Navigating conflict in activist spaces

Some ideas for how to make sure internal fighting doesn't derail your work

Yesterday, I had a really nice conversation with a journalist about activism. When we got to the questions about how to manage inter-personal conflict, I felt like there was too much to say for an article that wasn’t focused on this issue. And so, here you are …

When I talk to people about activism and how to get active, the question inevitably arises: how can we work across difference? How can we avoid having our groups fall apart over conflict? How can we work together in such a way that it doesn’t destroy everyone’s will to live?

Here are some ideas that you can draw on if you find your activist group mired in conflict. All of these are suggestions that will apply in some situations, but not in others. This isn’t prescriptive, these are ideas that might be able to help you get past something that has plagued your group — or maybe not! I’m just a random person who has spent too much time in meetings!

Organize around a specific goal

Not all of our work is centred on a specific goal, but if we’re able to identify a target of some kind, it can help re-centre the work of a group if a group has fallen off track. If you’re starting a group to promote feminist action, focus on an issue: a municipal bylaw, a rise in violence, a policy change, etc. If we have a focused goal, it’s much easier to stay on track than, say, if we get into a situation where we’re arguing over definitions of feminism and whose feminism is the correct feminism. There are places for those kinds of debates, but it might not be the case that your local feminist coalition is the right one for that.

When you organize around a specific goal, it matters much less that everyone checks off all the boxes of Correct Leftwing Politics. You’re also focused on something that is acheivable, leaving less time for inter-personal thumb twirlling. Think about the ideological diversity that existed within the feminist movement in Canada when feminists won the right to free and unfettered access to abortion — feminists who were progressive conservatives, United Church ladies, radical marxists — they were all involved to fight to change Canada’s abortion regime. If the movement set out to try and get progressive conservatives to become anticapitalists, they would have failed.

At the heart of this strategy is being very clear about what your group is, and what it is not. Your first meetings should spend time collectively developing your focus or vision. If you call a meeting to fight to address an injustice, it might be more obvious that this is the point of your group (to address or undo the injustice). Your group might not be (is probably not) out to organize the revolution, and that is OK. Focus on your goal. And if your group is to be out there to organize the revolution, then you’re going to have to employ different strategies to deal with difficult conversations and divergent political opinions.

Have difficult conversations in real life

Do not hold your difficult conversations online. Do not take someone’s online words as being more important than what they say in real life. Actions matter more than words.

Online spaces force us into binaries: this is good, that is bad, we are right, they are wrong, this is just, this is injust, and so on. But in real life, we don’t actually talk like this. We bring nuance into the debate (this is wrong turns into: here is my experience and it informs how I understand this to be wrong, and your different experience informs how you understand this to be wrong). Internet discussion forces us into binary thinking because usually, once a position is taken, we stick our elbows out to defend it. That works online, but when we’re together with others in a real-life space, it isn’t how we discuss anything.

In real life, we have humanity that we lack online, and that humanity can express shame, regret, nuance, fear, anxiety, hopefulness, and other emotions and techniques that can say things where words fail. This doesn’t render working through difficult relationships in real life easy, but it does give us the tools to navigate one another, something that is reduced into black and white online, while a for-profit fascist tech platform yells fight! fight! fight!

For more on binary thinking, check out this episode of Sandy and Nora.

Don’t pretend that your activist group is your social circle

Every time I say this to a crowd, I get laughs and chortles and snorts and eyes darting across the room. Your activist group should not be your social circle unless you are part of a very secretive closed society that is working to develop Marxism for 2027. Otherwise, most of your activist friends should be as diverse and distant as your hockey friends, your dog park friends, your coffee shop acquaintances or your work colleagues.

If we seek to fulfill all our human needs through our activism, we set ourselves up to entwine a lot of difficult human emotions and issues into the work that we’re trying to do. Fighting for more public transit? You absolutely do not want to find yourself in a meeting with the mayor and three people you’ve dated. Of course it might be the case that you meet a serious partner through this work, but this work cannot be all-consuming. If you’re in it for the long haul, your activism has to be able to survive your relationships ending, your roommates all moving out and you passing from one life stage to another.

I think that doing activism is the most important thing that we can do to feed our souls, but bird watching, playing sports, walking in parks, reading books, etc. are all necessary elements as well. Your activist friends don’t need to also be people you would go on vacation with, marry, have children with, live in a polycule with, and so on. They *might* be that but if they are *all* that, you might be swimming in way too shallow a pool to be effective as an activist and to be fulfilled as a human.

Bring in older activists to help navigate conflict

Sometimes conflict can arise because we’re all too deep in our own similar existences and an outside perspective can break through a relationship logjam that has arisen. More seasoned activists have likely lived through the same issue that you’re dealing with dozens of times. Having their insight and guidance is critical at all stages of activism, but it can be hard to ensure that our organizing is multi-generational. If you find that people are butting heads over things that are characteristic of the age group that your group mostly fits into, try to find an activist who is from a different generation to help you out.

Sometimes, our conflicts arise because our groups are too homogenius in terms of generation or age. Groups of people who are all about the same age might find themselves fighting over issues that operate like memes: this week, this might be the thing that is being talked about online and it’s impacted your collective organizing in some way, for example. Finding someone who isn’t part of this group, who might have no idea about the source of the tension but who can listen and react based on their own experiences, can give you enough outside experience that it can help you get past whatever issue is breaking people apart. Have the courage to call someone up who you respect and ask them for help.

This isn’t always going to work, of course. Sometimes, issues don’t translate well across generations. But generally, having someone who is not embroiled in a conflict come in with a fresh perspective or strategies to deal with an issue that they have used before, can help people get past whatever it is that is causing the difficulty.

Avoid purity tests and be broad based

Straight-up purity tests, I think, are somewhat rare. Most groups don’t require a skill testing question for people to join them, unless they’re doing something extremely radical. Mass movement mobilization needs to be open to everyone, regardless of how educated they are, how developed their ideas are or whatever. And so step one is to make sure that people don’t have to feel like they need to pass a test to get involved.

But what can be harder to weed out are the kinds of purity tests that expect that everyone will have the same political perspective if they’re fighting for something. The reality though is that it doesn’t matter if someone has bad politics on one thing if that thing has nothing to do with what you’re organizing for. If your group is broad based, you’re going to have people who join who might have voted conservative, who thinks that Mark Carney is cool or who thinks that capitalism is, on the balance of everything, good.

This is where having a clear goal is absolutely important. If your goal can be acheived by people who might have voted conservative, then who cares if they voted conservative? If you can’t stand to be in the same room as someone who has a vastly different opinion than you do, you should work on that because mass movement building requires us to be among people with whom we disagree. If you decide that you can’t put up with that, then mass movement organizing isn’t for you.

Social media has made us think that we can curate everything: who we follow is a statement on what we believe. Who we block demonstrates our virtue. But real life doesn’t work like that. No one should see someone’s presence in a group or action as an endorsement of everything that they believe in. If your work is broad based, someone with shitty ideas can join like anyone else.

While there is always a need to have smaller and closed groups of radicals, in general, we should always try to be broad-based in our organizing. If we’re broad based, we need to expect that people will show up with whom we will disagree. If we expect disagreement, we can navigate it easier when it arises than if we assume that everyone is cool and will mostly agree with everything we do or say.

Being broad based is important if we’re going to identify the tactics needed to convince average people of our issues. If we can’t influence average people on whatever issue we care about, then what’s the point of doing anything? While there is always space for smaller, more radical groups that are closed, most of our work needs to be among people who are not already convinced.

The most important part of this is that by giving someone whose politics suck access to people who are organizing and building together, there is a strong chance that their politics will shift. This collective learning and evolving is at the heart of changing society. If we don’t create conditions and spaces where people can learn in this way, they will learn from the far right. They don’t give a rat’s ass who you are. If you’ve shown up for coffee, they’ll gladly have you.

Foster a culture of debate

We are in desperate need of debate. A good debate shouldn’t feel like an argument. A good debate might be exhausting and frustrating but your group should emerge from a good debate with better ideas, more engaged volunteers and a more clear-eyed vision of what comes next.

The skill of debating isn’t something that is innate. Unless you grew up in a household where debate was part of life, you need to learn these skills somewhere. Learning the art of debate in activism is the perfect arena for this, because the arguments matter and the outcomes matter.

Debate also reminds us that no one has all the answers. Sometimes we lose the debate. Sometimes we win the debate. But the process of debate allows for a collective grappling with something that should make our ideas, arguments and tactics stronger. Debate is fundamental and if you find that your debates are becoming personal, or are making people hate one another, you aren’t debating properly. Maybe you need to pull someone in to help navigate a debate and teach people how to debate one another. Maybe you need to develop debate ground rules. But above all else: do not try to control debates or quash debates because you’re afraid of conflict. Our lives are conflict and we need to engage in conflict sometimes to arrive at a better path forward.

Understand the stakes of what you’re organizing for

Much of this advice assumes that your organizing is low stakes. Changing a government policy, asking for improved public services, fighting against hatred — you may be organizing around important issues, but these tactics are low stakes, as in they are unlikely to get get you imprisoned, shot at or beaten by cops.

Not all of our organizing is low stakes. Some of it is high stakes. When it is high stakes, police may be surveilling us, members of our group might risk deportation or maybe we put ourselves at risk of a visit from child services.

It is crucial that activists understand the stakes of their work. If you are doing higher stakes work, then knowing more about the members of our group becomes very important. Trust becomes much more important, as does understanding the theory and history behind what it is that you’re doing. Are you going to set off an explosive device alongside a member of the conservative party? Of course not. That’s much different than holding a rally where a member of a the conservative party participates.

We also have to be honest about the stakes. Sometimes, the stakes feel high. When we’re organizing our support for Gaza, the stakes seem catastrophically high. Depending on what kind of organizing you do though, sometimes the stakes aren’t actually as high as the moment feels like they are. In Canada, our actions in solidarity with Palestine seek to raise awareness (as Canada cannot actually force Israel to do anything on its own) and most of those actions (like rallies) remain low-stakes even though stopping the genocide is a matter of life and death. So understand the stakes: is an action that targets the CEO of Indigo going to net us charges and early morning raids? It’s high stakes, and activists must organize internally accordingly. Is the action a public demonstration of support for Gaza? Then its low stakes and the level of internal trust and agreement matters less.

If we have a clearer understanding of what’s at stake, we can more reasonably accept less or more information from the people we’re organizing with. When the stakes are very low, like “rally to fight violence against women” we can throw open the door to anyone who agrees with a statement like, “we should fight violence against women.” And then perhaps filter people out if there is a plan to organize something more radical in a smaller group.

It’s OK to call it a day

For every thing there is a season. If you find that your group has become unhappy, stressful, unfun, ineffective or even harmful, it’s ok to throw in the towel. While this might mean for you personally, I think that oftentimes it’s necessary for a whole gruop to consider this — maybe the group has run its course. Sometimes people lash or act out because there is a deeper dysfunction that is unresolvable. Your group should be mature enough to have a conversation about when it might be time to pull the plug. Don’t be afraid of it: something will likely rise in the place that you forged.

You don’t own one another. You aren’t cops.

Ultimately, a lot of this comes down to the fact that carceral logic has deeply infected activist spaces. It is important to remember: activist spaces are not our personal social media channels and we cannot police what others do or don’t do. We are not cops. If we find that the personal actions of someone in a group we’re involved with are impacting us personally, we need to step back and ask why do their actions matter?

Maybe they matter because we’re too involved with that person. Have we crossed a boundary where an opinion they have or something about them reflects on you personally? Could that be the source of tension?

Maybe they matter because they reflect on the entire group. That might mean that the group is too small, or too involved in the lives of the individuals involved. That also might mean that the group isn’t focused on it’s goal and instead, the antics of an individual is overshadowing what the group is trying to achieve. In that case, the group has to do more to focus on its goal.

Maybe they matter because their is stopping others from getting involved. In that case, it is very important to address their behavior and see if there’s a way to separate that person’s actions from the work of the group.

Or, maybe they don’t matter.

We do not control what others do, what they think, how they process, how they express themselves. Someone’s participation in a thing doesn’t mean that everything about that person is endorsed by the thing they’re involved in. When I think of my own activism, if someone who is involved in protest I organize for public transit, their involvement is not my active endorsement of anything about them personally.

Social media makes us believe that we can curate everything that we touch; that the presence of someone in your presence equals a full endorsement of that person. But real life doesn’t work that way, and when we try to make it work that way, we just fight one another.

We aren’t cops. Activist work isn’t virutous in and of itself. It’s just work. And just like we don’t get to choose our colleagues, we don’t really get to choose who we’re active with. We can navigate around people who bother us or who make us feel bad, but we can’t slip into carceral logics and try to get The Group to become a court of law to litigate someone. There are *so many shitty people* on the left that if you’re going to commit yourself to leftwing politics, you have to expect to navigate around people who are shit. Hell, even today, I was on a call where someone talked about the good work being done by someone who has physically assaulted me. If you’re lucky to live for a long time, you will develop relationships with people, and maturing in the movement means navigating a graveyard of the absolute best and absolute worst people you’ve ever met.

What else are you experiencing that’s derailing your activism? Don’t share anything that you wouldn’t want cops to read!