{"id":1515421,"date":"2022-06-14T13:19:08","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T17:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1515421"},"modified":"2022-06-14T13:20:04","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T17:20:04","slug":"mass-infighting-brings-progressive-activist-groups-to-a-standstill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/mass-infighting-brings-progressive-activist-groups-to-a-standstill\/","title":{"rendered":"Mass Infighting Brings Progressive Activist Groups to a Standstill"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmass-infighting-brings-progressive-activist-groups-to-a-standstill%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1515421&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div data-reactid=\"181\">\n<p><span data-shortcode-type=\"dropcap\" class=\"dropcap\">E<\/span><u>veryone acknowledged that<\/u> Zoom was less than ideal as a forum for a heartfelt conversation on systemic racism and policing. But the meeting was urgent, and, a little more than two months into the Covid-19 lockdown, it would have to do.<\/p>\n<p>During the first week of June 2020, teams of workers and their managers came together across the country to share how they were responding to the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis and to chart out what \u2014 if anything \u2014 their own company or nonprofit could do to contribute toward the reckoning with racial injustice that was rapidly taking shape.<\/p>\n<p>On June 2, one such huddle was organized by the Washington, D.C., office of the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rights movement\u2019s premier research organization.<\/p>\n<p>Heather Boonstra, vice president of public policy, began by asking how people were \u201cfinding equilibrium\u201d \u2014 one of the details we know because it <a href=\"https:\/\/prismreports.org\/2021\/12\/06\/guttmacher-institute-staff-say-a-toxic-work-culture-has-the-reproductive-rights-research-giant-in-a-death-spiral\/\">was later shared by staff with Prism<\/a>, an outlet that focuses on social justice advocacy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"192\">\n<p>She talked about the role systemic racism plays in society and the ways that Guttmacher\u2019s work could counter it. Staff suggestions, though, turned inward, Prism reported, \u201cincluding loosening deadlines and implementing more proactive and explicit policies for leave without penalty.\u201d\u00a0Staffers suggested additional racial equity trainings, noting that a previous facilitator had said that the last round had not included sufficient time \u201cto cover everything.\u201d With no Black staff in the D.C. unit, it was suggested that \u201cGuttmacher do something tangible for Black employees in other divisions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Behind Boonstra\u2019s and the staff\u2019s responses to the killing was a fundamentally different understanding of the moment. For Boonstra and others of her generation, the focus should have been on the work of the nonprofit: What could Guttmacher, with an annual budget of nearly $30 million, do now to make the world a better place? For her staff, that question had to be answered at home first: What could they do to make Guttmacher a better place? Too often, they believed, managers exploited the moral commitment staff felt toward their mission, allowing workplace abuses to go unchecked.<\/p>\n<p>The belief was widespread. In the eyes of group leaders dealing with similar moments, staff were ignoring the mission and focusing only on themselves, using a moment of public awakening to smuggle through standard grievances cloaked in the language of social justice. Often, as was the case at Guttmacher, they played into the very dynamics they were fighting against, directing their complaints at leaders of color. Guttmacher was run at the time, and still is today, by an Afro Latina woman, Dr. Herminia Palacio. \u201cThe most zealous ones at my organization when it comes to race are white,\u201d said one Black executive director at a different organization, asking for anonymity so as not to provoke a response from that staff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"196\">\n<p>These starkly divergent views would produce dramatic schisms throughout the progressive world in the coming year. At Guttmacher, this process would rip the organization apart. Boonstra, unlike many managers at the time, didn\u2019t sugarcoat how she felt about the staff\u2019s response to the killing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m here to talk about George Floyd and the other African American men who have been beaten up by society,\u201d she told her staff, not \u201cworkplace problems.\u201d Boonstra told them she was \u201cdisappointed,\u201d that they were being \u201cself-centered.\u201d The staff was appalled enough by the exchange to relay it to Prism.<\/p>\n<p>The human resources department and board of directors, in consultation with outside counsel, were brought in to investigate complaints that flowed from the meeting, including accusations that certain staff members had been tokenized, promoted, and then demoted on the basis of race. The resulting report was unsatisfying to many of the staff.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"198\">\n<p>\u201cWhat we have learned is that there is a group of people with strong opinions about a particular supervisor, the new leadership, and a change in strategic priorities,\u201d said a Guttmacher statement summarizing the findings. \u201cThose staff have a point of view. Complaints were duly investigated and nothing raised to the level of abuse or discrimination. Rather, what we saw was distrust, disagreement, and discontent with management decisions they simply did not like.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A Prism reporter reached a widely respected Guttmacher board member, Pamela Merritt, a Black woman and a leading reproductive justice activist, while the Supreme Court oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization were going on last December, a year and a half after the Floyd meeting. She offered the most delicate rebuttal of the staff complaints possible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI have been in this movement space long enough to respect how people choose to describe their personal experience and validate that experience, even if I don\u2019t necessarily agree that that\u2019s what they experienced,\u201d Merritt said. \u201cIt seems like there\u2019s a conflation between not reaching the conclusion that people want and not doing due diligence on the allegations, which simply is not true.\u201d Boonstra did not respond to a request to talk from either Prism or The Intercept.<\/p>\n<p>The six months since then have only seen a ratcheting up of the tension, with more internal disputes spilling into public and amplified by a well-funded, anonymous operation called ReproJobs, whose Twitter and Instagram feeds have pounded away at the organization\u2019s management. \u201cIf your reproductive justice organization isn\u2019t Black and brown it\u2019s white supremacy in heels co-opting a WOC movement,\u201d blared a typical missive from one of its Instagram stories. The news, in May 2022, that Roe v. Wade would almost certainly be overturned did nothing to temper the raging battle.<\/p>\n<p>That the institute has spent the course of the Biden administration paralyzed makes it typical of not just the abortion rights community \u2014 Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and other reproductive health organizations had similarly been locked in knock-down, drag-out fights between competing factions of their organizations, most often breaking down along staff-versus-management lines. It\u2019s also true of the progressive advocacy space across the board, which has, more or less, effectively ceased to function. The Sierra Club, Demos, the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, the Movement for Black Lives, Human Rights Campaign, Time\u2019s Up, the Sunrise Movement, and many other organizations have seen wrenching and debilitating turmoil in the past couple years.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, it\u2019s hard to find a Washington-based progressive organization that hasn\u2019t been in tumult, or isn\u2019t currently in tumult. It even reached the National Audubon Society, as Politico <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2020\/11\/12\/audubon-society-claims-intimidation-threats-436215\">reported in August 2021<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Following a botched diversity meeting, a highly critical employee survey and the resignations of two top diversity and inclusion officials, the 600,000-member National Audubon Society is confronting allegations that it maintains a culture of retaliation, fear and antagonism toward women and people of color, according to interviews with 13 current and former staff members.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Twitter, as the saying goes, may not be real life, but in a world of remote work, Slack very much is. And Twitter, Slack, Zoom, and the office space, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former executive directors of advocacy organizations, are now mixing in a way that is no longer able to be ignored by a progressive movement that wants organizations to be able to function. The executive directors largely spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of angering staff or donors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo be honest with you, this is the biggest problem on the left over the last six years,\u201d one concluded. \u201cThis is so big. And it\u2019s like abuse in the family \u2014 it\u2019s the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about. And you have to be super sensitive about who the messengers are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For a number of obvious and intersecting reasons \u2014 my race, gender, and generation \u2014 I am not the perfect messenger. But here it goes anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"img-wrap align-bleed large-bleed width-auto\" data-reactid=\"199\">\n<div data-reactid=\"200\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-399520\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-1231638442.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&#038;q=90\" alt=\"WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 10: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sign H.R. 1319 American Rescue Plan Act of 2021during a bill enrollment ceremony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, March 10, 2021 in Washington, DC.  (Kent Nishimura \/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption overlayed\">Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sign the American Rescue Plan Act on March 10, 2021, in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption source pullright\">\nPhoto: Kent Nishimura\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"201\">\n<p><span data-shortcode-type=\"dropcap\" class=\"dropcap\">F<\/span><u>or progressive movement<\/u> organizations, 2021 promised to be the year they turned power into policy, with a Democratic trifecta and the Biden administration broadcasting a bold vision of \u201ctransformational change.\u201d Out of the gate, Democrats pushed ahead with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, funding everything from expanded health care to a new monthly child tax credit. Republican efforts to slow-walk the process with disingenuous counteroffers were simply dismissed.<\/p>\n<p>And then, sometime in the summer, the forward momentum stalled, and many of the progressive gains lapsed or were reversed. Instead of fueling a groundswell of public support to reinvigorate the party\u2019s ambitious agenda, most of the foundation-backed organizations that make up the backbone of the party\u2019s ideological infrastructure were still spending their time locked in virtual retreats, Slack wars, and healing sessions, grappling with tensions over hierarchy, patriarchy, race, gender, and power.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo much energy has been devoted to the internal strife and internal bullshit that it\u2019s had a real impact on the ability for groups to deliver,\u201d said one organization leader who departed his position. \u201cIt\u2019s been huge, particularly over the last year and a half or so, the ability for groups to focus on their mission, whether it\u2019s reproductive justice, or jobs, or fighting climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"Pullquote Pullquote--left\" data-reactid=\"202\"><p><span class=\"Pullquote-line\" data-reactid=\"203\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div data-reactid=\"204\">\u201cMy last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div data-reactid=\"205\">\n<p>This is, of course, a caricature of the left: that socialists and communists spend more time in meetings and fighting with each other than changing the world. But in the wake of Donald Trump\u2019s presidential election, and then Joe Biden\u2019s, it has become nearly all-consuming for some organizations, spreading beyond subcultures of the left and into major liberal institutions. \u201cMy last nine months, I was spending 90 to 95 percent of my time on internal strife. Whereas [before] that would have been 25-30 percent tops,\u201d the\u00a0former executive director said. He added that the same portion of his deputies\u2019 time was similarly spent on internal reckonings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMost people thought that their worst critics were their competitors, and they\u2019re finding out that their worst critics are on their own payroll,\u201d said Loretta Ross, an author and activist who has been prominent in the movement for decades, having founded the reproductive justice collective <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sistersong.net\/mission\">SisterSong<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re dealing with a workforce that\u2019s becoming younger, more female, more people of color, more politically woke \u2014 I hate to use that term in a way it shouldn\u2019t be used \u2014 and less loyal in the traditional way to a job, because the whole economic rationale for keeping a job or having a job has changed.\u201d That lack of loyalty is not the fault of employees, Ross said, but was foisted on them by a precarious economy that broke the professional-social contract. That has left workers with less patience for inequities in the workplace.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll my ED [executive director] friends, everybody\u2019s going through some shit, nobody\u2019s immune,\u201d said one who has yet to depart.<\/p>\n<p>One senior progressive congressional staffer said that when groups don\u2019t disappear entirely to deal with internal strife, the discord is still noticeable on the other end. \u201cI\u2019ve noticed a real erosion of the number of groups who are effective at leveraging progressive power in Congress. Some of that is these groups have these organizational culture things that are affecting them,\u201d the staffer said. \u201cBecause of the organizational culture of some of the real movement groups that have lots of chapters, what they\u2019re lobbying on isn\u2019t relevant to the actual fights in Congress. Some of these groups are in Overton mode when we have a trifecta.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The idea, in theory, is that pushing their public policy demands further and further left widens the so-called Overton window of what\u2019s considered possible, thereby facilitating the future passage of ambitious legislation. Those maximalist political demands can also be a byproduct of internal strife, as organization leaders fend off charges of not internally embodying progressive values by pushing external rhetoric further left.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"Pullquote Pullquote--right\" data-reactid=\"206\"><p><span class=\"Pullquote-line\" data-reactid=\"207\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div data-reactid=\"208\">\u201cThere are wins to be had between now and the next couple months that could change the country forever, and folks are focused on stuff that has no theory of change for even getting to the House floor for a vote.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div data-reactid=\"209\">\n<p>But, the aide pointed out, there is legislative potential now. \u201cThere are wins to be had between now and the next couple months that could change the country forever, and folks are focused on stuff that has no theory of change for even getting to the House floor for a vote.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSunrise is doing their Green New Deal pledge,\u201d the aide continued, describing the Sunrise Movement-led effort to get elected officials and candidates to sign on to an ambitious climate commitment. \u201cThe climate bill is still on the table. \u2026 There\u2019s a universe where people are on the outside, focused on power and leveraging power for progressives in Congress. Instead, they\u2019re spending resources on stuff that is totally unrelated to governing. Nobody says, \u2018Hey guys, could you maybe come and maybe focus on this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The silence stems partly, one senior leader in an organization said, from a fear of feeding right-wing trolls who are working to undermine the left. Adopting their language and framing feels like surrendering to malign forces, but ignoring it has only allowed the issues to fester. \u201cThe right has labeled it \u2018cancel culture\u2019 or \u2018callout culture,\u2019\u201d he said, \u201cso when we talk about our own movement, it\u2019s hard because we\u2019re using the frame of the right. It\u2019s very hard because there\u2019s all these associations and analysis that we disagree with, when we\u2019re using their frame. So it\u2019s like, \u2018How do we talk about it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For years, recruiting young people into the movement felt like a win-win, he said: new energy for the movement and the chance to give a person a lease on a newly liberated life, dedicated to the pursuit of justice. But that\u2019s no longer the case. \u201cI got to a point like three years ago where I had a crisis of faith, like, I don\u2019t even know, most of these spaces on the left are just not \u2014 they\u2019re not healthy. Like all these people are just not \u2014 they\u2019re not doing well,\u201d he said. \u201cThe dynamic, the toxic dynamic of whatever you want to call it \u2014 callout culture, cancel culture, whatever \u2014 is creating this really intense thing, and no one is able to acknowledge it, no one\u2019s able to talk about it, no one\u2019s able to say how bad it is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The environment has pushed expectations far beyond what workplaces previously offered to employees. \u201cA lot of staff that work for me, they expect the organization to be all the things: a movement, OK, get out the vote, OK, healing, OK, take care of you when you\u2019re sick, OK. It\u2019s all the things,\u201d said one executive director. \u201cCan you get your love and healing at home, please? But I can\u2019t say that, they would crucify me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"img-wrap align-bleed large-bleed width-auto\" data-reactid=\"210\">\n<div data-reactid=\"211\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-399522\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-1071538420.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&#038;q=90\" alt=\"WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES - 2018\/12\/10: Protesters seen holding placards during the Sunrise Movement protest inside the office of US Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to advocate that Democrats support the Green New Deal, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. (Photo by Michael Brochstein\/SOPA Images\/LightRocket via Getty Images)\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption overlayed\">The Sunrise Movement protests inside the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to advocate that Democrats support the Green New Deal, in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 10, 2018.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption source pullright\">\nPhoto: Michael Brochstein\/LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"212\">\n<p><span data-shortcode-type=\"dropcap\" class=\"dropcap\">W<\/span><u>hat\u2019s driving the<\/u> upheaval can\u2019t be disentangled from the broader cultural debates about speech, power, race, sexuality, and gender that have shaken institutions in recent years. Netflix, for instance, made news recently by laying off 290 staffers \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/news\/article-10837347\/Netflix-layoffs-hit-staff-working-original-content-marginalized-communities.html\">a move described by the tabloid press<\/a> as targeting the \u201cwokest\u201d workers \u2014 in the midst of roiling tensions at the streaming company.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not just the nonprofit world, though, so let\u2019s be clear,\u201d said Ross. \u201cI started a for-profit consulting firm last year with three other partners, because every C-suite that\u2019s trying to be progressive is undergoing the same kind of callout culture. And so it\u2019s happening societywide.\u201d Business, she said, is booming, but the implications have been especially pronounced within progressive institutions, given their explicit embrace of progressive values.<\/p>\n<p>Sooner or later, each interview for this story landed on the election of Trump in 2016 as a catalyst. Whatever internal tension had been pulling at the seams of organizations in the years prior, Trump\u2019s shock victory sharpened the focus of activists and regular people alike. The institutional progressive world based in Washington, D.C., reacted slowly, shell-shocked and unsure of its place, but people outside those institutions raced ahead of them. A period of mourning turned into fierce determination to resist. Spontaneous women\u2019s marches were called in scores of cities, drawing as many as 5 million people, a shocking display of force. (Their collapse in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tabletmag.com\/sections\/news\/articles\/is-the-womens-march-melting-down\">heap of identitarian recriminations<\/a> is its own parable for this moment.)<\/p>\n<p>New grassroots organizations like Indivisible sprang up, and old ones were rejuvenated with new volunteers and hundreds of millions of dollars from small donors across the country. The ACLU alone collected almost $1 million within 24 hours of Trump\u2019s election and tens of millions more over the next year. Airports were flooded with protesters when Trump announced his so-called Muslim ban. Fueled by that anger, Democrats stormed back into control of the House in 2018, with a vibrant insurgent wing toppling the would-be speaker, Rep. Joe Crowley, and electing the most progressive freshman class ever.<\/p>\n<p>After that election, incoming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez teamed with the Sunrise Movement and Justice Democrats to occupy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u2019s congressional office to demand a Green New Deal. The protest put the issue on the map, and soon nearly every Democratic candidate for president was embracing it. But it was one of the only examples over the past five years of an organized, intentional intervention into the political conversation, which otherwise has been relatively leaderless and without focus. Presidential campaigns, particularly those of Sen. Bernie Sanders for the left, and midterms provide a natural funnel for activist energy, but once they\u2019re over, the demobilization comes quickly. That emptiness has been filled by infighting, and the fissures that are now engulfing everything in sight began to form early.<\/p>\n<p>In August 2017, when a rising \u201calt-right\u201d organized a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the ACLU went to court to defend the right to march on First Amendment grounds, as it had famously done for generations. When a right-wing demonstrator plowed his car into a crowd, he killed counterprotester Heather Heyer and wounded dozens of others.<\/p>\n<p>Internally, staff at the ACLU, concentrated among the younger people there, condemned the decision to defend the rally. Veteran lawyers at the ACLU <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/06\/06\/us\/aclu-free-speech.html\">complained to the New York Times<\/a> that the new generation \u201cplaced less value on free speech, making it uncomfortable for them to express views internally that diverged from progressive orthodoxy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Alejandro Agust\u00edn Ortiz, a lawyer with the organization\u2019s racial justice project, told the Times that \u201ca dogmatism descends sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou hesitate before you question a belief that is ascendant among your peer group,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>National Legal Director David Cole stood by the decision to defend the rally in a New York Review of Books essay. \u201cWe protect the First Amendment not only because it is the lifeblood of democracy and an indispensable element of freedom, but because it is the guarantor of civil society itself,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/2017\/09\/28\/why-we-must-still-defend-free-speech\/\">he wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Around 200 staff members responded with a letter slamming the essay as \u201c\u2018oblivious\u2019 to the ACLU\u2019s institutional racism,\u201d the New York Times reported, noting that 12 of the organization\u2019s top 21 leaders were Black, Latino, or Asian and 14 were women.<\/p>\n<p>Under pressure, the ACLU said it would <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/sites\/default\/files\/field_document\/aclu_case_selection_guidelines.pdf\">dial back its defense of free speech<\/a>. Wrote the Times: \u201cRevulsion swelled within the A.C.L.U., and many assailed its executive director, Anthony Romero, and legal director, Mr. Cole, as privileged and clueless. The A.C.L.U. unfurled new guidelines that suggested lawyers should balance taking a free speech case representing right-wing groups whose \u2018values are contrary to our values\u2019 against the potential such a case might give \u2018offense to marginalized groups.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"img-wrap align-center width-fixed\" data-reactid=\"213\">\n<div data-reactid=\"214\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-399534\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-971782262.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&#038;q=90&#038;w=1024&#038;h=683\" alt=\"WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 11:  ACLU&#039;s Anthony D. Romero speaks at the 2018 ACLU National Conference at the Washington Convention Center on June 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.  (Photo by Paul Morigi\/Getty Images)\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Anthony D. Romero,\u00a0executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, speaks at\u00a0a conference at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption source\">\nPhoto: Paul Morigi\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"215\">\n<p>An internal dispute over the organization\u2019s absolutist commitment to free speech is to be expected after such a tragedy. But the conflict mushroomed; instead of finding common ground on the question, it became fodder for endless and sprawling internal microbattles.<\/p>\n<p>The Times article on the ACLU infighting was published in September 2021, more than four years after the event that triggered it, and there\u2019s no sign of the tensions easing. Such prolonged combat has become standard, whether the triggering event is a cataclysmic one like Charlottesville or more prosaic, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanityfair.com\/news\/2022\/06\/inside-the-washington-posts-social-media-meltdown\">like a retweet of an offensive joke<\/a> by a Washington Post reporter. The initial event prompts a response from staff, which is met by management with a memo or a town hall; in either case, the meeting or the organizationwide message often produces its own cause for new offense, a self-reproducing cycle that sucks in more and more people within the organization, who have either been offended, accused of giving offense, or both, along with their colleagues who are required to pick a side.<\/p>\n<p>At the ACLU, as at many organizations, the controversy quickly evolved to include charges that senior leaders were hostile to staff from marginalized communities. Each accusation is unique; some have obvious merit, while others don\u2019t withstand scrutiny. What emerges by zooming out is the striking similarity of their trajectories. One foundation official who has funded many of the groups entangled in turmoil said that having a panoramic view allowed her to see those common threads. \u201cIt\u2019s the kind of thing that looks very context-specific, until you see a larger pattern,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Things get very ugly, she noted, and the overlapping crises of Trump, Covid, and looming climate collapse have produced extreme anxiety. Under siege, many leaders cling more tightly to their hold on power, she said, \u201ctaking shelter in professional nonprofit spaces because they think clinging to a sinking ship and hanging on as long and strongly as possible is the best bet they can make for their own personal survival.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-shortcode-type=\"dropcap\" class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span><u>hree years of<\/u> post-Trump tensions crashed head-on into a pandemic lockdown and the uprising following the police murder of Floyd.<\/p>\n<p>Progressive organizations convened meetings to work through their response, and, like at Guttmacher, many of them left staff extremely unsatisfied. A looming sense of powerlessness on the left nudged the focus away from structural or wide-reaching change, which felt out of reach, and replaced it with an internal target that was more achievable. \u201cMaybe I can\u2019t end racism by myself, but I can get my manager fired, or I can get so and so removed, or I can hold somebody accountable,\u201d one former executive director said. \u201cPeople found power where they could, and often that\u2019s where you work, sometimes where you live, or where you study, but someplace close to home.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Too much hype about what was possible electorally also played a role, said another leader. \u201cUnrealistic expectations about what could be achieved through the electoral and legislative process has led us to give up on persuasion and believe convenient myths that we can change everything by \u2018mobilizing\u2019 a mythological \u2018base,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThis has led to navel-gazing and constant rehashing of internal culture debates, because the progressive movement is no longer convinced it can have an impact on the external world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Things were also tense because of Covid. Jonathan Smucker is the author of the book \u201cHegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals\u201d and trains and advises activists across the movement spectrum. After the pandemic forced people into quarantine in March 2020, he noted, many workplaces turned into pressure cookers. \u201cCOVID has severely limited in-person tactical options, and in-person face-to-face activities are absolutely vital to volunteer-driven efforts,\u201d he\u00a0wrote to The Intercept. \u201cWithout these spaces, staff are more likely to become insular \u2013 a tendency that\u2019s hard enough to combat even without this shift. Moreover, the virtual environment (zoom meetings) may be convenient for all kinds of reasons, but it\u2019s a pretty lousy medium once there\u2019s conflict in an organization. In-person face-to-face time, in my experience, is irreplaceable when it comes to moving constructively through conflict. I know this is not the full picture and probably not even the root of these problems or conflicts, but it\u2019s almost certainly exacerbating them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The histories of the organizations were scoured for evidence of white supremacy, and nobody had to look very hard. The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was posthumously rebuked for her dalliance with eugenics, and her name was stripped in July 2020 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.plannedparenthood.org\/planned-parenthood-greater-new-york\/about\/news\/planned-parenthood-of-greater-new-york-announces-intent-to-remove-margaret-sangers-name-from-nyc-health-center\">from the headquarters of its New York affiliate<\/a>. (In 2011, I won a \u201cPlanned Parenthood Maggie Award for Online Reporting,\u201d which I still have.)<\/p>\n<p>At the Sierra Club, then-Executive Director Michael Brune published a statement headlined \u201cPulling Down Our Monuments,\u201d calling out founder John Muir for his association with eugenicists. \u201cMuir was not immune to the racism peddled by many in the early conservation movement. He made <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atlasobscura.com\/articles\/the-miseducation-of-john-muir\">derogatory comments<\/a> about Black people and Indigenous peoples that drew on deeply harmful racist stereotypes, though his views evolved later in his life,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sierraclub.org\/michael-brune\/2020\/07\/john-muir-early-history-sierra-club\">Brune wrote that July<\/a>, adding:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>For all the harms the Sierra Club has caused, and continues to cause, to Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color, I am deeply sorry. I know that apologies are empty unless accompanied by a commitment to change. I am making that commitment, publicly, right now. And I invite you to hold me and other Sierra Club leaders, staff, and volunteers accountable whenever we don\u2019t live up to our commitment to becoming an actively anti-racist organization.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Brune came to the Sierra Club, the environmental group founded in 1892, from Greenpeace and the anarchist-influenced Rainforest Action Network in 2010. He was considered at the time a radical choice to run the staid organization. Brune didn\u2019t last the summer.<\/p>\n<p>The progressive congressional aide said the Sierra Club infighting that led to his departure was evident from the outside. \u201cIt caused so much internal churn that they stopped being engaged in any serious way at a really critical moment during Build Back Better,\u201d the aide said.<\/p>\n<p>Then the Sierra Club\u2019s structure, which has relied on thousands of volunteers, many empowered with significant responsibility, also came under scrutiny after a volunteer was accused of rape. The consulting firm Ramona Strategies was brought in for an extensive \u201crestorative accountability process\u201d that The Intercept <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2021\/08\/19\/sierra-club-resignation-internal-report\/\">described<\/a> last summer as an \u201cinternal reckoning around race, gender, and sexual as well as other abuse allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo\" data-reactid=\"216\">\n<div class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link\" data-reactid=\"217\">\n<div class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-thumbnail\" data-reactid=\"218\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"440\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/static\/placeholder_1_1.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&#038;q=90\" width=\"440\" aria-hidden=\"false\" data-reactid=\"219\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-text\" data-reactid=\"220\">\n<h2 class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-eyebrow\" data-reactid=\"221\">Related<\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"Greek\" data-reactid=\"222\">\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"268\">\n<p>\u201cBeing a \u2018volunteer-led\u2019 organization cannot stand for volunteers having carte blanche to ignore legal requirements or organizational values around equity and inclusivity \u2014 or basic human decency,\u201d the consultant\u2019s report stated. \u201cAll employees should be managed by and subject to the oversight of individuals also under the organization\u2019s clear control and direction as employees. There is no other way we can see.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The recommendation was the logical dead-end point of the inward focus. Having only employees and no volunteers \u2014 or, in the case of Everytown for Gun Safety, <a href=\"https:\/\/theconnector.substack.com\/p\/and-we-are-not-saved?s=r\">asking volunteers to sign nondisclosure agreements<\/a> \u2014 would render moot the structure of most major movement groups, such as Indivisible, Sunrise, MoveOn, the NAACP, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>The reckoning was in many ways long overdue, forcing organizations to deal with persistent problems of inclusion, equity, and poor management. \u201cProgressive organizations are run like shit,\u201d acknowledged one executive director, arguing that the movement puts emphasis on leadership\u00a0\u2014 more often called \u201cservant leadership\u201d now\u00a0\u2014 but not enough on basic management. \u201cI have all the degrees, but I don\u2019t have a management degree.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the long term, the organizations may become better versions of themselves while finally living the values they\u2019ve long fought for. In the short term, the battles between staff and organizational leadership have effectively sidelined major progressive institutions at a critical moment in U.S. and world history. \u201cWe used to want to make the world a better place,\u201d said one leader of a progressive organization. \u201cNow we just make our organizations more miserable to work at.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"img-wrap align-bleed xtra-large-bleed width-auto\" data-reactid=\"269\">\n<div data-reactid=\"270\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-399540\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-97296513.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&#038;q=90\" alt=\"UNITED STATES - APRIL 25:  Mark Rudd, Chairman of the SDS talks to reporters as, Columbia students line the ledge outside the office of University President Grayson Kirk in protest against building of new gym, which students say isn&#039;t as important as the park site it would occupy.  (Photo by Dennis Caruso\/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption overlayed\">Mark Rudd, chair of Students for a Democratic Society, talks to reporters as Columbia University students protest on April 25, 1968.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption source pullright\">\nPhoto: Dennis Caruso\/NY Daily News via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"271\">\n<p><span data-shortcode-type=\"dropcap\" class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span><u>heorists have developed<\/u> sophisticated ways to understand how political movements evolve over time. Bill Moyer, a former organizer with Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s Poor People\u2019s Campaign who went on to\u00a0lead\u00a0the anti-nuclear movement, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.historyisaweapon.com\/defcon1\/moyermap.html\">famously documented<\/a> eight stages in his \u201cMovement Action Plan.\u201d (Others have subsequently simplified it to four\u00a0seasons that roughly map to the same waves.)<\/p>\n<p>Stage one he called normal times, the period before the public is paying much attention to an issue, while only a few activists are working to develop solutions and tactics. Stage two is failure of institutions, as the public and activists more generally become aware of a problem and the need for change. This is early spring, which then evolves into stage three, ripening conditions. To take the <a href=\"https:\/\/commonslibrary.org\/resource-bill-moyers-movement-action-plan\/\">civil rights movement as an example<\/a>, Brown v. Board of Education helped ripen conditions, as did a rising Black college student population after World War II and the return of Black veterans from the war more generally, along with a surge in anti-colonial freedom struggles across Africa. The conditions are set.<\/p>\n<p>Next comes a trigger event that shocks the conscience of the public, allowing the movement activists who\u2019ve been at work on an issue to seize the moment, creating stage four, when social movements really take off. Rosa Parks was by no means the first Black woman arrested for refusing to go to the back of the bus, nor was Trayvon Martin the first Black teen to be shot by a vigilante, nor was Michael Brown the first Black teen to be killed by a police officer. But the events came at a time when the public was primed to see them as symptomatic of a broader social ill that needed to be confronted. Springtime for social movements is a time of great promise, optimism, and surging momentum, when the previously unthinkable comes within grasp. In 1957, Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction.<\/p>\n<p>But before it passed the Senate, it was stripped of its enforcement mechanisms, leaving much of the South still ruled by Jim Crow, helping produce the fifth stage, in which activists confront powerful obstacles and despair sets in. \u201cAfter a year or two, the high hopes of movement take-off seems inevitably to turn into despair,\u201d Moyer wrote. \u201cMost activists lose their faith that success is just around the corner and come to believe that it is never going to happen. They perceive that the powerholders are too strong, their movement has failed, and their own efforts have been futile. Most surprising is the fact that this identity crisis of powerlessness and failure happens when the movement is outrageously successful\u2014when the movement has just achieved all of the goals of the take-off stage within two years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stage five happens coincidentally\u00a0\u2014 and paradoxically\u00a0\u2014 with stage six: majority public support. This is the period of time during which the movement has won over the public, with surveys showing two-thirds or more of the public siding with\u00a0it on\u00a0its question. Some elements of the movement adapt to this new environment and craft strategy to lock in gains, while other elements misread the moment and continue fighting as insurgents and outsiders.<\/p>\n<p>This is the summer and fall period for a movement, followed inevitably by winter. Moyer calls stage seven success and stage eight \u201ccontinuing the struggle,\u201d but activists have wildly different ideas about the meaning of success, with most seeing nothing but failure, even as they might acknowledge that, say, life was far more free for a Black American in 1977 than 1957.<\/p>\n<p>Where does that put us today? The period since Occupy Wall Street represents the single largest mass mobilization since the 1960s and encompassed the Movement for Black Lives;\u00a0the Women\u2019s March, #MeToo, and the broader resistance to the Trump administration; climate activism, the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline and for the Green New Deal; Sandy Hook, Parkland, and March for Our Lives; the presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 of Sanders, topped off by global mass protests in the wake of the murder of Floyd.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"img-wrap align-center width-fixed\" data-reactid=\"272\">\n<div data-reactid=\"273\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-399545\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-1247733157.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&#038;q=90&#038;w=1024&#038;h=683\" alt=\"BARCELONA, SPAIN - JUNE 07: Demonstrators protest in Sant Jaume square on June 07, 2020 in Barcelona, Spain.The death of an African-American man, George Floyd, while in the custody of Minneapolis police has sparked protests across the United States, as well as demonstrations of solidarity in many countries around the world.  (Photo by David Ramos\/Getty Images)\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Demonstrators protest the murder of George Floyd in Barcelona, Spain, on June 7, 2020.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption source\">\nPhoto: David Ramos\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"274\">\n<p>But summer has turned to fall. Or is it winter? The seizing of a trifecta in Washington by Democrats has coincided with a mass social movement demobilization. Those activated by Trump have stepped back. Democratic leaders spent more energy attacking the phrase \u201cdefund the police\u201d than they invested in police reform, which died in the Senate without a vote. Johnny Depp rode the backlash to a $15 million defamation verdict.<\/p>\n<p>In moments of political winter, turning inward or simply stepping out of the movement is common. The year 1968 saw an explosion of activism, capping more than a decade of progress that had been made in fits and starts. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, known as the Fair Housing Act, was signed into law during the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago turned into a police riot, and protests against the Vietnam War surged. The November election of Richard Nixon as president shifted the landscape. Demonstrations against the war continued, but they were never as large as those in the mid-\u201960s and included more radical elements advocating violent insurrection, further self-marginalizing. In 1969, a faction of activists took over Students for a Democratic Society, shut it down, and launched the Weather Underground in its place, declaring war on the United States and carrying out multiple attacks. The \u201cback-to-the-land\u201d movement saw young people dropping out of society and joining communes. The Black Panther Party was crushed and collapsed.<\/p>\n<p>Mark Rudd, an early member of SDS, helped convert it to the Weather Underground, a role he now regrets. \u201cAfter the war was over, a lot of the left went on a complete and total dead end,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want power. We\u2019re allergic to it. It\u2019s not in our DNA. We don\u2019t like coercion. We don\u2019t like hegemony.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Winning power requires working in coalition with people who, by definition, do not agree with you on everything; otherwise they\u2019d be part of your organization and not a separate organization working with you in coalition. Winning power requires unity in the face of a greater opposition, which runs counter to a desire to live a just life in each moment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople want justice, and they want their pain acknowledged,\u201d Rudd said. \u201cBut on the other hand, if acknowledging their pain causes organizations to die, or erodes the solidarity and the coalition-building that\u2019s needed for power, it\u2019s probably not a good thing. In other words, it can lead to the opposite, more power for the fascists.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Rudd spent seven years as a fugitive after the Weather Underground began to fall apart and later served a prison sentence. (\u201cI was a total nutcase,\u201d he said of his previous politics.) He has since returned to activism, but no amount of history in the movement can immunize anyone from a callout. Asked about the turmoil engulfing\u00a0left-wing organizations, he said he had personal experience. \u201cI have myself encountered it multiple times in the last years. And in fact, I was thrown out of an organization that I founded because of my \u2018racism,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWhat was my racism? When I tell people things that they didn\u2019t want to hear,\u201d he added, saying the disputes were over things like criticism he leveled at a young, nonwhite activist around the organizing of a demonstration. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s normal. It\u2019s what\u2019s happening everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s new is that it\u2019s now happening everywhere, whereas in previous decades it had yet to migrate out of more radical spaces. \u201cWe used to call it \u2018trashing,\u2019\u201d said Ross, the reproductive\u00a0justice activist. The 1970s were a brutal period in activist spaces, documented most famously in a 1976 Ms. Magazine article and a subsequent book by feminist Jo Freeman, both called \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jofreeman.com\/joreen\/trashing.htm\">Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood<\/a>.\u201d \u201cWhat is \u2018trashing,\u2019\u201d she asks, \u201cthis colloquial term that expresses so much, yet explains so little?\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>It is not disagreement; it is not conflict; it is not opposition. These are perfectly ordinary phenomena which, when engaged in mutually, honestly, and not excessively, are necessary to keep an organism or organization healthy and active. Trashing is a particularly vicious form of character assassination which amounts to psychological rape. It is manipulative, dishonest, and excessive. It is occasionally disguised by the rhetoric of honest conflict, or covered up by denying that any disapproval exists at all. But it is not done to expose disagreements or resolve differences. It is done to disparage and destroy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Ross, a Smith College professor who helped coin both the terms \u201creproductive justice\u201d and, in 1977, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/03\/26\/loreta-ross-on-the-phrase-women-of-color\/\">women of color,<\/a>\u201d said that she often hears from people skeptical of her critique of callout culture. \u201cThe\u00a0No. 1 thing people fear is that I\u2019m giving a pass to white people to continue to be racist,\u201d she said. \u201cMost Black people say, \u2018I am not ready to call in the racist white boy, I just ain\u2019t gonna do it.\u2019 They think it\u2019s a kindness lesson or a civility lesson, when it\u2019s really an organizing lesson that we\u2019re offering, because if someone knows if someone has made a mistake, and they know they\u2019re going to face a firing squad for having made that mistake, they\u2019re not gonna wanna come to you and be accountable to you. It is not gonna happen that way. And so the whole callout culture contradicts itself because it thwarts its own goal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"img-wrap align-bleed large-bleed width-auto\" data-reactid=\"275\">\n<div data-reactid=\"276\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-399543\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2022\/06\/GettyImages-470456304.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&#038;q=90\" alt=\"WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 20:  Sen. Bernie Sanders (L) (I-VT) departs with members of his staff after taking part in a \" Don \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption overlayed\">Sen. Bernie Sanders departs with members of his staff in Washington, D.C., on April 20, 2015.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption source pullright\">\nPhoto: Win McNamee\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"277\">\n<p><span data-shortcode-type=\"dropcap\" class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span><u>he tired online<\/u> debate over the question of cancel culture has been spinning for years. The question of its existence, however, has become a luxury reserved only for commentators not involved with any organization pursuing social justice. For those actively involved in the collective pursuit of a better world, the question is what to do about it, how to channel it toward its original end. \u201cWe must learn to do this before there is no one left to call out, or call we, or call us,\u201d wrote adrienne maree brown, a veteran activist in the harm reduction and abolition space, in an <a href=\"http:\/\/adriennemareebrown.net\/2020\/07\/17\/unthinkable-thoughts-call-out-culture-in-the-age-of-covid-19\/\">influential 2020 essay<\/a>. The collapse of progressive institutions is forcing a question most in the movement would rather avoid answering.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s become hard to hire leaders of unmanageable organizations. A recent article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy noted that nonprofits were having an extraordinarily hard time finding new leaders amid unprecedented levels of departures among senior officials. \u201cWe\u2019ve been around for 26 years, and I haven\u2019t seen anything like this,\u201d Gayle Brandel, CEO of PNP Staffing Group, a nonprofit executive search firm, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.philanthropy.com\/article\/large-numbers-of-nonprofit-leaders-are-stepping-down-and-the-competition-to-find-new-ones-is-fierce?cid=gen_sign_in\">told the trade publication<\/a>, explaining the difficulty in finding executives to fill the vacancies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe protests for racial equity in 2020 also changed many groups\u2019 and employees\u2019 perspectives and expectations,\u201d the Chronicle reported. \u201cIn some ways, it\u2019s an incredibly healthy response to both an opportunity and a set of challenges,\u201d Dan Cardinali, the outgoing CEO of Independent Sector, told the publication. \u201cIt is disruptive and, in the short term, inefficient. In the middle and long term, I\u2019m hopeful that it will be actually a profound accelerator in our ability to be a force for the common good, for a thriving and healthy country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Executive directors across the space said they too have tried to organize their hiring process to filter out the most disruptive potential staff. \u201cI\u2019m now at a point where the first thing I wonder about a job applicant is, \u2018How likely is this person to blow up my organization from the inside?\u2019\u201d said one, echoing a refrain heard repeatedly during interviews for this story. (One executive director noted that their group\u2019s high-profile association with a figure considered in social justice spaces to be problematic had gone from a burden to a boon, as the man now serves as an accidental screen, filtering out activists who\u2019d be most likely to focus their energy on internal fights rather than the organization\u2019s mission.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"Pullquote Pullquote--right\" data-reactid=\"278\"><p><span class=\"Pullquote-line\" data-reactid=\"279\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div data-reactid=\"280\">\u201cEveryone is scared, and fear creates the inaction that the right wing needs to succeed in cementing a deeply unpopular agenda.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div data-reactid=\"281\">\n<p>Another leader said the strife has become so destructive that it feels like an op. \u201cI\u2019m not saying it\u2019s a right-wing plot, because we are incredibly good at doing ourselves in, but\u00a0\u2014 if you tried\u00a0\u2014 you couldn\u2019t conceive of a better right-wing plot to paralyze progressive leaders by catalyzing the existing culture where internal turmoil and microcampaigns are mistaken for strategic advancement of social impact for the millions of people depending on these organizations to stave off the crushing injustices coming our way,\u201d said another longtime organization head. \u201cProgressive leaders cannot do anything but fight inside the orgs, thereby rendering the orgs completely toothless for the external battles in play. \u2026 Everyone is scared, and fear creates the inaction that the right wing needs to succeed in cementing a deeply unpopular agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During the 2020 presidential campaign, as entry-level staffers for Sanders repeatedly agitated over internal dynamics, despite having already formed a staff union,\u00a0the senator issued a directive to his campaign leadership: \u201cStop hiring activists.\u201d Instead, Sanders implored, according to multiple campaign sources, the campaign should focus on bringing on people interested first and foremost in doing the job they\u2019re hired to do.<\/p>\n<p>There are obvious difficulties for the leadership of progressive organizations when it comes to pushing back against staff insurrections. The insurrections are done in the name of justice, and there are very real injustices at these organizations that need to be grappled with. Failing to give voice to that reality can leave the impression that group leaders are only interested in papering over internal problems and trying to hide their own failings behind the mission of the organization. And in an atmosphere of distrust, the worst intentions are assumed. Critics of this article will claim that its intention is to tell workers to sit down and shut up and suck up whatever indignities are doled out in the name of progress.<\/p>\n<p>The reckoning has coincided with an awakened and belated appreciation for diversity in the upper ranks of progressive organizations. The mid-2010s saw an influx of women into top roles for the first time, many of them white, followed more recently by a slew of Black and brown leaders at most major organizations. One compared the collision of the belated respect for Black leaders and the upswell of turmoil inside institutions with the \u201chollow prize\u201d thesis. The most common example of the hollow prize is the victory in the 1970s and \u201980s of Black mayors across the country, just as cities were being hollowed out and disempowered. Or, for instance, salaries in the medical field collapsed just as women began graduating into the field.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI just got the keys and y\u2019all are gonna come after me on this shit?\u201d one executive director who said he felt like a version of those \u201970s-era mayors told The Intercept. \u201c\u2018It\u2019s white supremacy culture! It\u2019s urgent!\u2019 No motherfucker, it\u2019s Election Day. We can\u2019t move that day. Just do your job or go somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Being Black has by no means shielded executive directors or their deputies from charges of facilitating white supremacy culture. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to have a conversation about performance,\u201d said the manager. \u201cI\u2019m as woke as they come, but they\u2019ll say, \u2018He\u2019s Black, but he\u2019s anti-Black because he fired these Black people.\u2019\u201d The solution, he said: \u201cI buy them to leave, I just pay them to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Inner turmoil can often begin, the managers said, with performance-based disputes that spiral into moral questions. \u201cI also see a pattern of \u2026 people who are not competent in their orgs getting ahead of the game by declaring that others have engaged in some kind of -ism, thereby triggering a process that protects them in that job while there\u2019s an investigation or turmoil over it,\u201d\u00a0the foundation official added. Such disputes then trigger broader cultural conversations, with battle lines being drawn on each side.<\/p>\n<p>The same is true on campaigns. Dianne Morales, a woman of color, saw her New York mayoral campaign blown up by a staff uprising, which included complaints of mistreatment, misogyny, and racism\u00a0as well as a demand that workers be paid while on strike, which Morales noted was illegal given the campaign\u2019s use of public financing. In other cases, staff have approached local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America to level complaints against candidates they worked or had worked for, including Ihssane Leckey, a Muslim immigrant from Morocco running for a congressional seat outside Boston; Brandy Brooks, <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2022\/05\/08\/maryland-campaign-brandy-brooks-progressive-accountability\/\">a Black woman running for Montgomery County Council<\/a>\u00a0in Maryland; and Shahid Buttar, an Ahmadiyya Muslim immigrant running for Congress in San Francisco. When the chapters move to unendorse, citing toxicity inside the workplace, the campaigns are crippled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo\" data-reactid=\"282\">\n<div class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link\" data-reactid=\"283\">\n<div class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-thumbnail\" data-reactid=\"284\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"440\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/static\/placeholder_1_1.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&#038;q=90\" width=\"440\" aria-hidden=\"false\" data-reactid=\"285\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<div class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-text\" data-reactid=\"286\">\n<h2 class=\"PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-eyebrow\" data-reactid=\"287\">Related<\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"Greek\" data-reactid=\"288\">\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b\u2584\u200b<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"334\">\n<p>The reliance of so many organizations on foundation funding rather than member donations is central to the upheavals the groups have seen in recent years, one group leader said, because the groups aren\u2019t accountable to the public for failing to accomplish anything, as long as the foundation flows continue. \u201cUnlike labor unions, church groups, membership organizations, or even business lobbies, large foundations and grant-funded nonprofits aren\u2019t accountable to the people whose interests they claim to represent and have no concrete incentive to win elections or secure policy gains,\u201d they said. \u201cThe fundamental disconnect of organizations to the communities they purport to serve has led to endless \u2018strategic refreshes\u2019 and \u2018organizational resets\u2019 that have even further disconnected movements from the actual goals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Beyond not producing incentives to function, foundations generally exacerbate the internal turmoil by reflexively siding with staff uprisings and encouraging endless concessions, said multiple executive directors who rely on foundation support. \u201cIt happens every time,\u201d said one. \u201cThey\u2019re afraid of their own staffs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Organizations that start out by making significant concessions to staff often get run over in short order, said multiple organization heads who watched the process unfold. \u201cYou see it on the micro scale too,\u201d said one former executive director who plans to hunker down in the world of consulting for the next several years, \u201clike when there\u2019s an individual manager who gives up her or his power and just goes belly up\u00a0and says, \u2018Oh, yes, I have to apologize for thousands of years of oppression and I will never be able to make it up to you, but I will try.\u2019 People will just roll all over them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"img-wrap align-bleed large-bleed width-auto\" data-reactid=\"335\">\n<div data-reactid=\"336\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-399590\" src=\"https:\/\/theintercept.imgix.net\/wp-uploads\/sites\/1\/2022\/06\/AP22113746767742.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&#038;q=90\" alt=\"Activists participate in a rally to mark Earth Day at Lafayette Square, Washington, Saturday, April 23, 2022. The day after Earth Day, the League of Conservation Voters, SEIU, NAACP, Sierra Club, Sunrise Movement, Center for Popular Democracy, MoveOn, The Center for American Progress, and Green New Deal Network join more than 20 partner organizations in a nationwide mobilization, just as President Joe Biden and Congress are on the verge of taking climate action at the scale the crisis demands. (AP Photo\/Gemunu Amarasinghe)\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption overlayed\">Activists participate in a rally to mark Earth Day in Washington, D.C., on April 23, 2022.<\/p>\n<p class=\"caption source pullright\">\nPhoto: Gemunu Amarasinghe\/AP<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"337\">\n<p><span data-shortcode-type=\"dropcap\" class=\"dropcap\">T<\/span><u>he pendulum may<\/u> be swinging back. \u201cI have been a part of a bunch of conversations among progressives who have documented the pain that all the progressive groups are under. And there has been some organizing to push back against that,\u201d said one former group leader, saying that a letter \u2014 akin to the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/07\/07\/arts\/harpers-letter.html\">Harper\u2019s letter<\/a>\u201d \u2014 was being drafted and organized, \u201cdocumenting how people are using race or gender, or some combination of issues, as weapons and using it to distract from the mission of many organizations or to fight internal battles, the kind of stuff that you\u2019ve seen, while legitimizing the work that needs to be done in different institutions and across society on race and gender.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"Pullquote Pullquote--right\" data-reactid=\"338\"><p><span class=\"Pullquote-line\" data-reactid=\"339\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div data-reactid=\"340\">\u201cThey don\u2019t think what we\u2019ve been doing for decades has worked. Wanting to burn it down is not irrational.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div data-reactid=\"341\">\n<p>The pushback against callout culture, which might be surprising on a surface level, is bubbling up in Black movement spaces. \u201cIn the movement for Black lives, there is a lot of the top leaders saying, \u2018This is out of control. No one can be a leader in this culture. It\u2019s not sustainable. We\u2019re constantly being called out from the bottom,\u2019\u201d said one white movement leader who works closely with Black Lives Matter leaders. \u201cNowadays, there\u2019s an open conversation\u00a0\u2014 not open, there is a large conversation\u00a0\u2014 about the problems of this, and it\u2019s being led by people within the movement for Black lives,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have that three years ago, and if we did, they were a minority and were totally isolated. Now it\u2019s so bad that there\u2019s now a growing backlash within our own movements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, called the phenomenon out in\u00a0the book \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.boldtypebooks.com\/titles\/akiba-solomon\/how-we-fight-white-supremacy\/9781568588506\/\">How We Fight White Supremacy<\/a>,\u201d writing, \u201cPeople don\u2019t understand that organizing isn\u2019t going online and cussing people out or going to a protest and calling something out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>adrienne maree brown, an author and the former executive director of the radical direct action-oriented group the Ruckus Society, <a href=\"http:\/\/adriennemareebrown.net\/2020\/07\/17\/unthinkable-thoughts-call-out-culture-in-the-age-of-covid-19\/\">penned\u00a0the widely read essay<\/a>\u00a0\u201cunthinkable thoughts: call out culture in the age of covid-19\u201d in July 2020. She raised the provocative question of whether collectively we as a people still have a will to fight, or even to live. Indeed, oftentimes, according to multiple group leaders, when they have warned staff that the endless turmoil is destroying their organization, the argument doesn\u2019t land. \u201cThey don\u2019t think what we\u2019ve been doing for decades has worked,\u201d said one. \u201cWanting to burn it down is not irrational.\u201d Brown\u2019s essay is a plea to live again, to care again about the movement as a whole. Capitalization and bold in the original:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>the kind of callouts we are currently engaging in do not necessarily think about movements\u2019 needs as a whole. <strong>movements need to grow and deepen, we need to \u2018transform ourselves to transform the world\u2019*, to \u2018be transformed in the service of the work\u2019**. movements need to become the practice ground for what we are healing towards, co-creating. movements are responsible for embodying what we are inviting our people into.<\/strong>\u00a0we need the people within our movements, all socialized into and by unjust systems, to be on liberation paths. not already free, but practicing freedom every day. not already beyond harm, but accountable for doing our individual and internal work to end harm, which includes actively working to gain awareness of the ways we <em>can<\/em>\u00a0and <em>have<\/em>\u00a0harmed each other, and ending those cycles in ourselves and our communities.<\/p>\n<p>knee jerk call outs say: those who cause harm cannot change. they must be eradicated. the bad things in the world cannot change, we must disappear the bad until there is only good left.<\/p>\n<p>but one layer under that, what i hear is:<\/p>\n<p>we cannot change.<\/p>\n<p>we do not believe we can create compelling pathways from being harm doers to being healed, to growing.<\/p>\n<p>we do not believe we can hold the complexity of a gray situation.<\/p>\n<p>we do not believe in our own complexity.<\/p>\n<p>we can only handle binary thinking: good\/bad, innocent\/guilty, angel\/abuser, black\/white, etc.<\/p>\n<p>it is a different kind of suicide, to attack one part of ourselves at a time. cancer does this, i have seen it \u2013 oh it\u2019s in the throat, now it\u2019s in the lungs, now it\u2019s in the bones. when we engage in knee jerk call outs and instant consequences with no process, we become a cancer unto ourselves, unto movements and communities. we become the toxicity we long to heal. we become a tool of harm when we are trying to be, and i think meant to be, a balm.<\/p>\n<p>we must learn to do this before there is no one left to call out, or call we, or call us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Ross, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/08\/17\/opinion\/sunday\/cancel-culture-call-out.html\">in\u00a0an essay for the New York Times<\/a>, ends with a call for grace, pointing to the suppressed nature of the conversation.\u00a0\u201cI say to people today, as a survivor of COINTELPRO,\u201d she told me, referring to the FBI scheme to infiltrate and disrupt leftist movements by sowing internal dissension, \u201cif you\u2019re more wedded to destabilizing an organization than unifying it, part of me is gonna think you\u2019re na\u00efve, and the other part of me is gonna think you\u2019re a plant. And neither one of those is going to look good on you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In early June 2021, at the height of the battle over the climate provisions in Build Back Better, Fox News went for one such jiujitsu move, running a story headlined \u201cLeft-wing climate group Sunrise Movement torn by internal division.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The creative director at the left-wing Sunrise Movement claimed Tuesday that he was fired after accusing leadership of ignoring Black members\u2019 demands, generating internal conflict within the group dedicated to youth <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/us\/us-protests\">activism<\/a> against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/category\/us\/environment\/climate-change\">climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Alex O\u2019Keefe said he was terminated after sending a letter with demands from the \u201cSunrise Black Caucus\u201d calling on Sunrise Movement to \u201cpublicly reckon with the movement-wide crisis we are in [and] dismantle our white, owning-class culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Sunrise has had its share of internal crises, but this one didn\u2019t pan out the way Fox News had hoped. Varshini Prakash, the group\u2019s co-founder, quickly responded to O\u2019Keefe on Twitter:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Alex, I love you and you\u2019ve done incredible work for our movement, but this isn\u2019t what happened.<\/p>\n<p>You haven\u2019t shown up for work in months. Multiple friends and colleagues reached out repeatedly to figure out when you were coming back, and you didn\u2019t engage.<\/p>\n<p>In a movement powered by so many volunteers, we take really seriously the responsibility of being a paid staff member.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not going to say anything else publicly, but I\u2019m always here if you decide you want to talk.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Key to the organization\u2019s ability to move forward, though, was what happened next. The organization\u2019s Black staff unanimously agreed to put out a public statement squashing the situation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-reactid=\"344\">\n<p>Callouts have always been and will always be a part of any healthy culture. It\u2019s how the community responds to the callout that answers the question of whether it can continue to be a community. If every callout leads a mob to shoot first and ask questions later, we get what we have today. If the callout is examined soberly and judiciously, only those with merit get a hearing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen people do this callout stuff, one of the regulatory forces is people around them that they care about saying, \u2018Dude, don\u2019t blow this shit up.\u2019 They can\u2019t get that from the front of the room, they can\u2019t get that from the authority in the room. They have to get it through the people that they care about,\u201d said a leading organizer. \u201cThe best thing is just saying well, you need to be an organization, and organizations naturally have rank and authority that is respected. It has to function. So you\u2019re leaning on the regulatory forces that are already inherent in community and in organization to limit the opportunity of people to act that stuff out in certain environments.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"Pullquote Pullquote--left\" data-reactid=\"345\"><p><span class=\"Pullquote-line\" data-reactid=\"346\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div data-reactid=\"347\">If every callout leads a mob to shoot first and ask questions later, we get what we have today. If the callout is examined soberly and judiciously, only those with merit get a hearing.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div data-reactid=\"348\">\n<p>Priming those regulatory forces requires confident management, backed up by supportive funders, aligned with at least a faction of the staff. \u201cClarity and strength on both sides seems to work the best. So clarity and strength in saying, yeah, this institution or this movement, or across society, we have work to be done on racial justice, gender justice, economic justice, climate, and so on, and to try to not throw platitudes at that, but to be as specific and insightful as possible,\u201d one former executive director said. \u201cAnd then to say also: Here\u2019s the mission of our organization, here\u2019s what we\u2019re doing at our institution, company, university, whatever, here\u2019s what we\u2019re focused on, and this\u00a0\u2014 calling folks on whatever bullshit might be happening\u00a0\u2014 is not what we\u2019re doing. To be really clear about the work that needs to be done or the behaviors that are acceptable and not.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span data-shortcode-type=\"dropcap\" class=\"dropcap\">W<\/span><u>hen pressed,<\/u> even those who were most optimistic about a potential resolution of the crisis acknowledged that the pushback is at best in its embryonic phase. The pendulum is still carrying a wrecking ball through the headquarters of Guttmacher. The post-Floyd probe was the second such investigation in recent years. In 2017, Guttmacher surveyed its state affiliates and found dissatisfaction with the nature of its legislative coalition, with particular complaints directed at its alliance with the ACLU and Planned Parenthood. In the wake of the deadly white nationalist march in Charlottesville, which the ACLU had defended ahead of time in court, progressive staff wanted distance from the organization, while Planned Parenthood was seen as a stand-in for what Prism derided as \u201cwhite feminism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were questions about why the group was so abortion-focused and why reproductive justice organizations weren\u2019t at the table,\u201d one staffer recounted to Prism. \u201cWe were looking at abortion as a single issue and without making space for the handful of women of color in the room, let alone reproductive justice organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The resulting report, delivered in 2019, was based in part on extensive interviews with staff and managers, including a survey of 107 staffers, and found a \u201cwhite dominant culture\u201d that the organization pledged to diversify.<\/p>\n<p>The notion that Guttmacher is too abortion-focused, and ought to be more inclusive of the reproductive justice movement, risks \u201cmission drift,\u201d Ross told The Intercept. \u201cWhat are they talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would say that Guttmacher is a data collector, a research organization. They play that role very well, in my opinion. I\u2019m not quite sure how Guttmacher could be more reproductive justice-focused,\u201d she said. \u201cGuttmacher\u2019s great in the lane that it\u2019s in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Different organizations, and different people, play different roles in the movement, she said, and people should be\u00a0OK with that. \u201cGuttmacher is good at detailing the biological factors around reproductive oppression,\u201d Ross said. \u201cI would not want Guttmacher to lose its ability to give me the researchable, quotable data that I need to do my activist work. So I don\u2019t necessarily need them trying to redirect themselves into meeting whatever somebody else\u2019s definition of reproductive justice is.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the morning of May 2, 2022, employees of Guttmacher announced on social media\u00a0\u2014 Twitter, specifically\u00a0\u2014 the result of an effort that had stretched back months: They had sent a letter to management urging voluntary recognition of a new union.<\/p>\n<p>That very night, a story in Politico rocked the abortion rights world by revealing that the Supreme Court had decided to overturn Roe v. Wade, publishing a devastating draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito and joined by four others. It was the moment the reproductive justice movement had been\u00a0anticipating for years, and protesters immediately flooded the steps of the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>The next morning, the staff, however, was back at work on its union drive, with its first post thanking the public for its support of the effort: \u201cSeeing your messages, likes, follows, and retweets reaffirms our determination as we wait to hear from Guttmacher leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Reading the room, a follow-up post added that they were \u201cstill reeling from last night\u2019s leaked draft of the #SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe,\u201d expressing \u201csolidarity with abortion workers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Throughout May, Guttmacher\u2019s staff regularly updated the public on its battle with management over voluntary recognition. In mid-May, workers at the Groundswell Fund, one of the largest funders of reproductive justice organizations, announced that their five-month struggle with management over unionizing had resulted in voluntary recognition.<\/p>\n<p>Such recognition wouldn\u2019t come for Guttmacher\u2019s staff. On June 1, the workers said they\u2019d rejected management\u2019s offer because it demanded \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/guttunion\/status\/1532017203528212484?s=20&#038;t=sA26KzYKta9cEqtAYi3_jw\">months of no strike and non-disparagement clauses<\/a>.\u201d Instead, they would seek an election, they announced.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a symptom of poor threat assessment,\u201d said Ross. \u201cThey can\u2019t identify the main threat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Correction: June 13, 2022, 9:20 p.m.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>The Brandy Brooks campaign was erroneously included in a list of cases in which mostly white staff approached DSA chapters to seek the revocation of an endorsement. Her staff was not mostly white. The piece also misattributed a quote to Loretta Ross, and it has been removed.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone acknowledged that Zoom was less than ideal as a forum for a heartfelt conversation on systemic racism and policing. But the meeting was urgent, and, a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1515421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1515421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1515421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1515421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1515421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}