Wading Through Good Intentions: Why Movements Need to Get Over Themselves If They Want to Win

By Graham E. Whitaker | Big Mouth Media

You know the type:

The self-congratulating “activists” who show up in matching t-shirts, pose for the group photo, and then spend the next two hours explaining to actual working-class, queer, BIPOC folx how they’re doing activism wrong.

They mean well.

They usually vote the right way.

Some even donate big when election season rolls around.

But when the people most affected by injustice actually speak—when single struggling moms, disabled organizers, immigrant families, trans youth, and Black and brown leaders tell their truths—these same well-meaning folx often don’t listen.

Or worse, they tone-police.

They gatekeep.

They push these voices to the margins of movements built on their backs.

And it goes deeper than just not listening.

Some of these same “allies” actively work to undercut, undermine, and discredit organizers they deem too messy, too loud, too angry, too “unacceptable.”

It doesn’t matter how much lived experience, education, or frontline work these folx bring to the table—if it doesn’t fit the sanitized version of activism the comfortable want to see, they get written off, talked over, or pushed out entirely.

I’ve seen it firsthand.

I’ve lived it in conversations with my own family—brilliant, fierce, exhausted folx who fight every single day just to survive systems designed to grind them down.

My cousin, a Black queer womxn, got told she should “talk differently” by suburban Dems who’ve never spent a minute living the oppression they claim to fight.

My uncle, a Mexican immigrant working two jobs, was reduced to a pity story for a fundraising dinner—but nobody wanted him at the table when decisions were made.

My younger brother, a trans man navigating working-class Florida, isn’t polished enough for the nonprofits that say they fight for “equality.”

This isn’t theory.

This is real life.

And if we don’t start getting brutally honest about it, we are going to lose.

The truth is: imperfect allies are still allies.

We don’t need performative purity.

We need each other.

Critique to build, not to show off.
Organize. Arguing doesn’t win shit.
Movements win. Lone heroes burn out.
Progress is survival. Perfection is a fantasy.
Drop the ego or get dragged.
Think long-term. Tantrums today won’t win tomorrow’s wars.
Meet people where they are, or lose them.
Power doesn’t care if your feelings are hurt. Stay on mission.
Division is the oldest trick in the book. Don’t fall for it.

It’s easy to gather a few hundred people to wave signs for an afternoon.

It’s harder to actually build something that includes the messy, angry, complicated folx who can lead the real fight for change—if you let them.

If your “movement” only makes space for the voices that sound polished, or the stories that make you feel good about yourself—you don’t have a movement.

You have a pageant.

And we don’t have time for pageants.

Not while immigrant families are being torn apart.

Not while Black and brown trans kids are getting hunted.

Not while working-class single moms are getting crushed under poverty, with no safety net in sight.

Not while Florida politicians try to criminalize dissent and privatize survival itself.

If anything in this touches a nerve—but you’re sitting there telling yourself, “well, not me”—

look deeper.

If it stings, there’s a reason.

It’s probably you.

Movements that can’t self-correct can’t survive.

Movements that center only comfort will never touch real power.