Building Intersectional Movements: Managing Power and Ongoing Conflicts

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Movements at the Organizational Level

Abstract

This study emerges amidst increasing calls for social movements to become intersectional and limited research on traditional social movement organizations transitioning into intersectional organizations. A national umbrella network composed of about 30 local grassroots organizations worked through their process of becoming an intersectional organization after operating as a traditional organization for about 35 years. The interest here is in how participants’ concepts of power were managed throughout the transition. Data for this study includes documents from the organization detailing their transition, direct participation, and interviews with organizational leaders about the decision-making process evaluated by critical intersectional rhetoric, as explicated by Kearl (2015). While organizational leaders varied in perceptions of power, they also acknowledged that this experience granted them the most power they ever had in decision-making processes within similarly arranged social movement spaces. Despite an array of conflicts that arose, participants’ belief in the organization’s trajectory, alongside issues being addressed effectively in real time, led to participants’ belief that their power in the decision-making process would increase over time.

Author

• Evonnia Woods