would be met with curiosity instead of judgment and finger pointing. Harm would be addressed with seriousness and an eye toward reparation, remediation, and healing. And we would build power with relish and let our successes and failures breed innovation.

We are closer than we think to such a reality. We must go through a humbling but necessary period of change to achieve it. We must learn how to synthesize lessons from the past and observations in the present. That means sitting in an awkward both/and place. We must call out fallacies that weaken us, even when it’s hard and we face criticism for it. And we must meet our problems with grounded solutions that are drawn from a sober assessment of the larger time, place, and conditions we find ourselves in. None of this, of course, will be easy. In fact, much of it will cause great discomfort. However, on the other side of the uncomfortable journey is an abundant, playful, and powerful home for our freedom dreams. Will we choose it?

Discussion Guide

Haga clic aquí para leer esta guía para discusiones en español.

Social justice organizations are in the midst of enormous upheaval and change. In his article Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis, Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party, offers an assessment of the current dynamics within social justice organizations and pathways forward to realize “…movements that exude joy, build power, and secure critical victories for the masses of working people.”

This article is a call to action, raising the alarm about continuing along our current path and calling on each of us to learn from our mistakes and shift from a focus on problems to a focus on solutions: “What can we learn from our errors and our attempts to correct these errors in service of sustainable solutions? How can we shift from a posture that simply analyzes the problems into one that is working to solve them?” To do this, Maurice states:

We must go through a humbling but necessary period of change to achieve it. We must learn how to synthesize lessons from the past and observations in the present. That means sitting in an awkward both/and place. We must call out fallacies that weaken us, even when it’s hard and we face criticism for it. And we must meet our problems with grounded solutions that are drawn from a sober assessment of the larger time, place, and conditions we find ourselves in. None of this, of course, will be easy. In fact, much of it will cause great discomfort. However, on the other side of the uncomfortable journey is an abundant, playful, and powerful home for our freedom dreams. Will we choose it?

This Discussion Guide is intended to help organizations and the individuals within them  productively grapple with the assessments and solutions offered by Maurice, and build upon them according to unique organizational experiences and needs. It’s also intended to help organizations move from discussion to action so we can collectively build the movements we so desperately need.

The Guide is organized in parallel with each of the sections in Building Resilient Organizations. For each section, it highlights major themes and then offers discussion questions. These aim to help individuals and discussion leaders probe the analyses presented in the article and draw out what participants think is useful for their own organizations.

Introduction

The article makes the case that social justice organizations and activists need to make space to discuss tensions internal to the movement. It states, “This essay describes the problems our movements face, identifies underlying causes, analyzes symptoms that flow from the core problems, and proposes some concrete solutions to reset our course.” Publicly sharing internal tensions and problems comes with risks.

• What reactions do you have to Maurice Mitchell sharing his analysis in a public way? Is this article helpful to you in your work and to our movements?

Roots of the Crisis

This section puts the dynamics within social justice organizations into a larger context. It pushes back against the focus on conflict between individuals and outlines the considerable external forces that influence our current experiences—including ongoing efforts to dismantle and disempower movements, the successful neoliberal project of delegitimizing institutions, the expansion of corporate and billionaire power, philanthropy’s broken funding model and scarce support for Black people, people of color, immigrants, women, queer, and gender non-conforming leaders. Context matters as it can “allow for more compassion for our comrades as well as clarity about the urgent mandate at hand.”

• This section is making the simple but critical point that context matters. What other external forces are impacting dynamics within social justice organizations? What external forces are specifically impacting the dynamics within your organization?
• How does it feel to place the experiences at your organization into a larger historical and global context? Does it shift your perspective or make you think differently about the pathways forward?

Common Trends

This section outlines common tendencies within social justice organizations that are symptoms of the larger context in which we’re operating. It describes ten “common tendencies that flow from the larger conditions we find ourselves in and the fallacies underlying those tendencies.” The ten tendencies include:

1. Neoliberal Identity
2. Maximalism
3. Anti-Leadership Attitudes
4. Anti- Institutional Sentiment
5. Cherry Picking Arguments
6. Glass Houses
7. The Small War
8. Unanchored Care
9. Disproportionality
10. Activist Culture

• How do these common trends resonate with you? What feels familiar? How have you experienced, observed or perpetuated these tendencies?
• What doesn’t resonate with you or feel familiar? What feels challenging and/or uncomfortable and what does that say to you?
• What trends are you experiencing that are missing from this section? Or how would you define and analyze these trends differently?
• How does naming, defining and analyzing these trends help or hurt the current dynamics within social justice organizations?
  

From Problem to Solution

This section offers solutions to address the problems organizations face and calls on us to “shift from a posture that simply analyzes the problems into one that is working to solve them.” But who is responsible for these changes? Throughout this section, Maurice discusses the different kinds of leaders and leadership that will be required to tackle the problems.

• Whether you are in formal leadership or not, does the broader description of leadership resonate with you? Can you give some examples of how leadership shows up at all levels of an organization and in our movement?
• If you are an organizational leader, how does this make you think about your own leadership within your organization and across the movement? What are some challenges for leaders in collaborating across organizations? Does anything in the article inspire you to do things differently? If so, how?
• If we accept that we are all leaders in some form, are there things that came up in this article that you want to examine or change to strengthen your work?
• If you are in an organization with a working class constituency or grassroots membership base (or one that seeks to represent the working class), what are the ways in which you listen to or are led by your base? Do you agree with Maurice’s point that being accountable to a working class base would help reduce some of the tendencies described in the article?

The solutions offered in the article span four dimensions—structural, ideological, strategic and emotional — and range from suggested practices, policies and structures to how individuals see themselves and relate to each other.

• Do you find the “four dimensions” categories a helpful way to approach solutions? Do they clarify anything for you? Are there some dimensions where our movement organizations/formations seem stronger? Less strong?
• What solutions resonate the most with you? What are you inspired to focus on within yourself and/or your organization? What could that focus and action around it look like in the months and years ahead?
• What solutions would you add? What’s missing? What do you want to explore more deeply/learn more about for yourself and your organization? What do you need to deepen your understanding and learning?

A Vision of Joy, Power and Victory

This concluding section reflects on the intentions of this article and offers a vision for what our movements can feel and look like:

I believe our people deserve mass movements that exude joy, build power, and secure critical victories for the masses of working people. Such movements would be irresistible. People associated with these change projects would themselves exhibit liberatory values, including the practice of radical compassion and humility. They would work from a grounded understanding of power. Leaders would invite accountability, act with rigor, and speak with clarity. Problems and contradictions would be met with curiosity instead of judgment and finger pointing. Harm would be addressed with seriousness and an eye toward reparation, remediation, and healing. And we would build power with relish and let our successes and failures breed innovation.

• What are some ways we can practice joy in our work? Do you think those practices could strengthen our movement? If so, how?
• What is the role of humility and curiosity in our work? How does it show up for you personally in the work you do? What about discomfort?
• What are some of the challenges to admitting our mistakes or changing our behavior? What are some of the rewards?
• If we addressed these problems together, would the future we are trying to build look different? How?

Some Additional Reading & Exercises

• Yotam Marom, “Moving Toward Conflict for the Sake of Good Strategy.” Medium. Jan 13, 2020.
• Bryan Mercer and Hannah Sassaman, “Embracing Conflict Didn’t Tear Our Organization Apart, It Transformed Us.” Convergence. 2022. Part 1 and Part 2.
• Daniel Martinez HoSang , LeeAnn Hall, and Libero Della Piana, “To Tackle Racial Justice, Organizing Must Change,” The Forge. January 4, 2022.
• Joshua Kahn Russell and Michael Strom, “Healthy Group Accountability: Learning How to Learn,” Convergence. August 6, 2021.
• Jen Disla, “Organization for Black Struggle on Conflict: Know Your Friends From Your Enemies,” Convergence,
• “Combat Liberalism with Olufemi Taiwo, Mindy Isser and Zachary Hershman,” The Dig podcast with Daniel Denvir. April 16, 2021.
• adrienne marie brown, “Disrupting the Pattern: A Call for Love and Solidarity,” and We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice.
• Auburn Seminary, “Nurturing Relationships, Navigating Conflict” – a 4 to 6 hour workshop (can be broken up over a few sessions)

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.