(The Politics of Intersectionality) Sharon Doetsch-Kidder - Social Change and Intersectional Activism - The Spirit of Social Movement-Palgrave Macmillan (2012)

Social Change and
Intersectional Activism
The Politics of Intersectionality
Series Editors:
Ange-Marie Hancock, University of Southern California
Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London
Solidarity Politics for Millennials

Ange-Marie Hancock
Social Change and Intersectional Activism: The Spirit of Social

Movement
Sharon Doetsch-Kidder
S oc i a l C h a nge a n d
I n t e r sec t iona l Ac t i v ism
Th e Spi r i t of S o c i a l Mov e m e n t
S haro n D oe t sc h-Kid d e r
SOCIAL CHANGE AND INTERSECTIONAL ACTIVISM
Copyright © Sharon Doetsch-Kidder, 2012.
Chapter 1, “Loving Criticism: A spiritual philosophy of social change,” is
reprinted with permission of Feminist Studies, www.feministstudies.org.
Copyright © 1984, 2007 by the Estate of Audre Lorde. Excerpted from
SISTER OUTSIDER: ESSAYS AND SPEECHES. Used by permission of the
Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency.
Copyright © 1981, 1983 by Cherríe Moraga. Excerpted from THIS BRIDGE
CALLED MY BACK: WRITINGS BY RADICAL WOMEN OF COLOR. First
published by Persephone Press, Watertown, MA, in 1981. By permission
of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York. All rights
reserved.
Cover artwork by Kesh Ladduwahetty, www.artforactivists.com.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2012 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
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this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
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Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
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Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
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ISBN 978-1-349-29780-1 ISBN 978-1-137-10097-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137100979
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Doetsch-Kidder, Sharon, 1975–
Social change and intersectional activism : the spirit of social
movement / Sharon Doetsch-Kidder.
pages cm.—(The politics of intersectionality)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Social movements. 2. Social change. I. Title.
HM881.D64 2012
303.48⬘4—dc23 2011048614
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: June 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my mother,
who taught me about love, respect, and fairness
C on t e n ts
Series Editors’ Introduction ix

A Word about Social Change and Intersectional Activism xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
1 Loving Criticism: A Spiritual Philosophy of Social Change 21
2 Love: Activist Motivations 49
3 Faith: Connecting Activist Beliefs and Methods 83
4 Joy: Activist Pleasures 119
Conclusion 153
Appendix I: Methodology 157
Appendix II: Narrator Biographical Summaries 171
Notes 183
Bibliography 241
Index 263
Se r i es E di t or s’ I n t roduc t ion
T he Politics of Intersectionality series builds on the longstanding

insights of intersectionality theory from a vast variety of disciplinary
perspectives. As a globally utilized analytical framework for under-
standing issues of social justice, Leslie McCall, Mary Hawkesworth,
and others argue that intersectionality is arguably the most impor-
tant theoretical contribution of women’s and gender studies to date.
Indeed the imprint of intersectional analysis can be easily found on
innovations in equality legislation, human rights, and development
discourses.
The history of what is now called “intersectional thinking” is
long. In fact, prior to its mainstreaming, intersectionality analysis was
carried for many years mainly by black and other racialized women
who, from their predetermined perspective, perceived as absurd, not
just misleading, any attempt by feminists and others to homogenize
women’s situation, particularly in conceptualizing such situations as
analogous to that of racialized others. As Brah and Phoenix point out,
many black feminists fulfilled significant roles in the development of
intersectional analysis, such as the Combahee River Collective, the
black lesbian feminist organization from Boston, who pointed out
the need of developing an integrated analysis and practice based upon
the fact that major systems of oppression interlock rather than oper-
ate separately. However, the term “intersectionality” itself emerged
nominally from the field of critical legal studies, where critical race
feminist Kimberle Williams Crenshaw wrote two pathbreaking arti-
cles, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Critique
of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist
Politics” and “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity
Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” At nearly the same
time, social theorist Patricia Hill Collins was preparing her landmark
work, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the
Politics of Empowerment, which characterized intersections of race,
class, and gender as mutually reinforcing sites of power relations.
x Se r i e s E di t or s’ I n t r oduc t ion
Both Crenshaw and Collins gave the name “intersectionality”

to a far larger and more ethnically diverse trajectory of work, now
global in nature, that speaks truth to power sited differentially rather
than centralized in a single locus. What could also be called inter-
sectional analysis was in fact developing at roughly the same time
among European and postcolonial feminists, including Anthias and
Yuval-Davis (1983; 1992); Brah (1996); Essed (1991); Ifekwunigwe
(1999); Lutz (1991); Meekosha; and Min-ha (1989). Indeed it seems
that, in a manner parallel to that which Sandra Harding characterizes
as the evolution of standpoint theory, intersectionality was an idea
whose time had come precisely because of the plethora of authors
working independently across the globe to make vastly similar sets
of claims. Around the world, those interested in a more comprehen-
sive and transformative approach to social justice—whether sociolo-
gists, legal scholars, feminist theorists, policymakers, or human rights
advocates—have used the language and tenets of intersectionality to
more effectively articulate injustice and advocate for positive social
change.
The books in this series represent an interrogation of intersection-
ality at various levels of analysis. They unabashedly foreground the
politics of intersectionality in a way that is designed to both honor
the legacy of earlier scholarship and activism as well as to push the
boundaries of intersectionality’s value to the academy and most
importantly to the world. We interpret the series title, The Politics of
Intersectionality, in two general ways.
First, we emphasize the politics of intersectionality, broadly con-
ceived; that is to say we include debates among scholars regarding the
proper conceptualization and application of the term “intersectional-
ity” as part and parcel of the series’ intellectual project. Is intersection-
ality a paradigm? Is intersectionality a normative political (specifically
feminist) project? Is it a method or epistemological approach? Is it
(merely) a concept with limited applicability beyond multiply margin-
alized populations? Our own idiosyncratic answers to these questions
are far less important than the open dialogue we seek by including
them within the scholarly discourse generated by the series.
What this means pragmatically is that rather than dictatorially
denote an extant definition of intersectionality and impose it on every
author’s manuscript, as series editors our task has been to meaning-
fully push each author to grapple with their own conceptualization of
intersectionality and facilitate their interaction with an ever-growing
body of global scholarship, policy, and advocacy work as they render
such a conceptualization transparent to readers, reflexive as befits the
Se r i e s E di t or s’ I n t r oduc t ion xi
best feminist work, and committed to rigorous standards of quality

no matter the subject, the method, or the conclusions. As editors we
have taken such an active role precisely because grappling with the
politics of intersectionality demands our adherence to the normative
standards of transparency, reflexivity, and speaking to multiple sites
of power for which intersectionality is not only known but lauded as
the gold standard. It is our honor to build this area of scholarship
across false boundaries of theory and praxis; artificially distinct aca-
demic disciplines; and the semipermeable line between scholarship
and activism.
No less importantly we emphasize politics to mean, well, politics,
be it everyday senses of justice; so-called “formal” politics of social
movements, campaigns, elections, policy, and government institu-
tions; or personal politics of identity, community, and activism across
a broad swath of the world. While this general conceptualization of
politics lends itself to the social sciences, we define social sciences in
a broad way that again seeks to unite theoretical concerns (whether
normative or positive) with interpretive and empirical approaches
across an array of topics far too numerous to list in their entirety.
The second way we interpret the series title—simultaneously, as
one might expect of intersectionality scholars—is with an emphasis
on the word intersectionality. That is, the books in this series do
not depend solely on 20-year-old articulations of intersectionality,
nor do they adhere to one particular theoretical or methodological
approach to study intersectionality; they are steeped in a rich liter-
ature of both substantive and analytical depth that in the twenty-
first century reaches around the world. This is not your professor’s
“women of color” or “race-class-gender” series of the late twentieth
century. Indeed an emphasis on up-to-date engagement with the best
and brightest global thinking on intersectionality has been the single
most exacting standard we have imposed on the editing process. As
series editors we seek to develop manuscripts that aspire to a level of
sophistication about intersectionality as a body of research that is in
fact worthy of the intellectual, political, and personal risks taken by so
many of its earliest interlocutors in voicing and naming this work.
Currently intersectionality scholarship lacks a meaningful clear-
inghouse of work that speaks across (again false) boundaries of a par-
ticular identity community under study (e.g., black lesbians, women
of color environmental activists), academic disciplines or the geo-
graphical location from which the author writes (e.g., Europe, North
America, Southeast Asia). For that reason we expect that the bibliog-
raphies of the manuscripts will be almost as helpful as the manuscripts
xii Se r i e s E di t or s’ I n t r oduc t ion
themselves, particularly for senior professors who train graduate stu-

dents and, especially those graduate students who seek to immerse
themselves broadly and deeply in contemporary approaches to inter-
sectionality. We are less sanguine, however, about the plethora of
modifiers that have emerged to somehow modulate intersectionality—
be it intersectional stigma, intersectional political consciousness,
intersectional praxis, postintersectionality, paradigm intersectionality,
or even Crenshaw’s original modes of structural and political inter-
sectionality. Our emphasis has been on building the subfield rather
than consciously expanding the lexicon of modes and specialities for
intersectionality.
A Wor d a bou t S O C I A L C H A N G E
A N D I N T E R SEC T IONA L AC T I V ISM
In Social Change and Intersectional Activism, the second book of

this series, Sharon Doetsch-Kidder turns our attention to the chal-
lenges and spiritual journey of “doing intersectionality” as activists,
scholars, and humans seeking justice. Doetsch-Kidder analyzes 25
oral histories of activists who self-identify with various races, ethnici-
ties, sexualities, and genders as they attempt to put the principles of
intersectionality into practice. In doing so she brings together lit-
erature, politics, and multicultural feminist theory to illuminate the
vagaries of emotions, spiritual practices, and the politics of privilege.
Doetsch-Kidder’s work on activists and the particular stories they
weave from their political lives and work is in many ways a perfect segue
from the more theoretical Solidarity Politics for Millennials: A Guide
to Ending the Oppression Olympics, which preceded Social Change and
Intersectional Activism in our series. Though both books are focused
on the politics of the United States, they consciously analyze the con-
text in a way that recognizes the United States as just one location for
intersectional work. We expect that future manuscripts will similarly
offer nuanced analyses of the politics of intersectionality in a wide vari-
ety of national and global contexts. Indeed we welcome such projects.
It is thus with pleasure and pride that we invite you to join a global
intellectual endeavor—that of the Politics of Intersectionality Series.
We welcome your engagement, submissions, and constructive com-
ments as we move forward. We thank Palgrave Macmillan, our editor
Robyn Curtis and her staff, and the global community of intersec-
tionality scholar-practitioners for this opportunity to broaden the
world’s conversation in the direction of social justice.
A NGE-M ARIE H ANCOCK
University of Southern California, USA
NIR A YUVAL-DAVIS
University of East London, UK
Ac k now l e dgm e n t s
I thank, first of all, my research participants for sharing their life

stories, thoughts, and feedback. And to all the antiracist, feminist,
and queer writers and activists whose work has made mine possible: I
am eternally grateful for what your work has meant in my life. I thank
my contemporaries who are doing the hard work of writing about
spirituality and love in an academic environment. Knowing I am not
alone has helped me continue writing.
I am grateful also to my dissertation committee for providing sup-
port, helpful feedback, and encouragement throughout the process of
research and writing. Leila J. Rupp was always speedy with advice and
comments and helped me navigate the historical and sociological lit-
erature. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim has also been a champion mentor since
I first arrived at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB),
and asked helpful critical questions. Chela Sandoval helped me situate
my work and take seriously its contribution. Julie Carlson asked criti-
cal questions that helped me gain clarity.
I appreciate the useful feedback and support from series editors Ange-
Marie Hancock and Nira Yuval-Davis. My DC Writing Group, especially
Vicki Watts and Michelle Corbin, provided careful readings, insight-
ful responses, and good conversation during the early stages of writ-
ing. I also received very helpful feedback from Tom Roche, Elizabeth
Currans, and T. Todd Masman. The DC Feminist Activist Book Club,
particularly Charlene Allen, Nadine Gartner, Maymangwa Luisanda,
and Ifie Okwuje, offered stimulating discussion that helped me find
my intellectual self again after the crazy first months of motherhood.
I also appreciate the ideas, insights, and support shared by other
professors and colleagues at UCSB, particularly Celine Parreñas
Shimizu, Eileen Boris, Carl Gutiérrez-Jones, Aranye Fradenberg,
Maurizia Boscagli, Richard Helgerson, Chris Newfield, Alan Liu,
Jim Lee, Steve DeCanio, Giles Gunn, Ellie D. Hernández, and Laury
Oaks. I benefited greatly from the intellectual community of Andrea
Fontenot, Huda Jadallah, Carina Evans, Marc Coronado, John
Gamber, Steve Sohn, Sharleen Nakamoto, Simone Chess, Carolyn
xvi A c k now l e d g m e n t s
Herbst Lewis, Jess O’Keefe, Sandra Dawson, Kathy Glass, Alison

Kafer, Matt Richardson, and other smart graduate students enrolled
or visiting UCSB. I gained a lot from the intellectual community of
the School of Criticism and Theory, where I had the opportunity to
present some of my early work on spirituality and Chicana feminism.
I am thankful for the long-term mentoring of many brilliant femi-
nists whom I met while a student at Georgetown University, espe-
cially Leona Fisher, Kim F. Hall, Pam A. Fox, Margaret Stetz, and
Penny Rue. The intellectual and political foundation I gained at
Georgetown has been invaluable.
My ki and aikido training on two coasts contributed a great deal to
the perspective that produced this dissertation. For this I thank instruc-
tors and members of the UCSB Aikido Club, Southern California
Ki Society, Northern Virginia Ki Aikido, Reston Ki Aikido, Eastern
Ki Federation, the International Ki Society, and Aikido of Norfolk.
The teaching and support of David and Ileana Shaner, Gregory Ford-
Kohne, and Minh Pham has been especially valuable.
My experiences at Shambhala centers, and practices I learned there,
have been invaluable to my writing. I thank Cynthia Drake, who first
introduced me to Shambhala, and all the teachers and practitioners I
have encountered during programs at the DC center and at land cen-
ters Karmê Chöling and Dorje Denma Ling. Those spaces helped me
find the mental space to allow this text to come into being.
I am grateful for the sustaining friendship and conversation of
Jennifer Smith Minter, Cristina Zamora, Mike Gurven, and the
Jadallah-Karraa family. The support of Carolyn Hurwitz, Laurie
Miller, and Mariko Cool, who provided shelter near DC, and Nancy
Cantalupo was critical in helping me get through graduate school.
Thanks also to the many other friends who responded to research
questions and requests for comments and provided support and
encouragement, online, by phone, and in person.
Thanks to Mark Meinke and the Rainbow History Project for
sharing oral histories of Washington, DC, lesbian, gay, bisexual,
trans, and queer (LGBTQ) activists and connecting me with sev-
eral research participants. Bret Beemyn also shared interviews and
unpublished material from his fieldwork with LGBTQ activists in
DC. A Woodrow Wilson dissertation fellowship in Women’s Studies,
National Women’s Studies Association Graduate Scholarship in
Lesbian Studies, Virginia’s Community Colleges Paul Lee Professional
Development Grant, and several grants and fellowships from UCSB
supported my research, as did teaching opportunities at the UC
Washington Center. The staff of UCSB’s English, Feminist Studies,
A c k now l e d g m e n t s xvii
and Chican@ Studies departments have been wonderfully helpful,

particularly as I spent so much of my research time far away from
campus. I am thankful for library access granted by the University
of Maryland, College Park, and for several public libraries in Fairfax
and Virginia Beach, Virginia, where I found space to work. I am also
grateful for DC artist Keshini Ladduwhetty’s speedy and beautiful
work on the cover illustration.
Nasima Mahmood’s childcare helped me get started writing again,
and Virginia Beach Friends School provided a fantastic environment
for my son that let me spend my days working. I am deeply grate-
ful for the assistance and encouragement of my family. Bonnie and
Paul Kidder provided childcare, meals, and other household support
that helped me find time for research, writing, and practice. Carolyn
Doetsch provided invaluable support, particularly in the final stages
of writing, when she shared her home and let me spend most of my
waking hours working. My son, Miles, brought me artwork and toys
to enjoy while I wrote and brings me immeasurable joy every day. My
partner, Matt, sustains me through so many actions, large and small,
and by just being him, my love and my anchor.
I n t roduc t ion
For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by

institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive.
Audre Lorde1
Haven’t we always borne jugs of water, children, poverty? Why not

learn to bear baskets of hope, love, self-nourishment and to step
lightly? . . . we have commensed to carry with pride the task of thawing
hearts and changing consciousness.
Gloria Anzaldúa 2
As deeply as I wanted safety or freedom, I wanted desire, hope, and

joy. What, after all, was the worth of one without the other?
Dorothy Allison3
In Stride toward Freedom, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.,

describes the tireless work of black ministers during the Montgomery
Bus Boycott, who spoke to their congregations every Sunday, and
at organizing meetings in between, of the necessity of loving your
enemy and the transformative power of love. These reminders helped
keep participants focused on the principles underlying nonviolent
social action through the boycott, which lasted more than 12 months
and became an important demonstration of the power of love fused
with ethical tactics in political action. More than 50 years later, in our
decentralized movements, we need to remind ourselves of the mean-
ing of our work, of the values for which we work, and of our power
to transform the world by changing how we approach conflicts. This
is our spiritual work.
Feminist political scientist Leela Fernandes argues that “movements
for social or political transformation have faltered not because of the
impossibility of realizing their visions of social justice, but because
such transformations cannot be complete unless they are explicitly
and inextricably linked to a deeper form of spiritual transformation on
a mass basis.”4 For many years, scholars and practitioners of feminist
spirituality have been integrating spiritual work with the work of social
2 S o c i a l C h a ng e a n d I n t e r s e c t ion a l A c t i v i s m
change.5 Some writers have shown what an important role spiritual-

ity has played in the lives of people who want to make the world a
better place.6 The increasing attention to spiritual aspects in antira-
cist feminist theory emphasizes the importance of its spiritual dimen-
sions.7 Much of the work on spirituality, however, gets little attention
from people committed to secular activism and political change, many
of whom view spirituality as individualist, self-indulgent, apolitical,
or tainted by the use of religious rhetoric to promote violence and
oppression. By focusing on writers and activists whose work is rec-
ognized as being primarily about fighting for the rights of people
who are multiply oppressed, this book demonstrates that attention
to spirit is central to struggles for social justice. The use of religion
to restrict freedom and promote separation makes spirituality a realm
that requires antiracist feminist participation and contestation.
In interpreting empirical data with the help of antiracist feminist
theory and spiritual writing, I show how spirit works in the daily
lives of people working toward social change. In oral histories of 25
activists who organize at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexu-
ality, disability, and nation, I trace several rarely acknowledged yet
fundamental aspects of social movements: that activists are driven by
love, that their faith in humanity can be seen in their methods, and
that their work brings them profound joy. By examining the beliefs,
principles, emotions, and pleasures that guide and sustain intersec-
tional activism, I argue for the centrality of spirit to struggles for
social change. This research contributes to feminist, social move-
ment, and ethnic studies scholarship, transforming understandings
of the dynamics of contemporary US activism.
Intersectionality
In “The Heat Is On Miss Saigon Coalition,” activist Yoko Yoshikawa
quotes “an exasperated TV reporter” who asks, “What do lesbians
and gay men have to do with protesting Miss Saigon?”8 Yoshikawa
despairs of the mainstream media’s inability to recognize the com-
plexity and multiplicity of Asian and Pacific Islander communities
but finds hope in her vision of “a possible future: where a complex
identity is not only valued, but becomes a foundation for unity.” She
postulates that those “who occupy the interstices—whose very lives
contain disparate selves” can bring different groups together.9 That
aspiration is the foundation of this project.10
This book focuses on work, referred to variously as intersectionality,
“interstitial feminism,” “US third world feminism,” and “multiracial
I n t r oduc t ion 3
feminism,” that theorizes multiple identities and argues for the neces-
sity of coalitions that cross lines of class, race, sexuality, gender, and
disability.11 All these terms have different origins and were conceived
with different purposes in mind. I am more interested in what they
share, which is a view of different forms of oppression as connected
and a commitment to complexity that often accompanies experiences
of multiple identities. I use these terms, as well as “differential con-
sciousness” and “antiracist feminism,” more or less interchangeably
to emphasize the common form of consciousness they reference, and
because most of the writers and activists I cite could be described
with any or all of these terms.
By “intersectional activism,” I mean activism that addresses more
than one structure of oppression or form of discrimination (racism,
classism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, nationalism,
etc.).12 Intersectional activists are often marginalized in social move-
ment histories because they don’t work in organizations that focus
solely on “women’s issues,” “gay and lesbian issues,” or “race issues,”
for example. As people whose experiences and thinking transcend
categories, they are often lost in the interstices of history and poli-
tics but they have the capacity to bridge movements and highlight
connections among different people and groups. Bridging the divide
between theory and practice, this book examines intersectional activ-
ists’ narratives in order to identify theories, beliefs, principles, and
emotions that drive and derive from activism, and to identify a com-
mon spirit that connects social movements across generations, iden-
tity divides, and local, national, and global layers of community and
struggle.
There is now a wealth of work on intersectionality targeting schol-
arly and popular audiences.13 Anthologies focused on marginalized
identities collect autobiographical, creative, and critical work from
the margins, developing identities, theories, and communities.14
More and more historical studies detail the struggles and contribu-
tions that intersectional activists have made to movements for social
justice.15 Theory and literature by multiracial feminist thinkers like
Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and bell hooks is widely taught in gen-
der and women’s studies, American studies, race and ethnic studies,
and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) studies
courses. Yet the potential of intersectionality to transform scholarly
and activist work remains limited by our common insecurities about
the boundary-busting that it demands.
The inner voice, or “still small voice,” connected with experience
is foundational to the epistemology of intersectionality and to why
spirit is so central to its development.16 Intersectionality or multira-

cial feminism—what antiracist feminist scholar Chela Sandoval calls
“differential consciousness”—grows from an internal sense of the
intrinsic value of human beings—of oneself and one’s communities.
That is why Sandoval calls differential consciousness the “method-
ology of love.” “Differential consciousness” describes an ability to
read power relations and respond in a way that helps oppressed peo-
ples survive.17 It is a technology for reading a situation and choosing
tactics that enable one to act effectively to equalize power relations.
Sandoval uses “technology” to refer to the “practical arts” of activ-
ism.18 Technologies combine pragmatism and creativity, highlighting
activism as an artful practice, one that is always changing along with
the practitioner and the situations she encounters. Sandoval writes,
“The differential technologies of oppositional consciousness, as uti-
lized and theorized by a racially diverse US coalition of women of
color, demonstrate the procedures for achieving affinity and alliance
across difference; they represent the modes that love takes in the post-
modern world.”19 Working across differences is not only about strate-
gic activism. It is a way of loving others and working from a place of
love in the contemporary United States.
The ability to choose among political tactics goes hand in hand
with an ability to employ different ways of knowing. The experience
of difference, in itself, encourages critical thinking and questioning
of assumptions that many take for granted. In her interdisciplinary
study of differential consciousness, which she refers to as “mestiza
consciousness,” political scientist Edwina Barvosa argues that the
experience of identifying with multiply marginalized groups leads to
a greater capacity for critical thought that gives people in the inter-
sections an epistemological edge.20 People living and working at the
intersections of different forms of oppression experience conflicts
and contradictions that encourage questioning and critical thinking,
which is why they often offer fruitful insights that bridge differences
and gaps in political work. In the section “Epistemology,” I explore
the epistemological insights of intersectionality more deeply.
Barvosa connects the ability to choose between different tactics,
geared to survival—Sandoval’s differential consciousness—with
the experience of ambivalence that accompanies multiple identities.
Because they do not fit easily into one group, intersectional activists
often have mixed feelings about the different groups with which they
connect and are, therefore, less likely to follow along with established
or prescribed ways of doing things. Instead, they tend to see multiple
options and choose among them according to the situation at hand.21
These experiences of conflict between different identities can unravel

the stories one tells oneself—about who one is and how the world
works, who is “good” and “bad”—and one’s feeling of “authentic
self-fulfillment.”22 This is part of the connection with spiritual work
that seeks to promote acceptance of internal contradictions and to
reduce the grip of self-narrative and ego over the mind so that we can
work to improve ourselves and our communities. In the following
section, I explain the relevance of spirit for intersectional activism and
for the work of social change.
Spirit
It is their deep longings for connection, for justice, for a world better
than the one they inherited that drive activists.23 Politics that tap into
these feelings can create a spiritual force that inspires and sustains
social movements.24 This is the erotic power, the human spirit, that
can move people to want and to demand more from themselves and
their communities.25
Although contemporary spirituality is not necessarily religious, in
a US context, understandings of spirituality derive historically from
religious teachings and practices, and experiences of spirituality are
usually, if not always, deeply influenced by religious cultures, small
and large.26 The spiritualities and understandings of spirit presented
here draw on and participate in American metaphysical religion, which
plays a significant role in US history and culture.27 I use “spirit” for
the way it plays between a secular concept of feeling and a religiously
influenced notion of power or presence.28 In the contemporary
period, metaphysics indicates “those preoccupied in some sense with
what lies beyond the physical plane” and maintains an association
with healing.29 I use “spirituality” interchangeably with “metaphys-
ics” to refer to practices, experiences, and ideas through which people
seek to connect with nature, larger communities, their bodies, or an
internal sense of wisdom, values, or principles.30 I draw on under-
standings of spirituality from a variety of sources, but focus primarily
on writings by multiracial feminists and Buddhist teachers.31
Though the themes discussed in this book are present in many reli-
gious traditions, I find Buddhist philosophy, which is based on prac-
tices of observing the mind, particularly helpful as a way to discuss
spirit without relying on a god(dess), while leaving space for those
who believe in the divine to interpret our oneness as oneness with
God(dess).32 Much of Buddhist and Buddhist-influenced thought
teaches that spiritual wisdom comes from within, which democratizes
knowledge, because everyone has the capacity for looking within

themselves to learn. The belief in inner wisdom also relies on experi-
ence, because the process of looking within, the practice of medita-
tion, for example, is the way to tap into spiritual knowledge.33 This
looking within leads to recognition of “what is deepest and strongest
and richest within each of us,” those aspects of humanness that con-
nect all people.34 This internally produced knowledge in turn shapes
one’s view of the world. If one can, through spiritual experience,
learn to feel one’s connection with the universe, something which is
already present, one can learn to experience the universe differently.
One learns to love oneself because of the connection to the universe,
and one learns to love the universe because of its connection to one-
self. Feeling this connection with other humans necessitates social
and political action to make the world a better place for all living
things.
In a context in which religion is often used to justify conservative
social policy, spirituality’s connection with religion is one reason why
many progressives avoid discussions of spirituality and promote secu-
larism.35 Yet this approach ignores the power that spirituality holds
for political action, leaving this realm open to co-optation by anti-
democratic leaders. Activist and spiritual teacher Starhawk explains
the archetypal power of spiritual language, practices, and symbols:
A part of our humanity needs symbols and myth and mystery, yearns
for a connection to something broader and deeper than our surface
life. That part of us is powerful and dangerous: it can call us to the
most profound compassion or justify the worst intolerance . . . we
ignore it at our peril, for if a movement of liberation does not address
the spiritual part of us, then movements of repression will claim that
terrain as their own.36
Indeed, there are many examples of people using religiosity, religious

authority, and the rhetoric of love to move people to acts of violence
and repression.37 We need to strengthen our abilities to connect spiri-
tuality with peace and social justice to sustain and inspire activism
that respects human dignity and autonomy.
Multiracial feminists like Anzaldúa, Lorde, hooks, Cherríe Moraga,
Mab Segrest, and Fernandes insist on the intertwined nature of inner
work and public work for change.38 Because the body and mind are
one, physical and economic violence, hunger, pollution, and the social
control of bodies, through institutions, physical structures, practices,
and ideologies that organize bodies and the spaces we inhabit, affect
the psyche and cause spiritual damage.39 Because the violence of

oppression acts on more than the body, fighting oppression neces-
sarily entails healing the spirit. Moraga writes that she wants freedom
that is both “material and metaphysical. Sexual and spiritual”: “Third
World feminism is about feeding people in all their hungers.”40 She
describes her desire for passion—for powerful emotional and sex-
ual connections with others—as a hunger as important as the need
for food. “Hand-to-mouth survival” is not enough to drive her or
broader struggles for social justice.41 More than fighting for basic
human needs such as adequate housing, food, healthcare, and cloth-
ing, multiracial feminists have sought to transform our souls.
Because social problems are problems of thinking and feeling as
well as physical and structural problems, the work of transformation
is multidimensional.42 Social structures and the day-to-day practices
that shape them reflect beliefs, held consciously or unconsciously,
about humanity and community. Structures and habits will not change
without changing our underlying beliefs, and changing our beliefs is
not enough without paying attention to the physical conditions of
our lives. Moraga writes, “Oppression does not make for hearts as
big as all outdoors. Oppression makes us big and small. Expressive
and silent. Deep and dead.”43 Oppression can make us form expan-
sive communities and connections and make us focus narrowly on
injuries and personal experience. Oppression can produce incredible
generosity of spirit, and it can result in desensitization in order to sur-
vive. Ending oppression is essential to creating conditions that enable
people to do spiritual work, and fighting oppression is itself spiritual
work. Lorde explains, “In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression
must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the cul-
ture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.”44 The spir-
itual work of activism taps into those sources of power. Connecting
with this power, stripping away the distortions, is fighting oppression
and provides fuel for other world-changing work.
Attention to spirituality is also important for widening the circle
of who does justice work. Through spiritual practices, those who feel
they have no personal power can feel a larger force and find their
power through it. Anzaldúa makes a similar connection between
spiritual knowledge and empowerment: “We’ve been taught that the
spirit is outside our bodies or above our heads somewhere up in the
sky with God. We’re supposed to forget that every cell in our bodies,
every bone and bird and worm has spirit in it.”45 Our capacity for
locating spiritual understanding within each of us through practices
such as meditation and creating art makes spirituality a primary realm
for political contestation and makes the teaching of ways to access

intuition and spirituality a fundamental challenge to capitalist impe-
rialist patriarchy. People who trust themselves are naturally suspicious
of institutions and practices that promote shame, fear, and divisive-
ness. Such trust can be difficult to develop, particularly in people
whose bodies, feelings, thoughts, and experiences are devalued in
dominant culture.
It is not just that political and spiritual work must happen simultane-
ously. They are one and the same. Segrest draws these connections:
It is a spiritual process, as well as a political one, to help create a culture

by our brave and conscious actions in which we all know we belong,
because that’s how we are treated and that’s how the institutions of the
culture operate. To do this, we need to apprehend that we already live
in such a universe, with which we have an indissoluble bond.46
Activist work is both spiritual and political. Our belief that everyone
deserves to be treated as if we are “born to belonging” is the root of
social justice work, and actions that flow from that belief work on all
of our souls.
The need for deep internal change at the individual level makes
spiritual work particularly relevant to social justice. As Starhawk
writes, “Issues of race, gender, and identity involve our core selves.
To really change our groups and our unconscious behavior means to
examine the construction of our selves in ways that go beyond politi-
cal analysis and engage deeper powers of spirit and healing.”47 Political
analysis is important but not sufficient, as it remains at the conceptual
level. Spirituality addresses each individual’s responsibility for political
change. Fernandes recognizes “the spiritual responsibility that each
individual holds in processes of social change—a responsibility which,
unlike conservative discourses of ‘personal responsibility,’ confronts
the fundamental linkages between self-examination, self-transforma-
tion and individual ethical action on the one hand, and the transforma-
tion of larger structures of oppression on the other hand.”48 She writes
of the self-transformation required for spiritual social justice work as
labor, an “arduous and often painful process.”49 It is an ongoing pro-
cess with tremendous potential to create lasting change, from local
to global levels. Activist Claudia Horwitz, founder of stone circles, a
retreat center focused on supporting social justice work, explains,
As we develop spiritual and reflective practices within the context of

our personal lives and the pursuit of social change, we create a more
solid and secure foundation for a new world. We build lives with
greater expressions of love, more authentic relationships, and a deeper
articulation of truth. We become less afraid of fear and less afraid of
life . . . Reflection and spiritual practice will help ensure that our actions
as human beings yield benefits to a sphere far beyond the horizon we
can easily see.50
While many fear that the internal focus of spiritual work removes
energy from explicitly political involvement, it is, rather, an important
way to amplify energy for social change.
A number of activists in my study did explicitly express connec-
tions between spiritual work and political work. For many of them,
however, spirituality is not at the forefront of their theorizing or
their lives. Nonetheless, all of them exhibit aspects of the elements
that I choose to emphasize here and that I view as related to spirit,
if not always to an explicit spirituality. I agree with Fernandes that
“Spirituality can be as much about practices of compassion, love, eth-
ics and truth defined in non-religious terms as it can be related to
the mystical reinterpretations of existing religious traditions.”51 This
book is both a description of elements already present among activ-
ists and critics and a call to focus more on how we incorporate love,
faith, and joy into our work. It stems from my desire to amplify some
of the positive elements not often discussed as central to social move-
ments. The result is not so much a portrait of a particular group but
a representation of possibilities that are enacted with infinite variety.
I believe hooks’s statement holds true for all of us: “Clearly, if black
women want to be about the business of collective self-healing, we
have to be about the business of inventing all manner of images and
representations that show us the way we want to be and are.”52 Many
people are already engaged in the work of representing activists and
others authentically, as complex humans with the capacity to survive
tremendous hardship and transform our lives and worlds.53 This book
is my contribution to images of how activists want to be and are.
Emotions
Through analyzing the expression of emotions in activist oral histo-
ries,54 I identify “structures of feeling,” to use literary critic Raymond
Williams’s term, through which “meanings and values . . . are actively
lived and felt.”55 His theoretical formation emphasizes the social
nature of consciousness. Williams defines structures of feeling as
“affective elements of consciousness and relationships: not feeling
against thought, but thought as felt and feeling as thought: prac-

tical consciousness of a present kind, in a living and interrelating
community.”56 Examining affect is crucial to understanding how
people experience and enact consciousness and to seeing how indi-
vidual experiences are connected in emergent social structures.57 I use
“affect” here in a way similar to sociologist Deborah B. Gould, who
uses “affect” to refer to “these emergent, inchoate, not yet articu-
lable ways of feeling.”58 I trace these nonrational structures of feel-
ing through various oral histories, naming them “love” and “joy.”
Identifying them as emotions is cognitive work that does not fully
represent the affective state but, I hope, works to encourage the iden-
tification and growth of these emotions in activist work.
While Williams focuses on the shared nature of feeling as social
process, I argue that it is best understood as a spiritual process. The
concept of structures of feeling captures the idea of “synchronicity,”
which psychiatrist Carl Jung defines as “the coincidence of events in
space and time as meaning something more than mere chance.”59
Experiences, feelings, and ideas shared by people with no historical
connections—these structures of feeling indicate larger forces at work
beyond the realm of the social and the physical.
The messiness of sensation and emotions, their uncontrollability,
is part of their promise and their limits as tools of transformation.
Emotions involve bodily sensations, cognitive understandings, and
external stimulation, connecting body, mind, and the world around
us. Feelings can provide the insight and energy that lead to empower-
ment. Lorde writes, “Anger is loaded with information and energy,”
pointing to two primary contributions of emotions to social change:
emotions provide information about our relationships with the world
around us, and emotions can move people or produce stasis.60
Explaining some of the ways that emotions provide information,
literary critic Martha Nussbaum argues for the usefulness of emotions
for philosophy: “In an ethical and social/political creature, emotions
themselves are ethical and social/political, parts of an answer to the
questions, ‘What is worth caring about?’ ‘How should I live?’”61 She
emphasizes how an understanding of the role of the social and of
cognition and evaluation in emotion “shows us where societies and
individuals have the freedom to make improvements.”62 We can ques-
tion why we feel a certain way and influence the feeling through criti-
cal thinking or change cultural practices and social institutions that
produce certain feelings.63
Emotions also give us access to deeper knowledges and powers.
In “Poetry Is Not a Luxury,” Lorde writes, “The white fathers told
us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us—
the poet—whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.”64
Lorde juxtaposes the intellectual tradition of reason with the incho-
ate knowledge that comes from feelings and dreams. Responding
to feminist poet Adrienne Rich’s inquiry about her use of the black
mother archetype, Lorde elaborates, “The possible shapes of what
has not been before exist only in that back place, where we keep those
unnamed, untamed longings for something different and beyond
what is now called possible, and to which our understanding can only
build roads. But we have been taught to deny those fruitful areas
of ourselves.”65 Future possibilities exist in our present feelings and
desires.66 Tapping into those feelings expands our understanding of
what is possible and encourages work for meaningful change.67
Oral history brings out the emotional experiences behind activism,
how activism is a way for people to use the energy of their feelings of
love, hope, pain, disappointment, fear, and anger to create change,
and how they find joy in doing so. Feminist and queer studies scholar
Ann Cvetkovich writes of the importance of documenting the emo-
tional dynamics of queer lives:
Lesbian and gay history demands a radical archive of emotion in order

to document intimacy, sexuality, love, and activism—all areas of expe-
rience that are difficult to chronicle through the materials of a tra-
ditional archive. Furthermore, gay and lesbian archives address the
traumatic loss of history that has accompanied sexual life and the for-
mation of sexual publics, and they assert the role of memory and affect
in compensating for institutional neglect.68
The oral histories I collected contribute to the archives of LGBTQ

feelings. While the audio recordings contain individual traces of
emotional residue, my analysis seeks to highlight commonalities
that make up an emergent structure of feeling that I hope will grow
with more attention.69 I hope to develop a critical focus on feelings
of love, desire for justice, and joy in protest and community that
are bound up with the pain of oppression and anger at injustice.70
While sociologist James M. Jasper argues that “negative” emotions
are a stronger motivating force than “positive” affects, I know from
my aikido training that love and gratitude are more powerful than
anger and bitterness, though it can be difficult to access these feel-
ings when we are afraid.71 We can amplify the love that is at the root
of activist anger to build a stronger and more enduring force for
social change.72
Focusing on positive feelings does not mean denying or rejecting

feelings of anger and pain. Indeed, I agree with psychopharmacologist
Candace B. Pert that “all honest emotions are positive emotions.”73
Still, I locate the source of our strength and our best work in our
feelings of love, faith, and joy.74 The issue is not so much what one
feels as from where one starts to act. Writer, performer, ritualist, and
contributor to This Bridge Called My Back Luisah Teish advises,
When problems arise, proceed from a position of strength. Affirm that

there is a positive solution to every problem, take the matter to your
ancestors or saints, then take positive action. I do not mean that you
cannot complain, cry, or get angry. On the contrary, your complaining
becomes a means to analyze the difficulty, your tears become “healing
waters,” and your anger becomes fuel for positive action.75
I do not want to recuperate the pain, anger, and fear that accompany
oppression or argue that “people suffer for a reason.” People suffer
and experience kindness and beauty, and one’s role as a survivor or
perpetrator of injustice or violence does not preclude either. What
I find hopeful is to view the beauty that can and does arise in the
midst of pain and horror. Even in the most horrible situations, there
is possibility. By proceeding from where we are strong, from the best
parts of ourselves, we call upon the best in others and create common
ground for doing the work of social change.
The grief and anger of those who rebel is powerful. Their naming
violence and oppression is healing, and in letting go of the pain, they
find joy. Native American literature scholar Inés Hernández-Ávila
writes in This Bridge We Call Home that grief can “become a bitter-
ness so deeply immobilizing it’s hard to have faith in anything, much
less ourselves.” She describes the process of healing as a “miracle”
that begins “from the moment we began to question, know, and
understand. From the instant we began to look for the language to
name.”76 Once named, we gain power over the pain, and then we can
let it go, rather than holding onto it and continuing destructive pat-
terns. Hernández-Ávila finds joy and power in letting go of the pain
of past injuries and trauma. Love, hope, faith, and joy are sources of
agency: “To love, to laugh, to truly live, to have vision and promise,
to believe in oneself and others, to life-work carefully, meticulously
for something, alone and with others. We are the protagonists of
these new stories. We are writing the scripts.” She defines freedom
as “When each individual realizes freedom from within, and thereby
recognizes everyone else’s right to it.”77 This experience of freedom is
part of a larger structure that is emerging—a spiritual force for social

transformation that is characterized by love, faith, and joy.
Emotions do the work of spiritual connection. Pert cites the phe-
nomenon that natural scientists call “emotional resonance” to argue
that “we can feel what others feel” and “Our molecules of emotions
are all vibrating together.”78 Among her major contributions are an
understanding of the body as a nonhierarchical “psychosomatic infor-
mation network” in which the biochemicals of emotion are produced
and shared throughout the brain, immune system, and endocrine
system.79 Based on research in what has come to be known as the
field of psychoneuroimmunology, she defines “mind” as what “holds
the network together, often acting below our consciousness.”80 The
body, in this view, is the physical manifestation of the mind: “Mind
doesn’t dominate body, it becomes body—body and mind are one.”81
Departing from the Newtonian view of “energy acting on matter
to create behavior,” Pert sees “intelligence in the form of informa-
tion running all the systems and creating behavior.”82 Viewing this
understanding of emotions in connection with data on emotional
resonance, Pert proposes a scientifically based theory of spirituality:
that the intelligence that runs the psychosomatic network
has no bounds and . . . is not owned by any individual but shared

among all of us in a bigger network . . . And in this greater network of
all humanity, of all life, we are each of us an individual nodal point,
each an access point into a larger intelligence. It is this shared connec-
tion that gives us our most profound sense of spirituality, making us
feel connected, whole.83
This is the connection that aikido master Koichi Tohei refers to

when he says, “[Y]ou are the Universe and . . . the Universe is you.”84
Through one’s own feelings and experiences, one has access to
knowledge other than that which we acquire through the five physi-
cal senses.
Epistemology
To challenge the racist patriarchal imperialism embedded in the sci-
entific demands of visibility and desire for control, we need to simul-
taneously value and develop other forms of knowledge.85 Following
feminist critiques of “the origins, problematics, social meanings,
agendas, and theories of scientific knowledge-seeking,” many schol-
ars have found ways to use science for progressive ends and to use
antiracist feminist critiques to improve how people do science.86

Many have taken feminist philosopher of science Donna Haraway’s
ironic blasphemy and run with it, celebrating the promises of the
cyborg’s blurred lines between human and machine.87 Exploring also
the cyborg’s connection with animal and spirit, we can discover what
ways of knowing, teaching, and creating become possible when we
bring together reason, intuition, and spirit.88 Even within the realm
of scientific research, Pert argues, there is a “new paradigm” that
focuses on connection. Bringing together social science, philosophy,
and spirituality, this book is part of an emergent body of work put-
ting together insights from different traditions.89 After centuries of
reductive separation, dividing the natural world into ever-more dis-
crete categories, science is now constructing a view of connectedness,
most evident in the fields of ecology, psychoneuroimmunology, and
theoretical physics.
While there were times when my frustration and anger at the vio-
lent histories of science and religions led me to want to dismiss both,
I see more and more evidence of the possibilities for integrating the
best aspects of both traditions of reason and traditions of intuition
and spirit. These traditions are described well by philosopher Thomas
P. Kasulis, who characterizes them, respectively, as cultural orienta-
tions toward integrity and intimacy. He identifies five basic character-
istics of each orientation:
1. Intimacy is objective, but personal rather than public.

2. In an intimate relation, self and other belong together in a way
that does not sharply distinguish the two.
3. Intimate knowledge has an affective dimension.
4. Intimacy is somatic as well as psychological.
5. Intimacy’s ground is not generally self-conscious, reflective, or
self-illuminating.90
Integrity, on the other hand, emphasizes
1. Objectivity as public verifiability

2. External over internal relations
3. Knowledge as ideally empty of affect
4. The intellectual and psychological as distinct from the somatic
5. Knowledge as reflective and self-conscious of its own grounds.91
What I find most useful for my purpose here is Kasulis’s description

of intimacy’s version of epistemology—what sociologist Patricia Hill
Collins calls “connected knowing.”92 He writes, “Knower and known

are not fully discrete; they overlap in some way and part of this over-
lap is knowledge . . . When we learn something intimately, we learn, in
part, about ourselves.” He contrasts this understanding of knowledge
with the integrity orientation—that of science—“in which knowledge
is an external relation between the person and the world.” 93 He does
characterize knowledge as objective in the intimacy orientation, but
it is not public.
Kasulis uses Olympic diving judges as an example to illustrate the
nonpublic objectivity of the intimacy orientation. Their understand-
ing of the sport comes from their own involvement in the sport—
from years of experience and “love for the sport.” It is through love
“that part of the sport becomes the judge and the judge part of the
sport.” 94 Emotions, thus, are intimate ways to knowledge. People
who have not had similar experiences may not understand, but those
with the experience—whether of diving or of experiencing specific
forms of oppression—reach general agreement on certain truths or
evaluations. This difference in epistemology encapsulates the problem
that intuition and spirituality pose for science.
Nonetheless, Kasulis’s explanation of intimate objectivity provides
a way to discern some sort of truths that are at least as valid as the
situated knowledges accessible through scientific methods.95 Many
writers on spirituality note themes that can be traced through many
traditions around the world and in different historical periods. For
example, Buddhist scholar and activist Joanna Macy notes relatedness
as an aspect of many religious traditions:
From Judaism, Christianity and Islam to Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism

and Native American and Goddess religions, each offers images of the
sacred web into which we are woven . . . We interexist—like synapses
in the mind of an all-encompassing being. In our own time, as we
seek to overcome our amnesia and retrieve awareness of our interex-
istence, we return to these old paths—and open also to new spiritual
perspectives.96
Note the synchronicity of Macy’s description with Pert’s description

of “a larger intelligence.” 97 That we can trace this notion of con-
nection or relatedness through centuries of work by many different
spiritual teachers, writers, and artists is evidence of its truth. There
are many paths to an understanding of our larger connection, but its
realization requires the intellect, intuition, and experience, a combi-
nation characteristic of Buddhist meditation.98
Reason is an important contribution—one that helps us focus on

our principles and strive to align our actions accordingly. But because
reason lacks a moral core, it needs the guidance of intuition and spir-
it—of love. Sandoval writes of the world-changing potential of com-
bining spiritual with scientific knowledges in a politics driven by love
in her foreword to This Bridge We Call Home:
The authors of this book call for a science that can bring together
the best wisdom of past indigenous spiritual traditions with current
techno-digital knowledges, with the purpose of exploring and affirm-
ing the multi-dimensional places where body, mind, and spirit assem-
ble, where spiritual work is seen as political work, where political work
is seen as spiritual work, and where the erotics of love invest both.
Becoming one such spiritual activist rewires one’s brain, body, and
erotics, in a process that opens the apertures between worlds. Peoples
meet there, and transit to new perceptions.99
The foreword and the introductory section to this 2002 anthology

reinforce the spiritual and loving dimensions present in its 1981 for-
bear, This Bridge Called My Back. Sandoval eloquently asserts the
world-changing ideological work of both texts, whose authors draw
on the best of past and present knowledges to transform themselves
and the world. The activists in my study share in this work of trans-
formation, infused with love.
Love, Faith, and Joy

When I began my oral history research, I sought to identify in the sto-
ries of those “who occupy the interstices” a theory-in-praxis capable
of connecting social movements that continue to stratify along lines
of race, class, gender identity, sexuality, and ability. Though I did not
find a unifying political analysis in my interview data, I found people
working for social justice who are connected by the love that drives
them, the faith that guides them, and the joy that they find in activ-
ist work. Viewing these connections is helpful for learning to work
together. Recognizing shared values creates common ground that
activists “suggest . . . provides a basis for a successful coalition whether
working with those assumed to be similar or different. Rather than
attempting to create false unity to achieve goals, engaging conflict-
ing views while ultimately focusing on a shared commitment allows
activists to take on difficult questions while moving the coalition
forward.”100 In the love that they feel for themselves and their com-
munities, their beliefs in human dignity, and the pleasure they find in
working for change, people committed to social change can find a lot
of material for creating connections across differences.
I focus on accurately representing the stories that illustrate each
point and allow the concepts some play and overlap, so in places the
structural clarity may suffer in order to preserve the stories’ coher-
ence.101 Chapters 1 and 3 describe approaches to social change work—
what people do, or technologies of social change. Chapters 2 and 4
describe emotions found in the narratives—how people feel, or the
emotions that drive and derive from activist practice.
Identifying and describing emotions is necessarily a difficult
task.102 Still, there is something powerful about words like “love”
and “faith,” which may sound simple but can describe a range of
complex feelings and experiences. They may not be the words that
most activists would first choose to characterize their motivations
and experiences, yet I hope that most activists will recognize that
those elements are present in ways like what I describe, and I hope
that people will find in these powerful words inspiration to continue
and expand the work of positive social change.
In the first chapter, I consider the spirit of criticism, meditating on
ways that social critique can enact love. Centering around the chal-
lenges presented by multiracial feminists like Lorde and Anzaldúa to
focus on spirit, continuities, and connections in the work of social
change, I argue that paying attention to the spirit of our work helps
us produce knowledge that serves humanity, that is useful to those
struggling to survive, and that brings more love, justice, and compas-
sion to the world. Paying attention to spirit, we draw on ancient and
internal knowledges that can help us find alternatives to the opposi-
tional thinking that is the root of violence, can help us treat those with
whom we disagree with understanding and kindness, and can open
up worlds of possibility for creating deep, lasting change. Examples of
how intellectuals and activists attend to spirit guide us toward what I
call “loving criticism,” a way of organizing and critiquing that honors
our roots, accepts our shared humanity and our power to change our
lives and the world, and faces conflict with kindness. Through loving
criticism, we nourish ourselves through positive action. The examples
in this chapter show what social change work can look like when we
pay attention to spirit.
Chapter 2 locates the roots of lifelong activism in love and argues
for the necessity of revolutionary love for political and spiritual trans-
formation. I examine how love combines with beliefs and cognitive
processes to drive people to social activism. After discussing the role
of emotions in activism and the political potential of love, I describe
four primary ways in which love manifests as motivation for activ-

ism: as self-love or self-respect, connecting with others, compassion
and caring, and the desire to make a meaningful contribution to the
world. Because activists care about others and the world, and because
their love is wrapped up in their work, they are vulnerable to dis-
appointment and heartbreak. I discuss connections between loving,
fearlessness, and painful experiences. By focusing on the love that
underlies so much social change work, yet is so rarely commented
upon, I encourage all of us to look for the love that underlies political
and social action and the righteous anger of activists.
In chapter 3, I describe the role of faith in activism and how belief
shapes activist methods. Faith is foundational to activists’ power to
affect their own lives and the world around them. The activists in my
study share a belief in autonomy—that each person deserves to live
with dignity, and that we can learn to live together respectfully, with
all of our differences. When activists deeply believe in self-determina-
tion, they trust in individual and community self-development, and
support others in changing their lives. One outgrowth of this belief
is an activist method called “empowerment,” a strategy based on an
understanding that meaningful social change relies on people’s beliefs
about what can be done. After defining faith and empowerment, the
chapter describes five technologies that compose this method that
seeks to expand people’s sense of possibility: activists reflect on their
own beliefs and experiences and care for themselves; trust and accept
others; support community leadership; learn about and adapt to dif-
ferences; and commit to long-term relationships. This chapter shows
the importance of focusing on the principles and values underlying
social action, encouraging ongoing reflection and discussion of how
what we do reflects what we believe.
The last chapter describes different ways in which activists find joy
through social justice work and how activists use joy to promote posi-
tive social change.103 The experience of humanity accessed through
helping others is a source of deep satisfaction and pleasure for activists
and others who seek to make the world a better place. After describ-
ing the complexities of activist joy, I identify different aspects of plea-
sure that organizers experience through connecting with others, fun
events, creativity, and satisfying work. Intrinsically valuable, joy also
serves important functions in social justice movements. The empha-
sis on fun and pleasure in LGBTQ communities—on using parties,
performances, and parades to raise awareness and money and to build
community, for example—is not only a method of survival but also
an important political resource and strategy. Feelings of joy and
pleasure produce energy that sustains activists through conflicts and

difficult work. “The sharing of joy,” Audre Lorde notes, connects
people across differences that may divide them.104 Activists also use
their constituents’ desires for pleasure and fun to do explicitly politi-
cal work. When we feel angry, overwhelmed, or obligated, it is easy
to forget about the enjoyment we can and do find in social change
work. I end the book with joy to encourage us all to find delight in
activism and with the hope that we remember not to take things, even
our serious work, so seriously.
Throughout the chapters, I discuss the power of the erotic—the
spiritual power—that amplifies the meaning of activist love, faith,
and joy beyond what can be conveyed through rational description.105
By getting people in touch with their emotions and desires, the erotic
leads people to understand their relationship to the world and others
around them and the power they have to make choices that affect
their lives and contribute to their communities. Philosopher Cheryl
Hall argues, “The more conscious people are of what they value and
of the satisfaction that living up to it brings, the greater their ability
and their motivation to strive for their vision of the best will be.”106
Even more than consciousness, the erotic adds what some physicists
call “subtle energy,” a force that encourages the expansion of love,
faith, and joy from each local instance outward in ever-expanding
circles.107
I tried to write this book for academics, activists, students, and
people interested in spirituality. The results may be rather uneven.
The Introduction and the Background sections of each chapter pro-
vide academic and theoretical background for the work. The endnotes
also address, I hope, many of the questions, concerns, and desires for
additional information that scholarly readers may have. Each chapter
has five subsections where I present the narrators’ words and stories,
relating them to the themes of love, faith, and joy in intersectional
activism. I hope these sections are engaging for academic and non-
academic readers alike. The first appendix tells some of my story, if
you are curious to know how I came to write this. It also explains the
methods I used and describes the group of narrators, whose biogra-
phies are included in the second appendix.
One thing that connects everyone in my diverse group of inter-
viewees, and everyone engaged in social justice work, is that people
transform their experiences of pain and privilege by connecting with
others toward the purpose of changing the world for the better. I
focus on the best of what activists do to draw from their stories les-
sons and reminders for all of us about the pleasures and wonders of
social change and the power of kindness and principled action in the
face of injustice.
While I trace these ideas across different disciplines in this study,
I come back to the texts of multiracial feminism again and again,
finding new truths and rediscovering old ones that remind me that
how we do this work is as important as what we accomplish. By shar-
ing stories of activists on the ground, doing their boundary-busting
work, I hope to remind myself and you, again.
1
L ov i ng C r i t ic ism: A Spi r i t ua l
P h i l osoph y of S oc i a l C h a nge
But there are no new ideas still waiting in the wings to save us as
women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new com-
binations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves—
along with the renewed courage to try them out.
Audre Lorde1
Twenty-one years ago we struggled with the recognition of difference

within the context of commonality. Today we grapple with the recog-
nition of commonality within the context of difference.
Gloria Anzaldúa 2
W ith the necessary focus on the material, which has been encouraged
by multiracial feminists such as Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzaldúa,
critics and activists can easily forget to attend to the spiritual aspects
of liberation.3 This chapter takes as its central concern the spiritual
challenges presented by these foundational feminist and queer think-
ers.4 In a culture that seems obsessed with conflict and newness, how
do we bring old knowledges into our work? How do we find common
ground with those whom we protest and criticize? For critics, as for
activists, how we do our work matters. Paying attention to the spirit
of our work helps us produce knowledge that serves humanity, that
is useful to those struggling to survive, and that brings more love,
peace, and compassion to the world. Paying attention to spirit, intel-
lectuals as well as activists draws on ancient and internal knowledges
that can help us find alternatives to the oppositional thinking that is
the root of violence, can help us treat those with whom we disagree
with understanding and kindness, and can open up worlds of pos-
sibility for creating deep, lasting change.5
Already I have trouble with language. The material and spiritual
are not in opposition. The insight that our spiritual interconnection is
part of our global material interdependence is central to what historian

Becky Thompson names multiracial feminism—“the liberation move-
ment spearheaded by women of color in the United States in the 1970s
that was characterized by its international perspective, its attention to
interlocking oppressions, and its support of coalition politics.”6 Also,
activists and intellectuals are not distinct groups. Many whom I cite
in this book are writer-activists. The nature of much activist work is
to critique the status quo, and the work of socially engaged criticism
is activist in nature, so these terms are largely interchangeable, though
at times my usage indicates whether one’s primary work is scholarly
writing or political organizing. What I term “loving criticism” can
guide work in the academic, social, and political arenas. Most of the
thinkers on whom I draw here write for people engaged in all aspects
of social change work—political, cultural, spiritual, intellectual—
categories that also overlap and dissolve into one another. Here I write
of “activists” and “intellectuals” or “critics,” but mostly of “we” who
are engaged in the work of positive social change. Those of us familiar
with histories of exclusion are trained to question any use of “we,”
using specificity to indicate that we understand we cannot speak for
everyone. I insist on using a hopeful “we” to reflect my very broad
view of what constitutes social change work. Teaching, parenting,
writing, performing, creating art, building communities through so
many small and large actions, acting ethically and responsibly in our
personal and professional relationships—all of these acts, as well as
explicitly political activism and organizing, work to make the world
a better place if they are done with “the spirit of love and protection
for all things.”7
Antiracist feminist activists and intellectuals have been doing the
work of integrating spirit into social change, paying attention to not
just when and where but how we enter into discourse and social
interaction, so that our work reflects our best values rather than the
negative emotions often generated in response to conflict. Yet such
attention to spirituality remains marginal within women’s and queer
studies and progressive social movements. Here I reflect on the impli-
cations of spirit for how we do social change work.
In examples of how intellectuals and activists attend to spirit, I find
lessons that can guide us—activists and scholars—toward what I call
“loving criticism.” Criticism can be loving in countless ways. Rather
than attempting to describe loving criticism in a way that may be seen
as exclusionary, I meditate here on five aspects of loving criticism that
I have found in my research: loving criticism (1) honors our roots; (2)
accepts our shared humanity; (3) accepts our power to change our
L ov i ng C r i t ic i s m 23
lives and the world; (4) faces conflict with kindness; and (5) nourishes
us through positive action. These aspects may overlap, but each repre-
sents a way of viewing loving criticism that I find helpful. The loving
criticism that has been most inspiring to me seeks understanding of
others on their own terms, along with an understanding of larger
structures that work on and through individual lives.
Background: Intellectual and

Spiritual Roots
I build on a legacy of criticism and creative production that seeks
to view the behavior of individuals and groups with respect and to
interpret cultural texts and artifacts with a sense of human digni-
ty.8 Integrated into this discussion is data from my study of intersec-
tional activists whose everyday theorizing confirms the insights of
multiracial feminist writers. I draw on these oral histories along with
other narratives of intersectional activism and feminist, queer, and
Buddhist thinking to describe the philosophy of social change that
I call “loving criticism.” The emphasis on spirituality in this chapter
reflects a foundational element of multiracial feminism that is taking
a more central place in antiracist feminist queer struggles for justice.
Multiracial feminist intellectuals such as Chela Sandoval, AnaLouise
Keating, Mab Segrest, M. Jacqui Alexander, and Leela Fernandes
continue to build on the work of groundbreaking thinkers such as
Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker, Cherríe Moraga, Lorde, Paula
Gunn Allen, Anzaldúa, Beth Brant, bell hooks, and Gloria Akasha
Hull, pointing out that attention to spirit is a key aspect of antiracist
feminist theory and praxis.9 In addition to drawing on Christianity
and indigenous spiritualities of Africa and the Americas, feminists
like Walker, hooks, Segrest, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick have explic-
itly discussed Buddhism, citing Buddhist teachers such as Thich Nhat
Hanh.10 I use the work of Thich and other Buddhist teachers here to
explain the spiritual significance of intersectionality and loving criti-
cism. The result of this combination of feminist and queer theory and
Buddhist philosophy is a view of a particular form of consciousness
that can be found across theoretical and disciplinary divisions.11
In describing loving criticism, I identify principles guiding the
practice of differential consciousness, one of five forms of oppo-
sitional consciousness that Sandoval maps in Methodology of the
Oppressed. “Oppositional consciousness” refers to rhetorics and appa-
ratuses of resistance to neocolonization and other forms of domina-
tion. Oppositional consciousness can take many forms in response
to different structures and exercises of power and seeks to equalize

power relations between individuals and groups.12 The first four
forms of oppositional consciousness identified by Sandoval represent
ideological stands that are potential tactics to draw from in order to
redeploy power.13 The fifth form, differential consciousness, enables
movement between and among these ideological positions.14 “Like
the clutch of an automobile,” the differential is the variant that enables
an activist or group to analyze a problem or situation and choose an
appropriate tactic. Differential consciousness lifts the other forms of
oppositional consciousness out of dogmatic practice and transforms
those forms into “tactical weaponry for intervening in shifting cur-
rents of power.”15 In naming oppositional consciousness, Sandoval
connects decolonizing intellectual and scholarly work across different
time periods, locations, and identities. Ethnic studies scholar Ruby
C. Tapia points out, “It is love as social movement that is, ultimately,
her object of study.”16
The differential emerges out of junctures and crises, especially
experiences of intersecting oppressions and identities associated with
the experiences of women of color in US social movements.17 In
male-dominated race-based movements and white-dominated femi-
nist movements, many women of color felt that their differences, their
lives, and their work have been invisible. Builders of bridges between
and among these social movements, women of color feminists have
operated in the ideological spaces between the forms of consciousness
represented in dominant culture. Located in the interstices, women
of color feminists produced a form of consciousness—US third world
feminism—that operates between the lines that divide us.18 Sandoval
devised her understanding of differential consciousness from study-
ing US third world feminism from 1968 to 1990. She describes US
third world feminism as “an insurgent social movement that shat-
tered the construction of any one ideology as the single most correct
site where truth can be represented.”19 One problem with the first
four forms of oppositional consciousness is when they get trapped
in a “drive for truth”—the search for one true theory-praxis to solve
social problems, which produces new forms of domination. US third
world feminism denies any one ideology as the answer and posits a
form of consciousness that can shift among different ideologies and
tactics, depending on what forms of power are to be moved. There is
no one truth or one way to respond in every situation. Theories are
flexible to respond to changing situations.
Marginalized by intersecting oppressions, US third world feminists
are able to move from the interstices of race, class, gender, sexuality,
disability, and nation “between and among” groups structured oppo-

sitionally by dominant discourse—the discourse that leaves them in
the margins. Sandoval’s tremendous contribution is in viewing this
form of consciousness as a tactical, “ethical” practice of “opposition
to oppressive authorities,” geared toward survival and guided by love,
rather than as mere “intuition and psychic phenomena.”20 Here, I
revisit the roots of differential consciousness in intuition, feeling, and
spiritual knowledge and describe the principles—which are spiritual
as well as ethical—that guide its praxis.21
Love as a Critical Position

Love is a complex emotion deeply interwoven with spirituality.
Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa distinguishes a spiritual sense
of love from the experience of romantic love: “Love is associated with
ugliness and pain and aggression, as well as with the beauty of the
world; it is not the recreation of heaven. Love or compassion, the
open path, is associated with ‘what is.’” Love is not about simple
pleasure or feeling complete. Instead, this love requires letting go of
concepts and desires, including one’s self-concept and desires for how
one wants the world to be, and accepting the world as it is. This form
of love is developed through a conscious opening, which can come
through spiritual work: “In order to develop love—universal love,
cosmic love, whatever you would like to call it—one must accept the
whole situation of life as it is, both the light and the dark, the good
and the bad. One must open oneself to life, communicate with it.”22
For many people, universal love requires spiritual practice in order
“to abandon the basic struggle of ego.”23 Love, as Trungpa describes
it, is like differential consciousness—the openness of universal love
means “being free to do whatever is called for in a given situation.
Because you do not want anything from the situation, you are free
to act in the way genuinely appropriate to it.”24 That freedom comes
from egolessness. The combination of opening to life, acceptance of
things as they are, and letting go of concepts enables the technologies
that I describe here as “loving criticism.”
Spiritual activist Marianne Williamson writes, “We don’t need
deeper analysis of our sicknesses so much as we desperately need
a more passionate embrace of the only thing that heals them all
[: love].”25 While most progressive studies of social problems come
from a place of love, what I term “loving criticism” chooses love and
healing as objects of study. Loving criticism is very much like what
Sedgwick calls “reparative knowing.” She critiques the dominance of
paranoia as a methodology of queer and feminist theory and other

forms of criticism. Paranoid criticism can include “Subversive and
demystifying parody, suspicious archaeologies of the present, [and]
the detection of hidden patterns of violence and their exposure.”26
Sedgwick notes that the focus on “unveiling” the hidden workings
of power has become a dominant critical approach in cultural studies.
Indeed, she writes, “to theorize out of anything but a paranoid criti-
cal stance has come to seem naïve, pious, or complaisant.”27 Rather
than relying on this “infinitely doable and teachable” approach to
studying culture, Sedgwick argues that paranoia should be viewed
as only one of many theoretical alternatives. She seeks other forms of
criticism that can coexist with a serious and complex understanding
of oppression.28
Sedgwick defines paranoid and reparative critical approaches as
two critical possibilities, avoiding terms that carry a sense of value,
progression, or fixity. While she sees the paranoid and reparative posi-
tions as interconnected, Sedgwick focuses her essay on her critique
of paranoia.29 She does not dismiss the paranoid critical position nor
disavow the insights gained from a paranoid perspective but empha-
sizes that the “the main reasons for questioning paranoid practices
are other than the possibility that their suspicions can be delusional
or simply wrong.”30 Sedgwick here participates in conversations about
what knowledge does rather than whether it is true.31 In paranoid
criticism, our focus is often not on personal suffering but on the suf-
fering of oppressed groups. This is a loving perspective, but one that
stems from a fear of humiliation. For the paranoid person, bad news,
and the negative feelings associated with it, are always anticipated,
never a surprise.32 Paranoid practices of reading encourage cynicism,
which, sociologist James M. Jasper notes, “discourage[s] protest by
dampening hopes for change.”33 Loving criticism, on the other hand,
is hopeful and opens the critic to disappointment.
Sedgwick provides a glimpse of an alternative to paranoia in the
reparative position, noting as she introduces the term that another
name “for the reparative process is love.”34 While the paranoid posi-
tion seeks to expose violence and exercises of oppressive power in
order to never be surprised by bad news, reparative, or loving, criti-
cism seeks to grow resources that encourage positive development in
an often hostile world.35 These are not oppositional critical practices
but have different feelings and different effects. Because the culture
of criticism is so distrustful of love, faith, and joy, we need to work to
sustain ourselves, and loving criticism is part of that self-nourishing
work, as are spiritual practices and creative work.
Honor Our Roots

Preserving histories and expressing gratitude for the work of those
who have come before, loving criticism restores value to old ways
and knowledges that can support people struggling to survive
and/or working for progressive change. Keating explains how Allen,
Anzaldúa, and Lorde draw on the past to remake the present and
“create new modes of living and thinking.”36 bell hooks also writes
of the importance of recovering old knowledges and practices that
counter the psychic effects of oppression: “We come from a long line
of ancestors who knew how to heal the wounded black psyche when
it was assaulted by white-supremacist beliefs.” Though the transmis-
sion of these old “useful” knowledges has been broken, hooks affirms
our ability to access old ways of thinking for use in our lives.37 Traces
of past wisdom exist deep in our bodyminds and can be accessed
through intuition, attention to feeling, and spiritual practices.38
Lorde’s notion of the erotic describes how feeling lets us know
when we have accessed some older knowledge or deeper truth whose
direct transmission may have been broken. She writes, “the consid-
ered phrase, ‘It feels right to me,’ acknowledges the strength of the
erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most
powerful light toward any understanding. And understanding is a
handmaiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge,
deeply born.”39 The erotic is a powerful feeling of truth discovered
and lived, a sense of satisfaction when our actions are in harmony
with the universe and express our deepest selves, a feeling of joy when
we feel connected with the world around us.40 Paying attention to
these feelings within ourselves as well as continually asking ourselves
how our work serves the purpose of bringing love and social justice
into the world leads to loving criticism, through which we can honor
our past and change our “habits of thinking and being.”41
Many activists work to understand their connections with the past
and to appreciate how they have come to be where they are in life.
Biracial lesbian feminist activist Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz speaks of her
ancestors when describing her understanding of her purpose, which
is to build bridges between different groups. She says, “I do feel very
strongly that I would not have been given this, the physical disability,
the learning disability, being Jewish and Arab, being a lesbian, and
dealing with that whole coming out and sexuality stuff. That is a gift,
I think, for me, and I know that I am supposed to do something
with that, not to further myself, but to be a bridge.” Viewing herself
in connection with others who have come before her, Lisa is grateful
for the challenges she faces. Gratitude transforms her painful experi-
ences of difference and marginalization into gifts that enable her to
work across differences. She uses her experience “to be a bridge,”
to connect her present with those who have come before her, and to
help people who are different better understand each other and work
together. In this work, Lisa finds a purpose that sustains her.
In activism, organizers may honor their roots in private acts and
spaces, by remembering and thanking those whose work has inspired
or enabled theirs, and/or in public demonstrations such as the Sistahs
Steppin’ in Pride festival and dyke march in Oakland, California.42
Antiracist feminist scholar Elizabeth Currans, who studied the 2004
event, explains that its main purpose is to celebrate and build com-
munity by connecting the participants to a history of queer women of
color and to each other. Carrying signs memorializing women from
the East Bay and beginning the festival with a ritual that thanks the
ancestors, the organizers and participants of Sistahs Steppin’ identify
themselves with a local history of struggle and creativity.43 Through
a ritual thanking ancestors, they connect themselves with those who
have gone before them and with the earth that sustains all life, as well
as with each other.44 The act of giving thanks to ancestors is an act of
healing and, in this public space, building and sustaining community,
as well as a political celebration of individuals whose lives have been
devalued.45
Gratitude for those whose work has come before ours and for all
that sustains us does important spiritual and emotional work. The
17th Karmapa, a Buddhist teacher, explains the power of gratitude:
if you appreciate, he says, “how other sentient beings have been kind
to you, . . . your happiness will increase and your altruistic heart will
become stronger. You will have a stronger desire to protect others, and
you’ll think more often about helping them.”46 Because we are all inter-
dependent, “everyone is kind to us.”47 That is, our survival depends on
the sun for warmth and energy to grow plants, on animals to help plants
reproduce and to provide food, and on people who grow our food,
transport it, sell it to us, and prepare it. In this global economy, we are
dependent on a larger than ever network of people for food, clothing,
and shelter.48 Without their kindness, our lives would be much more
difficult.49 Giving thanks to those whose lives and work support our
own, we feel more satisfaction and a greater desire to help others.
Gratitude, as acknowledgment and appreciation of the past, is
also important for antioppression research and teaching. Professor
of multicultural education Cynthia B. Dillard defines gratitude as
“the acknowledgement of service to ‘something bigger’ that guides
the very purposes of our research.” Dillard describes a “need to pray

and bear witness to that inner power and its outward manifestations
through us, as researchers who are also healers and teachers” and con-
nects this need with “our need to re-member, to put back together the
pieces and fragments of cultural knowledge of Africa and her diaspora
in ways that give thanks for all who have witnessed and worked on
behalf of the humanity of Black people and the inclusion of our wis-
dom in the world’s grand narrative.”50 Research done with the spirit
of gratitude for all who have worked to restore dignity to those who
have suffered discrimination and violence is healing work that enables
scholars “to more clearly recognize humans in our various ways of
being.” Recognition of those who have come before us and of the
energy, which some think of as divine spirit, that moves through us
enables a clearer understanding of ourselves—our positions, our rela-
tions to others, which enables a clearer understanding of humanity.
This understanding of humanity, according to Dillard, enables “more
principled relationships” and works toward the “collective survival” of
“the African family” and, I would add, all humans.51 Acknowledging
the work that makes ours possible and finding the best in work that
has come before ours, critics and activists honor our roots and encour-
age the joy, faith, and loving action that flow from gratitude.
Accept Our Shared Humanity

Lorde, Anzaldúa, and other multiracial feminists have, throughout
their work, emphasized the importance of working for social change
while keeping our shared humanity in mind. Their critiques of dif-
ference, which have shaped understandings of race, class, gender, and
sexuality since the 1970s and 1980s, have gone hand in hand with
recognition of sameness and calls for deconstructing our internal bor-
ders.52 The emphasis on the simultanaeity of sameness and difference
participates in a critique of the binary thinking that is the root of
racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, transphobia, etc., and
responds to our human needs for connection with others and with
something larger than ourselves.53 Accepting our shared humanity
means not only seeing our connections with others with whom we
disagree but also accepting all the parts of ourselves, especially those
parts we might like to disavow.
Activists and critics make a habit of identifying and opposing
unjust exercises of power through what some sociologists call “injus-
tice frames.”54 Through rhetoric and imagery, activists seek to pro-
voke anger and desires for justice. This oppositionality is a valuable
form of resistance to oppression and generates energy that motivates

important social change work. At the same time, Anzaldúa recog-
nizes, oppositionality—in her terms, “counterstance”—“is not a way
of life.” She sees violence in our opposition, even when it comes from
loving ourselves and others whom we view as oppressed.55 Anzaldúa,
like Lorde, Alexander, Fernandes, and other multiracial feminists,
values the counterstance as a critical part of breaking away from
ideologies of domination: opposition is a step toward changing our
thought patterns and beliefs.56 But in occupying one side of a binary,
our oppositional stance is stuck in relation to the systems and ideolo-
gies we oppose; it limits how we can move and respond.57
For some activists, an oppositional stance can lead to acting out
of anger and judgment rather than compassion. Burmese American
feminist activist Sandee Pyne says of her days as a young animal rights
activist, “We felt morally righteous, and I think any time you feel
morally righteous you need to really beware.” After personal conflicts
led to Sandee leaving her job with an animal rights organization,
she was “left completely bare” and found herself confronting ques-
tions of “Who I wanted to be, how do I practice my beliefs? I say I
care about stopping suffering, but meanwhile I was doing things that
made women fearful. Ruining their fur coats. You don’t have to like
the people who disagree with you, but you should not dehumanize
them.” Even though she describes some of these protests as “genius,”
she does not think she would do them again: “Why use it to create
more fear? [Why use] it to polarize a conversation?”58 Sandee remem-
bers wearing slogans calling for peace while her behavior was full of
anger, which she felt was justified by her political beliefs.59 Reflecting
on the changes in her life, she describes the break from the organiza-
tion as an opportunity to rethink her approach to social change and
views her earlier ways of expressing her opposition to social injustice
as placing her in opposition to other people. As Sandee became more
of a practicing Buddhist, she used meditation to help transform her
oppositionality into loving kindness and felt a need to change her
activist strategies to reflect her desire to act from a place of compas-
sion rather than anger.60
While maintaining oppositionality means always fighting, always
seeing oneself as separate, focusing on what we share as humans can
help us choose different approaches to conflicts. Anzaldúa hopes
activists can find a more peaceful way to live. She writes,
The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored,
between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates
in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our
thoughts. A massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual
and collective consciousness is the beginning of a long struggle, but
one that could, in our best hopes, bring us to the end of rape, of vio-
lence, of war.61
Anzaldúa calls for foundational changes in consciousness in order to

find peace. Instead of dualism, she imagines an inclusive conscious-
ness, represented through the figure of the mestiza. The mestiza
“operates in a pluralistic mode—nothing is thrust out, the good, the
bad and the ugly, nothing rejected, nothing abandoned. Not only
does she sustain contradictions, she turns the ambivalence into some-
thing else.” Anzaldúa’s call to accept “the bad and the ugly” along
with the good is a call for psychic and spiritual acceptance—a call to
accept our own humanness by starting with the difference, bad and
good, within ourselves.62
Black queer feminist activist Monique Meadows describes coming
to such personal acceptance along with an understanding of feminism
as something that “honors all of who we are.” As a young feminist,
Monique tried to fit into what she thought was a feminist “look”:
“not really into makeup, . . . just practical, bare-bones. And that is not
me at all. In my heart I’m crunchy, but the aesthetic that I like is kind
of polished. I like clothes; I like makeup; I like high heels. I really
love that stuff actually.” Eventually, she came to understand feminism
as “about women finding our own voices and having the right and
the space to express that however we see fit without other people
telling us, ‘No, you can’t do that; you have to be this.’ So that essen-
tially we’re our own inner authority.” Monique’s ideas about what a
feminist was and feelings about what she should be opened up as her
ideas about feminism changed and as she explored her spirituality. As
a witch and a practitioner of Yoruba, she says, “I have to believe in
my own inner authority and in my own voice. If not, then how am
I going to lead a ritual? What would be the point if I don’t believe I
have the power to do it?” Believing in women’s power and authority
over their own lives, Monique learned to claim power and authority
for herself and accept all of who she is.
Accepting oneself and others means accepting our power and
privilege as well as those parts of ourselves that are socially deval-
ued. Anzaldúa’s use of the mestiza, a genetic blend of colonizer and
colonized, focuses on the simultaneous presence of oppressor and
oppressed within each of us, a theme present throughout This Bridge
Called My Back and its successor, This Bridge We Call Home.63 In
the latter, antiracist feminist scholar Irene Lara helps to explain the
mestiza’s position. She reflects on her white ancestors: “Whether I
am comfortable with it or not, their genealogies live in my bones as
well. Like other people of mixed race before me, I work to make peace
with them. Because not to acknowledge and love all who I am is to
be defeated, again.”64 At the same time that the “proudly defiant”
counterstance to oppression works to revalue those parts of ourselves
that have been devalued by dominant culture, it often devalues people
and parts of ourselves that we connect with oppression, perpetuat-
ing the violence of dualism. To “make peace with” the oppressor is
not to tolerate oppressive behavior but to recognize it as human, as
stemming from human experiences and emotions, and to recognize
that the root of violence is in the concept of separateness, something,
widely shared, that our souls work to overcome.65
For most of us raised within an oppositional culture, to truly,
deeply accept the oppressor within each of us requires working with
one’s emotions or spiritual energy and slowly changing our habitual
responses to conflicts and emotions.66 Some activists explicitly discuss
spiritual practices that help them be more accepting of themselves and
others. As a “black female, left-handed, vegetarian, spiritual, kind of
womanist individual who lives her life outside of a box,” V. Papaya
Mann’s spiritual practices have helped her accept herself and others
and act from a place of love and generosity.67 She says that her spiri-
tuality “keeps me centered. Keeps me in a place of love. Even when
there are things that make me angry, I know that there’s more . . . and
it makes me feel comfortable in my skin being who I am as well as
not being afraid about any aspect of who I am.” She claims that her
“natural style is not confrontational,” adding “Even though AIDS
did try my patience a lot with that. I had to be more confrontational
in HIV because of the many stigmas attached to it and the many
barriers that we’ve had to overcome just to have services.” She is not
specific about how she dealt with conflicts, saying, “I just dealt with
it” and adding that her ways of coping are related to her spirituality:
“It rejuvenates me. And allows me to forgive. And go on. Forgive
myself for the things that I can’t do or that I’m not interested in
doing. Forgive others for the things that they do or sometimes don’t
do.” Papaya’s acceptance of herself and others helps her cope with
conflicts and “rejuvenates” her even when she has been “burned.”
Using therapy, recovery programs, spiritual practices, writing, and
other creative or personal work, activists and critics work to accept,
emotionally as well as intellectually, all the parts of themselves and to
extend that acceptance to others.
Acceptance of oneself and others happens also through the dif-

ficult work of examining ourselves—our pain and anger as well as
our beauty and joy—with honesty and kindness. Lorde describes her
vision of the love, patience, and acceptance that result from this col-
lective work:
We will begin to see each other as we dare to begin to see ourselves;

we will begin to see ourselves as we begin to see each other, without
aggrandizement or dismissal or recriminations, but with patience and
understanding for when we do not quite make it, and recognition and
appreciation for when we do . . . We must recognize and nurture the
creative parts of each other without always understanding what will
be created.68
To see ourselves and each other honestly and kindly means believing
that we are all okay as we are, while continuing to work to improve
ourselves.69 It depends on a faith that caring for ourselves, as for oth-
ers, is good and, therefore, spreads goodness in the world. This work,
again, involves accepting the oppressor, and the effects of oppression,
within. Criticism that is honest but not kind, criticism that judges
or rejects our human failures, works differently on the emotions and
spirit from loving criticism, in which we are all in it together, working
to understand ourselves and each other and figuring out how we can
all change for the better. Trungpa teaches a path of self-examination
through which “We can see our shortcomings without feeling guilty
or inadequate, and at the same time, we can see our potential for
extending goodness to others.” In the Shambhala tradition of spiri-
tual warriorship, as in the work of Anzaldúa, Lorde, and other spiri-
tual activists, inner work is a foundation, inseparable from our work
in the world. Honest self-acceptance is the first step in Shambhala
warriorship, the essence of which, according to Trungpa, is “refusing
to give up on anyone or anything.”70
Feminist critic Heather Love’s study Feeling Backward: Loss and the
Politics of Queer History exemplifies a critical refusal to give up on any
part of our queer past. Love argues that we need a history of injury
“to attend to the social, psychic, and corporeal effects of homopho-
bia” because “it is the damaging aspects of the past that tend to stay
with us,” noting that, “For groups constituted by historical injury, the
challenge is to engage with the past without being destroyed by it.”71
Love is drawn by the power of tragic queer texts like Radclyffe Hall’s
The Well of Loneliness, in which she views “the gap” between queer
hopes for liberation and “actual” experiences of shame, longing, and
pain. While Love sees the problems posed by negative emotions for a
queer politics centered on pride and celebrating queerness, she values
what these texts have to say: “they describe what it is like to bear a
‘disqualified’ identity, which at times can simply mean living with
injury—not fixing it.” Viewing the pain in these texts honestly, with-
out trying to make it positive to fit a hopeful politics, Love calls for
us to remember the past without disavowing its painful experiences.72
She argues, “Modern homosexual identity is formed out of and in
relation to the experience of social damage. Paying attention to what
was difficult in the past may tell us how far we have come, but that is
not all it will tell us; it also makes visible the damage that we live with
in the present.”73 Such honest examinations of the difficult past and
present contribute to our ability to accept our humanity as it is—full
of pain, fear, anger, loss, shame, and disappointment as well as love,
faith, and joy. When we are aware of and accept ourselves as we are,
we can work on creating the future we hope for.
Accept Our Power

Self-examination not only helps activists and critics to accept our own
humanness and to see our connections with others, it leads to dis-
covering the power we need to change the world.74 Lorde writes of
self-examination as a crucial part of empowerment, which she defines
as “our strengthening in the service of ourselves and each other, in
the service of our work and future.”75 Empowerment is the work of
discovering one’s erotic power, a power that enables creativity and
movement. Erotic power is not a power that can be held or wielded
but a power that flows through everything and can be accessed by
anyone.76 This power adds to our personal strength and ability not
just to survive hardship but to use our experiences of pain, anger,
fear, and sadness to understand those feelings in others and act com-
passionately. Discovering our erotic power, we find possibilities for
creative and political work that we might not have seen before. Then,
by doing our work, we share our power with others.
Monique’s description of how her spiritual work connects with her
activism provides one example of self-empowerment as political work.
She explains that her spiritual work sustains her, “gives me this sense
that that there is order to all of this. It feels crazy and chaotic, but it’s
ordered chaos. I believe very much that we are all connected, and that
we’re all one.” With this understanding of connection, Monique sees
that, “as I do my work and heal my inner world, it heals my whole lin-
eage. Because there’s a whole legacy, like for many people, of violence
and emotional abuse and poverty and all of that, and I feel that as I do
my work, I’m able to change the path for the people that come after
me.” Through her spiritual work, she has developed a more complicated
understanding of power, including her own power to effect change and
what she calls “feminine power.” Through leading rituals, Monique
“learned to be comfortable with my own power and my own voice”
and with “sharing [my power] with the world.” She quotes Williamson:
“playing small doesn’t serve the world.” Monique explains, “pretend-
ing we’re not powerful and don’t have gifts doesn’t serve anybody,
including ourselves, but definitely not the world. The world needs us to
be operating at full throttle.”77 Her understanding of oppression and
her belief in connection lead her to develop her own power, so that she
can contribute to the world in positive ways. Through examining her-
self and nurturing her creative powers, she found her own way to serve
the world. In retreat, she found a purpose for her work: “My mission is
to serve, embrace, and inspire women in their healing.”
Loving criticism takes responsibility for the power that each one of
us has to change ourselves and the world, rather than trying to place
blame. It focuses on what we build rather than on what we can take
down. To blame dominant culture and ideologies and/or privileged
people for causing suffering separates the world into those who are
responsible and those who are victims, oppressor, and oppressed—a
violent division that cedes power to people with more privilege and
further disempowers those who have less. Blaming does not create
change. As Thich writes, “Only love and understanding can help
people change.”78 Anzaldúa articulates the bind created by blaming
others for oppression:
Blocked, immobilized, we can’t move forward, can’t move back-

wards . . . We do not make full use of our faculties. We abnegate. And
there in front of us is the crossroads and choice to feel a victim where
someone else is in control and therefore responsible and to blame
(being a victim and transferring the blame on culture, mother, father,
ex-lover, friend, absolves me of responsibility), or to feel strong, and,
for the most part, in control.79
Anzaldúa points out the choice that we all have to feel empowered or
victimized.80 The choice to feel empowered is expansive; it is the root
of creativity and a source of love. Through loving criticism, we accept
responsibility for our role in conflicts and our power to respond, con-
struct, create, and transform. We refuse to circumscribe people as
victims and oppressors.
Many activists resist the position of victim, focusing instead on

personal power and an understanding of negative experiences as gifts.
Reflecting on negative experiences from her life, Sandee refuses the
idea that she is special or that she has been a victim. “Horrible things
happen to people,” she says, “but they’re not victims. They might be
traumatized. They might be victimized by situations, but they’re not
just victims.” Indeed, she thinks “trauma and pain are potentially cat-
alytic events for creating greater social justice.”81 As Anzaldúa writes,
wounds are openings with the potential to create change.82
The gratitude Sandee expresses for all she has experienced is a feel-
ing shared by South Asian American queer feminist Sivagami “Shiva”
Subbaraman, who claims that her spiritual faith is what enabled her
to survive traumatic and painful experiences: “I wouldn’t have got-
ten through this if it wasn’t for that larger sense . . . Yes, a lot of peo-
ple were mean to me and abused me, but a lot of people have also
loved me, and if love is God, then I have seen God at work, too.” She
sees it as a difficult and “painful paradox” that good things often
follow tragic or painful events. Reflecting on her mother’s death
and the sexual abuse Shiva suffered at the hands of her grandfather,
she says,
It was very painful for me that [my mother] died when I was twenty-
two, but on the other hand it helped me grow and become who I
am today, right? . . . My life would have been easier if my grandfather
hadn’t existed. But on the other hand, I do believe in that old saying
that pain hollows you out, and hopefully if you understand the role of
pain, it allows you to hold more.83
Accepting the pain and abuse she has suffered, Shiva views those
experiences as gifts that enable her to understand more and to change
the world for future generations. Activists and critics can transform
their painful experiences into sources of strength and empowerment.
Accepting our power, we can better understand the power that others
have to affect the world.
In her famous question, Lorde claims the power of all of who she
is, all of her experiences, and challenges us to use our own power in
service of our purpose: “Because I am woman, because I am Black,
because I am lesbian, because I am myself—a Black woman war-
rior poet doing my work—come to ask you, are you doing yours?”84
Lorde made this call again and again in her speeches and writing.
Rooting herself in the collective identities that are parts of her, but
not all of her, and in her own unique “self,” she declares her work as
her own. She elaborates on her use of “work” in “The Uses of the
Erotic”: “The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and
the lives of our children richer and more possible. Within the celebra-
tion of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious
decision—a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which
I rise up empowered.”85 Our work, then, is that which furthers our
purpose, which, for most of us, is to improve the way we live for
ourselves and future generations. Lorde does not make prescriptions
for anyone else but asks if each of us is doing hir work, leaving it to
each of us to consider hir own life and determine if zie is working
toward hir purpose.86 This question enacts a kind of critique that
helps people to find their own inner sense of value, their principles,
and to determine for themselves what they contribute. Such a loving
kind of critique honors each person’s struggle and helps develop a
sense of possibility in everyone.
Antiracist feminist scholar Celine Parreñas Shimizu honors the
power and dignity of all humans, and Asian/American women in par-
ticular, in The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American
Women on Screen and Scene. Representations of Asian women as
hypersexual—and the related material impacts in the form of discrim-
ination, sexual exploitation, and violence against Asian/American
women—affect the lives of women of Asian descent in the United
States and around the world. Shimizu shows that the impact of these
representations is not simple or unidirectional, however. As produc-
ers, consumers, and critics of representation, Asian/American women
find “trauma, terror, and pain as well as joy, self-recognition, and alli-
ance” in hypersexual representations and negotiate their own under-
standings of themselves and their power through and in relation to
hypersexuality.87 Accepting the power that hegemonic representations
have to create a screen of hypersexuality through which non-Asians
view Asian women, Shimizu interrogates the pain and pleasure that
Asian/American women find in hypersexuality, locating possibility in
the complexity of representation. Like Heather Love, Shimizu resists
the reduction of human experience to fit a simplistic politics. She
finds in the complexity of Asian/American women’s representation
the beauty of human struggle and imagination. Shimizu emphasizes
the importance of accepting “unknowability” to leave space for pos-
sibilities of transformation. She writes,
The space between bondage and freedom in defining racialized sex-

uality is vast, ambiguous, and complex in ways we need to sustain
as unknowable or ever mysterious and surprising. To know oneself
as unknowable is to remain open to change and the process of self-

transformation in both social experience and our engagements with
representations.88
Rather than evaluating representations in relation to a normative view

of what counts as oppressive or liberatory, Shimizu finds a way to
hold human vulnerability and agency through rigorous criticism that
respects human intelligence, creativity, and power while understand-
ing the real impacts of structural oppression.
Face Conflict with Kindness

Accepting our power enables action for social change, which often
involves conflicts, large and small. Maintaining focus on our shared
humanity enables us to practice kindness as a strategy for deep, last-
ing change. Papaya hopes that we can all learn to handle conflicts
without anger or hostility, “Because clearly on a small level it’s con-
flict between individuals. But on a large level it’s the same conflict
that creates conflict between us as people, as cultures, as races, as
gender[s], even within gender variants. A lot of that hostility, we must
learn to commute it into something more positive, more active.” Like
Anzaldúa, Papaya views all conflicts as having the same root and
believes we need to transform our feelings of hostility into a positive
force. If we understand all conflicts as connected and rooted in feel-
ings and beliefs that we are separate, then each conflict is an oppor-
tunity to transform the larger problem of separation. Each interaction
becomes an opportunity to practice peace and being kind with each
other—something that is difficult and necessary because the oppres-
sion we live with relies on separation, fear, suspicion, and hostility.
Even, or especially, when working for positive social change—actions
rooted in love for others and belief in human dignity—it is easy to
get swept up in conflicts, focusing more on being right than on being
kind.
Because the day-to-day work of social change, as Papaya notes,
entails a lot of conflict, the ideals behind the work can get lost. Ram
Dass, spiritual teacher and former Harvard psychologist, and Paul
Gorman, faith-based activist, comment on the challenge of keeping
human commonalities in mind on “the battlefield” of political activ-
ism, which entails “encountering profound difference of belief, chal-
lenging institutions, struggling for power, risking casualties.” Living
according to our values and ideals requires “clarity and inspiration.”89
Reflecting on lessons learned from the movements and philosophies
associated with Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.,

Dass and Gorman ask, “What kind of victory is it when someone is
left defeated? . . . Do we just want to be right, or do we all want to
be free?” 90 If what we want is to win, then others are left behind—
someone loses. Freedom, for Dass and Gorman, means everyone
participates—no one feels forced to give anything up. Freedom for
everyone requires respecting the dignity of each person.
Lorde connects the problem of being right with activist opposi-
tionality, which she, like Anzaldúa, views as necessary and insuffi-
cient. She writes, “Political work will not save our souls, no matter
how correct and necessary that work is. Yet it is true that without
political work we cannot hope to survive long enough to effect any
change. And self-empowerment is the most deeply political work there
is, and the most difficult.” 91 Being correct is not the same as being
empowered, or free. People often get stuck, attached to a position, a
tactic, or an emotion, when we feel correct. Such fixity can prevent
movement and growth, locking one down in a conflict while other
possibilities go unnoticed. Calling for empowerment rather than cor-
rect politics, Lorde argues that it is more important for people to
learn and grow than to create a correct system without them. The
many failed experiments with state socialism are some of the clear-
est examples of revolutionaries instituting change without transform-
ing people’s lives and cultures. Attempting to force people to change
their ways of living and thinking, rather than allowing individuals to
find their own paths, led to notorious periods of oppression and vio-
lence. The political work of self-empowerment produces possibilities
and increases chances for survival.92
Letting go of the attachment to being right can contribute to a
sense of empowerment. Monique found that she had to let go of her
investment in being right in order to speak her truth. As a leader
in her professional and spiritual communities, she learned to “speak
with conviction and authority,” and now “I feel much more confident
in my ability to express my opinions.” She claims that her shyness is
both natural and learned through growing up in almost all-white
environments. Feeling either invisible or hypervisible because of how
other children treated her, Monique tried “to put myself more and
more in the background as much as possible.” She also realizes that
“my ego was very invested in” being right and impressing people.
“Over time,” she says, “I’ve given myself permission to not be right.
I don’t have to be good, it just has to be real. It just has to be truth.”
Asked how she knows what is true, she replies, “Because it feels right
to me. It feels in line with my values, with my experience. It feels like
it’s not coming from a place of fear, rather a place of love.” With this
statement, Monique signals the erotic, the feeling of everything com-
ing together in connection with her deepest self, which lets her know
when she’s found her truth and gives her the power to speak it. Not
needing to be correct or to win, we can tap into our erotic power,
find our truths, and speak them, and from this place of empower-
ment, we can respect each person’s need to find her own truth.
Following the example of Lorde’s question, with its respect for
each person’s potential, loving criticism involves a shift in focus from
oppression to possibilities. Some activists find that reminding them-
selves of their foundational beliefs and principles opens up possibili-
ties for action and change when a focus on injury might shut down
connections. Focusing on their values, these activists change their
approach to the situation, which changes the situation. Discussing
her work as Development Director for a national queer youth orga-
nization, Monique describes the challenges of working with mostly
white male donors. She realizes that she often assumes that white men
“are not interested in anything I have to say. That’s not helpful for me
to believe that. Sometimes it’s true. Sometimes it’s not true. I’m not
always sure that I know.” Regardless of whether or not there is racism
at work in these meetings, Monique realizes that her assumption does
not make her feel good or confident. She asks, “Does it serve me to
make that assumption? Do I feel great leaving an experience where
I’ve made that assumption? No . . . I can think it protects me against
being harmed in some way, but it doesn’t. In fact, it can end up block-
ing important connections I could make.” Even if her diagnosis of
racism is accurate, that truth does not protect her, does not make her
feel good, and can prevent her from acting in a way that promotes
positive change.
Monique talks about the need to balance her awareness of race, class,
sexuality, gender, and related dynamics with her desire to “move to
a different level of understanding of humans,” saying, “It’s there; it’s
real. And at the same time, how do I see the higher selves?” Relating
a story of a meeting held with a potential donor who was completely
ignoring her, directing all of his attention toward the organization’s
white male executive director, she recalls thinking, “Okay, Monique,
you have a choice here. You can assume that he’s doing this because
you’re black and [the executive director]’s white, or you can assume
that he hasn’t met you before, so he just doesn’t know you. So . . . use
your social grace to put yourself into this conversation.” The strategy
was successful, and the man “warmed up” to her by the end of the
meeting. She admits that it is difficult not to make assumptions about
people, particularly when race is involved, but her commitment to

treating people with respect and compassion requires such work. She
also realizes that making assumptions about where people are coming
from, even if they are true, closes down possibilities for connection
and movement. By assuming the best about where people want to go,
Monique encourages positive change.
Black lesbian feminist Colette Stone uses a similar narrative struc-
ture to describe a different situation in which her belief that “the uni-
verse is abundant” helps remind her to act from her best principles.93
Colette frequently partners with other organizations that compete
for the same grant funding as her national organization. Even after
she learned that a partner organization was not supporting her by
letting grant foundations know that the two groups were collaborat-
ing on projects, Colette felt it was important to continue to assist the
organization by sharing information about upcoming grant competi-
tions. She explains, “There was a moment where I was like, . . . ‘Keep
it to yourself.’ But I was like, ‘[Colette], that’s ridiculous. If you
really believe the universe is abundant and there’s enough, then it
is enough.’” Like Monique, Colette represents these thoughts as a
conversation with herself. Both women see two choices, each aligned
with one version of herself. Each narrator describes herself as initially
reacting from what I call the smaller self, the part of her that acts
habitually, responding to negative feelings or seeking immediate plea-
sures. This smaller self’s response is interrupted by the voice of the
larger self, the one that realizes a deeper connection with the universe
or the divine, who advises making a positive choice that follows her
spiritual beliefs.94 Acting from her best principles, based on her belief
in abundance, Colette serves her purpose of bringing more social jus-
tice to the world. Focusing on her best principles, each activist and
critic can do her part to create possibilities for positive change.
Because oppression does not teach us to be kind or to value our-
selves or others from marginalized groups, treating each other with
respect requires such conscious practice. Lorde writes of the work
required to treat each other kindly, “because what was native has been
stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other. But we can
practice being gentle with ourselves by being gentle with each other.
We can practice being gentle with each other by being gentle with
that piece of ourselves that is hardest to hold.”95 Here Lorde writes
specifically of relationships between black women and in the context
of histories of slavery, segregation, and colonialism specific to black
people. Yet the internal oppression and anger that she describes is
present in many people, across all boundaries, and her advice is useful
for all of us who would like to see more kindness in the world.96 By
connecting the difficulty of being kind and gentle with each other
with oppression, Lorde argues for the necessity of tenderness in social
justice work.97 Using the word “practice,” she claims that acting with
kindness is itself a way to learn to act with kindness. That is, indi-
vidual acts of kindness are a form of practice that help to make a habit
of kindness, and treating one person with kindness helps one learn to
treat others with kindness. Lorde thus invokes the spiritual sense of
practice, in which one does something for its own sake, because it is
part of a life well-lived.98
Drawing on a Buddhist concept of practice and view of the big
picture and of each moment as “interconnected,” Sandee sees each
interaction as an opportunity to practice peace. All of her political
goals are at stake in each moment. She asks, “How do we talk to one
another and really accept that difference and not just simply [have] a
knee jerk reaction back and forth? Not dehumanize?” She describes
this focus on each moment as Buddhist because “you are trying to
be aware, . . . mindful of how you speak, mindful of the fact that every
action has a reaction, a consequence.” Sandee contrasts this approach
with her earlier view that “we either get that change or its nothing!”
She explains, “Being peaceful with yourself and compassionate with
yourself and others. It’s all practice. If you don’t practice compassion,
there is no compassion.” Her practice includes being aware of her
thoughts and trying to stay in the moment. She connects mindful-
ness with being present with another person, trying to accept the
other person without the screen of thoughts, which include past
experiences and ideas that can obscure understanding of the present
moment. Her practice, she says, is “to be right here and look at you
and really try and see you.” Sandee combines Buddhist mindfulness
practice with structural critique, so that part of one’s awareness of a
situation is of privileges, options, experiences of victimization, and
limits that have a basis in political, economic, and social structures.99
Through the practice of observing and letting go of thoughts that
lead to separation and judgment, one can better understand both
larger and smaller forces that shape people’s lives and individual
moments. Mindful of overdetermination and arbitrariness and of the
illusion and reality of separation, one can practice compassion in the
midst of conflict.100
Alexander describes the possibilities for this kind of critical and
compassionate consciousness: “We can continue holding on to a
consciousness of our different locations, our understanding of the
simultaneous ways dominance shapes our lives and, at the same time,
water the erotic as that place of our Divine connection which can
transform the ways we relate to one another.”101 Connecting with the
erotic energy that flows through each of us, we can find the power
to create more peace. As Alexander emphasizes, this does not entail
forgetting the real effects of oppression but seeing possibilities for
transformation. Artist and educator Renée M. Martínez describes
the shift from focusing on oppression to possibilities as a move from
warrior to peacemaker. Martínez recalls growing fatigued from her
activist oppositionality, feeling “under siege, constantly embattled
and completely exhausted.” Her approach to activism changed as she
discovered prejudice in people who were close to her. Unable to dis-
miss them as oppressors, a progressive activist’s “other,” her love for
them led her to seek new methods and perspectives on social change.
As she was able to see friends and family members as people who
perpetuate injustice and who still deserve dignity and love, she was
able to see others as whole people also. From the perspective of peace-
maker, Martínez views her earlier oppositional stance as participat-
ing in domination, using “the master’s tools,” in the words of Audre
Lorde. Another way of being in the world, peacemaking preserves
human dignity by treating people with honesty, kindness, and respect
for their power.102
Peacemaking is defined by the centrality of its principles and its
faith in possibility. No longer stuck by feelings of hurt and unfocused
anger, Martínez is free to seek other ways to work for justice while
respecting human dignity. She describes this peaceful approach as
strong, powerful, and faithful, writing of working with those who
could be dismissed as oppressors as an act of bravery. Acting from
belief in her principles and the possibility of peace, Martínez finds
connections, where before she might have focused on conflicts.
Turning gaps into bridges has been a major contribution of multira-
cial feminism—a contribution emphasized in alternate terms for this
form of consciousness, such as interstitial feminism and intersection-
ality. From the interstices, the spaces between movements and theo-
ries focused on gender, race, class, sexuality, and disability separately,
multiracial feminists created broadly inclusive theories and politics
from their belief that “another world is possible.”103
The changes Martínez describes may be subtle: letting go of the
habit of categorizing people as friend or foe; focusing on “principles,”
such as her belief in human dignity, rather than on conflicts; resisting
the tendency to judge; looking for commonalities. Yet she describes
the effects of these shifts on her life as “revolutionary.”104 Similarly,
Sandee calls peacemaking “action-oriented” and “infinitely radical.”
Reflecting on the movement for democracy in Burma, she explains,

“I’d love to see wholesale change. But there isn’t wholesale change if
I’m not behaving democratically, even if [that] means allowing space
for people I don’t agree with and I find really objectionable. There is
no democracy the moment I behave undemocratically.” For Sandee,
like Dass and Gorman, the victory of regime change is not better than
the freedom of universal dignity. The belief that meaningful change is
possible only if we respect human dignity is foundational to peacemak-
ing. Acting from this principle is a subtle way to create deep change.
The principles and beliefs of peacemaking connect single peaceful
acts with a global movement. Martínez views peace efforts as encour-
aging hope:
Our answers somehow lie in building and creating, moving forward

and beyond, allowing wounds to heal and scars to fade gracefully. Not
to forget or deny pain, but to embrace it and move on. We must believe
that atrocities and injustices will not prevent us from flying, or even
from soaring . . . I’m tired of seeing energy drained into a dark pit of
despair, rather than amplified by hope.105
The “somehow” in this quote points to the difficulty of explaining

peacemaking in words, the impossibility of pinning down emotional
and spiritual effects with words. This sense of not knowing how these
things happen runs throughout discussions of the spiritual aspects of
activism, along with acknowledgment of the difficulty—and necessi-
ty—of the work. Somehow, we find creative ways to move, build, and
connect. Hope grows; healing happens; and we find more energy to
continue the work.106
Nourish Ourselves through Positive Action

Sustaining the practice of peacemaking requires practicing kindness
with ourselves as well. Because “Too much suffering can destroy our
capacity to love,” Thich teaches that we need “to stay in touch with
things that are dreadful in life and also things that are wonderful.”107
As Sedgwick notes, both paranoid and reparative critical positions are
equivalent in their capacity for producing knowledge.108 She argues,
though, that the paranoid approach to criticism can block positive
feelings, while the reparative position is pleasure-seeking. In addition
to providing more pleasure, the reparative position “inaugurates ethi-
cal possibility” that Sedgwick argues is founded on “the very frag-
ile concern to provide the self with pleasure and nourishment in an
environment that is perceived as not particularly offering them.”109

Seeking to discover ways that individuals and communities survive
and nourish themselves, often in a culture that does not support
them, the reparative critic nourishes herself.
Native Canadian educator Kim Anderson’s project in A Recognition
of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood is a reparative one. She
examines how native women “maintain their power, in spite of all
the oppression” and finds the answer in a four-part process through
which native women define themselves by “resisting negative defini-
tions of being; reclaiming Aboriginal tradition; constructing a posi-
tive identity by translating tradition into the contemporary context;
and acting on that identity in a way that nourishes the overall well-
being of our communities.”110 Anderson begins with her own story
and situates her project in relation primarily to native literature, invit-
ing readers to “suspend their own frame of reference” in order to
listen to stories and analysis that may grow from a different world-
view.111 After providing background on “The Colonization of Native
Womanhood” to describe the history of oppression that continues
to affect native people’s lives, she focuses the bulk of the book on
how native women “resist, reclaim, construct and act,” citing stories
and quotes from her interviews with 40 native women.112 She clearly
states how her focus in the book reflects her purpose of contributing
to the health and empowerment of native women: “Although I take
my cue from the violence and confusion, the focus of this book is the
strength, power and beauty of native womanhood. My way of dealing
with the sickness that comes from the confusion is to share a vision of
health.”113 This loving project carries Anderson’s hope for dialogue,
vision, and reflection that will help native women and others create
more balanced, healthy, and respectful lives.
Reparative criticism is a kind of positive, or hopeful, thinking that,
Sedgwick notes, sometimes comes from “the most paranoid-tending
people.”114 For Shiva, reparative practice is a response to a paranoid
worldview. Because there is “no safety, . . . you have to make the world
safer or you’re just there, feeling afraid.” She explains, “for me the
world was not safe. I didn’t grow up in a safe family, I didn’t grow
up in a safe world, I was clearly not protected.” While she supposes
her abusive grandfather “had malicious intent, . . . he is the only one
of whom I can say so clearly and maybe my grandmother, who knew
what was going on. But everybody else, it wasn’t malicious intent.
It was ignorance, innocence, stupidity, denial, all those human cul-
pabilities.” Because she does not view the world as malicious, Shiva
finds possibilities to make change. She does not know if she has made
the world any safer, but she believes in the ripple effect. Her actions
may not make huge changes, but “you have that ripple and the ripple
sets up things.” Her belief in good intent supports her work to make
the world safer than it was for her. Her beliefs and activism provide
nourishment in a world that has not supported her. Positive thinking
and action can be a healing response to a paranoid worldview.115
hooks prescribes such hopeful thinking to counter the stress that
comes with black women’s paranoia: “Positive thinking is a serious
antidote to stress. Since so much of our personal worrying has to do
with feeling that the worse that can happen will, we can truly counter
this negative by changing thought patterns.”116 She relates the many
health problems that make stress life-threatening for black women and
notes that “stress does not empower us to handle whatever comes our
way.”117 She describes the difficulty and scariness of positive think-
ing for black women: “We express a lot of our negative thinking in
humorous vernacular speech. It often has a quality of magic and sassi-
ness that comforts. It’s tied up with our sense of being able to look
on the rough side and deal.”118 hooks attributes the paranoid per-
spective in black women as stemming from fear of disappointment, a
similar claim to Sedgwick’s view of the paranoid critic’s fear of being
surprised by bad news. hooks describes the different perspective she
has developed on disappointment: “Now I know better. Not being
addicted to being tough, to facing everything with no show of hurt
or pain, allows us to express disappointment, hurt, outrage, and be
comforted. Bottling up emotions intensifies stress.” hooks identifies
in the paranoid position a stifling of negative emotions. Letting go of
her attachment to “being tough,” she appreciates the care that she is
able to receive when she expresses negative feelings.119 Letting go of
fears of appearing weak or having bad surprises, hopeful thinking and
action open space for caring to happen.
In addition to relieving individual stress, love and positive thinking
sustain struggles for justice. hooks writes, “What would it mean for
black people to collectively believe that despite racism and other forces
of domination we can find everything that we need to live well in the
universe, including the strength to engage in the kind of political resis-
tance that can transform domination?”120 Her rhetorical question here
reframes the focus on kindness taught by the 17th Karmapa in a way
that makes clear the political impact of the teaching. A shift in per-
spective, from a focus on how oppressed people have suffered to how
the universe supports our survival, can provide the faith, gratitude,
joy, and love needed for transformation. White queer pagan activist
Eric Eldritch describes the belief in one’s own individual and collective
power as “magic”: “magic is the hope and the belief in transformation

and your ability to make it happen.” He includes in that definition the
faith that “you can get your needs met right here, in yourself and your
community” if you “keep believing that the synergy of people com-
ing together is greater than just everybody trying to make it on their
own.” The belief that one can find what one needs in one’s self and
community makes it so. As we trust in our own resources and nourish
ourselves by focusing on love and possibilities, we find ways to survive
and energy to change the world.
Conclusion
The work of rediscovering truths and changing our thought patterns
goes hand in hand with the work of changing the physical conditions
of our lives. Lorde says, “Because we cannot fight old power in old
power terms only. The only way we can do it is by creating another
whole structure that touches every aspect of our existence, at the
same time as we are resisting.”121 We must resist the old patriarchal
racist homophobic classist imperialist powers while we do the deeper
work of creating other ways of being and doing that integrate and
honor all of who we are. The daily work of resistance is connected to
the deeper, long-term work of transformation.
In transformative acts of resistance, loving criticism seeks knowl-
edge and methods that do something besides exposing the truth
of oppression. It seeks to amplify kindness, creativity, love, and joy
wherever it can find it, so that the critic and the world can draw on
these resources. Critique serves an important function because of the
centrality of consciousness to oppression. Yet it easily becomes stance
and counterstance, positioning, reacting, paranoia. Too often, we
make accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and other
related isms, to which some respond as a challenge, and most respond
with defensiveness, because we have dehumanized the racist, sex-
ist, homophobe, classist, and so on, that exists in all of us. Through
loving criticism, we look for and encourage the best in others and
ourselves, trusting that nourishing our creative parts is intrinsically
good.122 Accepting our shared humanity, honoring those who have
come before us, examining ourselves with honesty and kindness, lov-
ing criticism encourages hope through peacemaking. Driven by the
hope for a better future, loving criticism produces knowledge that can
help sustain us as we work for positive social change.
2
L ov e: Ac t i v ist Mo t i vat ions
Understanding love as a life-force that urges us to move against death

enables us to see clearly that, where love is, there can be no disen-
abling, disempowering, or life-destroying abuse.
bell hooks1
My choice of the term “loving criticism” to describe the theoretical

approach for which I strive honors the love that is the root of the prac-
tice of social change. The life-seeking love that bell hooks describes
in the above passage is what I call “revolutionary love,” a source of
activism that promotes social justice and peace. Revolutionary love is
the foundation of work for positive change, though it often manifests
as anger.
Popular representations of activists often focus on activist anger.
Through anger, activists express a desire for justice, fairness, and
respect that reflects their love of themselves and of others who suffer.2
In this chapter, I locate the roots of lifelong activism in love and argue
for the necessity of revolutionary love for political and spiritual trans-
formation.3 Most sociological studies of motivations for activism give
insight into reasons for participation in a particular organization or
event.4 In order to understand how habitual activists begin and sus-
tain a lifetime of social change work, my study focuses on life histo-
ries of a small group of activists. Oral history provides rich qualitative
data from which to analyze the simultaneity of internal and external
processes of identity and value formation, changing understandings
of social problems, and a broad range of emotions, including love,
desire, and pleasure, over long spans of time.5
I examine how love combines with beliefs and cognitive processes to
drive people to social activism in many ways.6 After discussing the role
of emotions in activism and the political potential of love, I describe
five primary ways in which love manifests as motivation for activism
in oral histories of intersectional activists: as self-love or self-respect,
connecting with others, compassion and caring, the desire to make a

meaningful contribution to the world, and openness to heartbreak.
Because activists care about others and the world, and because their
love is wrapped up in their work, they are vulnerable to disappoint-
ment and the pain of letting their hearts break. Discussing heartbreak
includes addressing the mixed emotions many activists have about
their work and how painful experiences are connected with loving and
fearlessness. By identifying love at the root of social change work, I
hope to encourage people to see the love that activist anger expresses.
There, we can find common ground.
Background: The Emotions of Activism

Social scientists have paid increasing attention to emotions in social
movements, responding to calls by sociologists such as Verta Taylor
and James M. Jasper for more study of the central role of emotions
in activism. Taylor critiques the dualist treatment of reason and emo-
tion in much social movement theory and the minimal attention paid
to emotions in the study of activism. Rather than debating whether
social movement actors are driven by reason or passion, Taylor points
out that “emotional expression often serves rational and strategic
purposes” and that recognizing that emotions play an important
role in social movements “is not to deny that we are thinking as well
as feeling actors.”7 Jasper argues that emotions are critical to social
movements, providing motivation to engage in activism and energy
to sustain activist struggles.8
Social movement theory on the emotions of activism often focuses
on group affinity, a kind of love. Jasper focuses on the affective ties
that connect people within social movements and the emotions shared
among people in social movements. His discussion centers on activ-
ists’ love and caring for each other and shared anger at people, institu-
tions, or policies with which they disagree.9 These emotions, Jasper
notes, build solidarity and identification with a movement. Historian
Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor also find that affective ties to a group
are an important part of activist commitment.10 Jasper explains that
caring for other group members is the basis of collective identity, on
which much protest is based.11
Many studies also locate activist motivations in dissatisfaction and
negative feelings. Jasper notes that organizers frame their actions and
rhetoric to appeal to emotions, particularly anger, fear, and hostil-
ity.12 Sociologist Doug McAdam writes of anger and hope as essential
to the formation of social movements: “At a minimum people need
L ov e 51
to feel both aggrieved about some aspect of their lives and optimistic
that, acting collectively, they can redress the problem.”13 Sociologists
Francesca Polletta and Edwin Amenta emphasize “anger, indigna-
tion, fear, compassion, or a sense of obligation” as motivating forces.
Taylor describes how “feminist organizations encourage women to
trade fear and shame for anger” in order to channel the energy gen-
erated by anger into organizing.14 Sociologist Cheryl Hercus writes
of anger as central to political organizing, particularly for feminist
groups. Hercus describes how groups function to sustain feminists
who feel little support from the popular culture or local commu-
nities for their anger at sexism.15 Antiracist feminist queer studies
scholar Ann Cvetkovich also writes of the emotional work of activ-
ism, describing lesbian organizing as a productive response to trauma,
including the daily traumas of invisibility and discrimination.16 The
root of protest as a response to anger, pain, disappointment, and
trauma, I argue, is love for oneself and for others who suffer from
discrimination and oppression.17
The connection between love and anger can be seen even in stud-
ies that emphasize how activist groups “legitimate anger.” Hercus’s
“Identity, Emotion, and Feminist Collective Action,” for example,
reveals how feminist organizing provides an emotional boost through
“enthusiasm and joy” shared in the personal connections made at
feminist gatherings. Hercus’s research participants report increases
in positive feelings about themselves and enjoying feelings of “‘sup-
port’” and connection with a larger group.18 The increased energy
they report feeling from such gatherings reflects the reinforcement of
self-love through group affinity.
The emotions of activism are closely tied with morality, which is
also connected with love.19 Jasper describes some emotional responses
that often lead people to seek political involvement without having
necessarily been recruited as “moral shocks.”20 He connects morality
with feelings of intense anger through love: “Positive and negative
affects like these are related to moral sensibilities, at least in that I am
morally indignant or outraged (my moral sensibilities are expressed
through emotions) when the objects of my affection are threatened
in some way.”21 The anger that often leads people to political involve-
ment reflects feelings of love for those beings or values that are felt
to have been injured or threatened. As antiracist feminist Cherríe
Moraga writes, “What drew me to politics was my love of women, the
agony I felt in observing the straight-jackets of poverty and repression
I saw people in my own family in.”22 It is because activists love oth-
ers and themselves that they experience pain and anger at oppression,
and the energy provided by their love and anger fuels the work of
social change.
Love as a Political Force

bell hooks and other antiracist feminist writers, including Gloria
Anzaldúa, Chela Sandoval, Trinh Minh-ha, Emma Perez, Cherríe
Moraga, Maria Lugones, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde, write of
the revolutionary potential and necessity of love. Because “oppres-
sion and exploitation pervert, distort, and impede our ability to
love . . . The choice to love has always been a gesture of resistance for
African-Americans” and people from other marginalized groups.23
As “a life-force,” love is something that drives us and can overtake
the intellect. It involves feelings and thereby the body and experience,
since feelings involve biochemical processes and physical sensations,
which we come to understand and articulate intellectually. Love can
lead us to care for others and ourselves in a way that leads to activism
and to desiring a better world.
My use of “love” in this chapter is similar to what philosopher
Cheryl Hall describes as “passion” in her critique of liberal political
theory’s approaches to and marginalization of passion. Hall argues
that the dichotomy of reason and passion in political theory is both
false and gendered, so that the privileging of reason in the public
sphere “reinforce[s] and perpetuate[s] both the marginalization of
women from public life and the marginalization of so-called femi-
nine aspects of human life from politics.”24 She calls passion “the key
force for improving political life” and argues that it is passion, which
she connects with “an envisioned good,” that leads people to work
together to create a political system.25 This connection with the good
involves “a cognitive judgment,” which incorporates both reason and
emotion.26
One way that love moves people toward connection is through
identification, a kind of projection in which I use my imagination to
understand an other’s experience. As Lugones writes, I “see myself
in her.”27 Through playfully getting to know an other’s “world,” we
learn to perceive, and thereby to love, the other’s humanity. Lugones
thinks we can learn to identify with love in order to connect across
differences and build alliances for social change. Antiracist feminist
writer Inés Hernández-Ávila also writes of love for particular people
and communities. For her, love for past activists, artists, and teach-
ers “who gave their lives for the cause of universal peace and justice”
is the source of activism: “So that their/our suffering will not have
L ov e 53
been in vain, so that every ounce of energy they gave for liberation
will count, so that our spirits will draw and give from such strength,
we get up, we rise up, in beauty, in dignity, in conscious freedom.”28
Driven by love, activist work transforms the suffering of activists
themselves and those who came before them. Contemporary activists
continue the work of those who came before, working for justice and
peace. Love through identification is characterized by such particu-
larity of object. Through connection with concrete others, known
or unknown, with whom we identify, we feel a love that encourages
compassionate action.
Even when love focuses on a particular object, its nature is to
grow to encompass more. hooks views love as “an action” and as
“the will to extend oneself to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual
growth,” a kind of work that promotes healing and expansive con-
nections.29 Walker explains that love naturally grows from wherever it
starts, saying, “You can start with a daffodil, but if you sincerely see
it and if you sincerely love it, then . . . The daffodil is like a key to the
big, big, big storeroom. Then everything becomes something that is
lovable.”30 Spiritual author and lecturer Marianne Williamson views
expanding how and whom we love as a political imperative. For her,
“Love is more than a feeling; it is a choice, a commitment, a stand we
take, or it is nothing.”31 Drawing on the work of Martin Luther King,
Jr., she explains that “it is agape —our capacity to love even those
whom we do not like—that has the power to restore the world to its
innocence and grace.”32 Williamson focuses on the revolutionary love
of King and Mohandas Gandhi, arguing for love as key to personal,
social, and political change and as capable of producing “a re-vision-
ing of the entire world.”33 She calls for Americans “to expand our
concept of love and family to include the children on the other side
of town.”34 For Williamson, love has concrete policy implications: “If
love came first, we would use our financial resources to create jobs to
help people live well, instead of building more prisons to punish them
when they do not; if love came first, we would seek to educate and
help rather than to prosecute our children violently screaming out for
attention.”35 A loving relationship with the world would mean adopt-
ing policies and practices that are caring and compassionate.
Sandoval also finds revolutionary potential in the power of love to
expand and encompass more love. She writes of love as “a technology
for social transformation” and “a set of practices and procedures that
can transit all citizen-subjects, regardless of social class, toward a dif-
ferential mode of consciousness and its accompanying technologies of
method and social movement.”36 She argues that bridging differences
among people requires differential consciousness, which “requires

an emotional commitment within which one experiences the violent
shattering of the unitary sense of self as the skill that allows a mobile
identity to form takes hold.”37 Loving across boundaries for Sandoval
is not a process of identification but a process of self-shattering that
may be experienced as painful and threatening. From the experience
of fragmentation, one realizes the impossibility of knowing a unified
self in a bodymind that is inherently relational. This self-shattering
enables individuals to develop multiple and shifting identifications,
the revolutionary mestiza consciousness described by Anzaldúa in
Borderlands/La Frontera. From this loving form of consciousness,
one can form meaningful alliances and act in social and political
spheres to counter oppression and support the survival of marginal-
ized people.
Sandoval also gestures toward the role of self-understanding in lov-
ing. For Lugones, seeing ourselves as different in different “worlds”
uproots the “arrogant perception,” or “unitary sense of self” in
Sandoval’s terms, that is a barrier to love.38 Interrupting the “uni-
tary sense of self” is also part of the warrior tradition, described by
Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa. Shambhala warriorship is not a
tradition of aggression but a “tradition of fearlessness” that enables
the warrior to engage the world and work toward creating “enlight-
ened society.”39 The key to fearlessness, according to Trungpa, is “not
being afraid of who you are.”40 Such self-acceptance both comes from
and enables a looking within that leads to recognition of “what is
deepest and strongest and richest within each of us . . . : the passions
of love, in its deepest meanings.”41 The warrior faces, first in hirself,
those aspects of humanness that connect all people. This knowledge
that comes from self-examination in turn shapes one’s view of the
world. One learns to love hirself as human and part of the universe,
and one learns to love the universe because it is part of hirself. Feeling
this connection with others necessitates social and political action to
make the world a better place for all living things.
Self-love and Self-respect

Self-understanding is foundational to self-love, the first aspect of love
as activist motivation.42 Coming to understand, accept, and value
oneself and one’s desires can be a challenge in a society in which non-
normative desires and bodies are often associated with shame and suf-
fer discrimination.43 Loving and making choices for yourself based on
your internal sense of truth, desire, or passion—on trust in yourself,
L ov e 55
your feelings, and your ability to make choices—is an act of self-

love.44 In a culture in which sexuality is highly politicized and tied to
understandings of self, there may be a connection between the “inner
voice” of sexual desire and the “inner voice” of political desire.45 This
“inner voice” that calls us to self-love—to affirm our own and others’
humanity—has the spiritual force of truth. As Gandhi writes, “Truth
is the very substance of the soul . . . The soul is informed with knowl-
edge. In it burns the flame of love.”46 Those who find it difficult to
ignore the inner voice may be more likely to work toward recogni-
tion of and respect for universal human dignity. While black lesbian
activist V. Papaya Mann recognizes that what gets people upset is
who lesbians, gays, and bisexuals choose to have sex with, she thinks
that what is important is “not just the behavior, it’s the core of how
we love other people and how we love ourselves.” What Papaya calls
“the simple act of loving,” even when not connected explicitly with
politics, can encourage the self-love that is foundational for lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) social action. hooks’s
assertion that “Love heals. We recover ourselves in the act and art
of loving” encapsulates the possibility for loving others to increase
self-love.47 In this section, I discuss some challenges to self-respect
and stories of how narrators develop the self-love that is the basis of
political action.
Latina trans activist Ruby Corado’s self-love is interconnected
with her belief in human rights and civil rights. She began speak-
ing in the community after she became aware of disrespectful treat-
ment of transgender women by police officers. Because it seemed that
such poor treatment by police was “constant,” she thought, “This is
not right.” She began attending community meetings and became a
national spokesperson after her friend Bella Evangelista was killed in
2003. Ruby explains, “I didn’t want to be ignored, I wanted to have
a space.” She wanted city workers and nonprofit agencies who serve
Latina transgenders to be aware of the needs of her community. In
addition to speaking about trans issues in community forums, Ruby
organizes trans women to attend support groups or other events
where she feels a Latina trans presence is important. Asked why it
is that she felt she did not need to accept being treated poorly, Ruby
explains that it comes, for her, from “knowing what’s right and what’s
wrong. And if I know something is wrong, I felt like I had to say [so],
and I still do.” She trusts her own moral knowledge and also draws
on two different belief systems in explaining why she feels discrimi-
natory treatment is wrong: a rights-based understanding of equality
and a religious ethic of treating others as you would like to be treated.
She says, “I feel, I pay taxes just like they do; they wouldn’t like it if
they were given the same treatment that they were giving me, that
they were giving the people that I’m with.” Her use of “I feel” con-
veys the emotional aspect of this belief: this is a philosophy that feels
true. Sociologists James Downton, Jr., and Paul Wehr argue that such
deeply felt beliefs are fundamental to sustaining activist commitment.
They write of beliefs, “it is their meaning as ‘truth’ which gives them
the power to shape our perception of social reality and to affect our
behavior.”48 While they emphasize the socially constructed nature of
belief, I would argue that the cultural articulation of certain beliefs—
ones that are often traced across the world’s major religious traditions
and center around ideas of basic human dignity and connectedness—
also tap into our spiritual connection, and their power comes from
what Lorde terms the “erotic” force of our universal connection,
what Gandhi calls “Truth.”
Ruby explicitly draws upon an understanding of basic human dig-
nity in explaining why she advocates against violence and harassment
(which she considers a form of violence): “I should be able to walk
wherever I want to go and have people mind their own business and
let me mind my own business. But to me it’s important because I am
a human being.” Her love for herself and her trans sisters manifests
in the expression of this belief in their rights as humans. She thinks
that, as a human being, “I deserve a place. And I deserve the right
place. I’m a little greedy. I don’t want a place in the back of a train
or the back of the bus. I want a place where everybody is. And I have
it.” This having a place is what Ruby wants for all trans people—not
to be treated disrespectfully or discriminated against because they are
trans, immigrants, uneducated, sex workers, or drug users. Acting
from the deeply felt belief, rooted in love, that she deserves to be
respected simply because she is human, Ruby confronts prejudicial
acts and garners respect for herself and other trans women.49
For LGBTQ activists, developing self-love is often a prerequisite
for coming out and social action. Coming out is an act of self-love, a
determination to accept oneself and to be honest with oneself and oth-
ers. For some people, accepting their identity as lesbian, gay, bisexual,
trans, or queer comes easily. Others struggle with themselves, family,
friends, or religious beliefs over their appearance and whether it is
okay to feel same-sex desire. Cognitive beliefs and understandings of
identity combine with feelings in stories of how people come out as
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer.50
From a young age, white Jewish lesbian activist Carol Wayman
struggled with feeling different and with pressures to conform to
L ov e 57
dominant ideals of femininity until she found other women with

whom she could identify. She had crushes on girls from the age of
four and knew she was gay at the age of 11. She remembers hav-
ing “battles” with her mother through high school over housework
and “that I wasn’t feminine enough, and part of it was that I wasn’t
allowed to find my own sense of femininity at all. It was [the] ’80s,
you know, and it was all the big bows and the big hair and the ruffles
everywhere. It just didn’t appeal to me at all.” Carol came out early in
her first year of college. After seeing two women kissing in a bar, “I
went outside, and I just cried. I don’t know why I cried; I just cried.
And then I came in, and I’m like, ‘I’m gay.’” She suggests the cry-
ing was “a way to release” and remembers, “all these women looked
like me.” Recognizing their humanity, Carol was able to embrace her
own. After feeling like she “didn’t fit,” her feeling of finding others
who were like her provoked strong emotions. She quickly discovered,
“I love being gay!” Carol recognized how her grandfather’s finan-
cial support made her not worry that her parents would cut her off
and she would have to leave college. Still, she was affected by other
people’s struggles with sexual identity. Her first girlfriend broke up
with her after they were in a car accident, “because she said it was a
sign from Jesus that we shouldn’t be together. It was pretty awful
since I loved her so much.” Because the only resource for lesbian and
gay students was a part-time counselor—“and I didn’t really need
counseling,” Carol started a social club and helped found an activist
group. Because she accepted her lesbian identity and enjoyed con-
necting with other gays and lesbians, she spent her time promoting
lesbian and gay visibility and support.
For Carol, seeing other women who “looked like me” led quickly
to enjoying life as a lesbian. Vietnamese American trans activist Irena
Bui focuses specifically on the confidence of others who she identi-
fied as being like her as having a big impact on her development.
Irena describes herself before coming out as “almost a totally dif-
ferent person. Back then I was very passive, didn’t really say much,
didn’t really talk much and just did everything that [I] was told by
my parents to do, and now I’m sort of like the opposite of that.”
Through living her life, she “discovered that if you don’t speak your
mind or take an active role in your life, then you won’t get anywhere.”
After realizing that she was gay, Irena, who was then a boy called
Sean, went to a DC organization for LGBTQ youth, where “I saw
all these other people who are just so comfortable with who they are
and discovering things, and it just opened up a whole new way of
looking for me, and I was just really excited. It was like wow, there’s
these people who are like me and have the same thoughts as I do.”
Irena identified the other gay boys in the support group as being
“like me.” Through this identification, she saw their apparent com-
fort with themselves as being something that she could also feel. A
positive emotional response—excitement—accompanies this realiza-
tion. Irena marks at that moment another realization: that she was
“tired of being unhappy” and “feeling alone, like I’m the only gay
Asian Vietnamese boy . . . in this world. And that’s pretty much when
I just started to really decide that I wanted to be happy and pursue
what I wanted to pursue, and then I came out to my parents.” Irena
connects happiness with making decisions for herself and felt empow-
ered to do so after connecting with other gay boys who seemed to be
empowered agents in their own lives.
The next pivotal moment in Irena’s coming out story occurs in
Philadelphia, where she met “two people who really changed my life,”
who she describes as “cross-dressers.” Getting to know these two
friends, she remembers realizing, “Wow, you can be effeminate and
be comfortable in it.” Irena identified her own suppressed femininity
as being like that expressed by her cross-dressing friends and, again,
saw in their comfort the possibility of her own. Spending time with
them and cross-dressing, she “was getting more comfortable with
my effeminate side and my female side,” which she recalls deliber-
ately suppressing after being teased as a child in Vietnam. At some
point, she realized “I was really trying to be somebody that I wasn’t.”
She continued cross-dressing and gradually learned more about the
transgender community and the transition process, eventually decid-
ing to start taking hormones. Irena recalls being called out as male
by people in her neighborhood who knew she was trans, being upset
and “scared but at the same time just really pursuing it, like I wasn’t
going to give up on it.” After seeing that others seem comfortable
with their gay identities or dressing and acting in a manner consid-
ered feminine, Irena saw being comfortable as a possibility and chose
to live her life as if she was comfortable in her identities and choices
as well. For her, the cognitive realization that it is possible to inhabit
comfortably a marginalized identity was accompanied by excitement
that motivated personal changes that led to self-acceptance and com-
munity involvement.51
Biracial trans man Sean Gray decided to transition from female
to male after losing a friend in the September 11, 2001, attacks and
realizing he didn’t “want to die miserable” or feeling “like I hadn’t
lived life.” Sean knew he wasn’t a girl at a young age and realized
around age seven that he “wasn’t fitting in” and people were treating
L ov e 59
him differently “based on how I was behaving.” He had no words to

describe what was going on, but knew of gay and lesbian identities
and thought “I guess if I’m a girl and I like girls, maybe that’s what it
is.” Sean started hanging out in gay and lesbian bars in Washington,
DC, around the age of 17, but he says he “never really felt like a
member of the lesbian community.” After being closeted and miser-
able at George Mason University, Sean flunked out and lived at home
for a while, taking classes at a local community college before get-
ting accepted to George Washington University in DC, where Sean
enjoyed classes and made good friends: “It was the first time in my life
that I actually felt included.” In his late twenties, he remembers hav-
ing this feeling “like I was splitting in two physically.” He remembers
telling his girlfriend and his best friend “‘I think I’m a transsexual.’
I was horrified. I was scared out of my wits. But at the same time . . . ,
I felt like I just kind of shed all this stuff.” When Sean was able to
express his feelings in a cognitive framework, he, like Carol, describes
a kind of release. He then began connecting with other trans people
and communities, getting involved with the True Spirit conference.
It was not until 2001, however, that Sean decided to transition. In
that year, he ended a romantic relationship, was passed over for a pro-
motion, and lost a childhood friend who worked at the World Trade
Center. With the extra time he had as a newly single person, Sean
was able “to concentrate on my identity” and realized “at that point
I was just kind of going through the motions . . . I was kind of like,
‘Well, I tried living like this, and this is not making me happy, so why
don’t I try this?’” Sean decided to get hormone injections, thinking
he would just get a low dose, “But once I started to take injections,
I was like, this is what I want to do.” His emotional response to the
first physical step of transitioning confirmed Sean’s cognitive realiza-
tion of his trans identity. Following the emotional realization of one’s
desires—whether that is sexual desire, love, or desire to express one’s
gender in a particular way—is an act of self-love.
For African American lesbian feminist activist Donna Payne, com-
ing out involved fear of rejection by her family and a struggle to real-
ize God loves her as a lesbian. She describes the morning after she
first had sex with a woman as both happy and sad: “I knew that my
life had changed . . . I was happy, because I had figured out . . . that
was me. But the sad part was that I knew there was no way I could
tell my family.” A spark of self-love shows here in Donna’s happiness
at her own self-discovery, yet she describes experiencing depression,
her grades dropping and family relationships suffering, after that
moment. One experience that helped her was meeting Audre Lorde
while Lorde was visiting Payne’s Tennessee university. At the time,

Donna found it remarkable that Lorde wrote erotic poems about her
women lovers and wondered how “she could be so bold as to put it
in words.” Lorde’s assurance that she would become more “at ease”
with herself with age and “That she thought it was a joy just to be who
you are right now . . . helped to lift my depression.” “Words can’t even
explain” how “phenomenal” it was for Donna to meet this openly
lesbian black woman writer at a time when she felt she could not
speak of being gay.52 Her conversation with Lorde, she says, helped
her accept that “I do like women, and it’s okay to love a woman.”
Donna continued to struggle to reconcile her Christian beliefs with
her same-gender loving, however.
Donna’s love of her family and church community made it difficult
to be with them and to remain silent about her romantic life. She feels
that she hurt family and friends by not being honest with them about
her life. She describes several instances in which family and hetero-
sexual friends tried to connect with her, were honest and genuine
in relationship with her, while she was actively hiding an important
part of her life. She says of her years in the closet, “you tend to hurt
other people, because you’re hurt inside . . . You don’t feel loved by
God, then you can’t feel or understand love from someone else.”53
The difficulty Donna had reconciling church teachings about homo-
sexuality with her attraction to women left her feeling disconnected
from family and church and unable to stay in a long-term romantic
relationship. She describes feeling “empty” because she was lying to
her family, living “two lives,” and unsure if God loved her.
Things changed for Donna when she left Tennessee to move to
Washington, DC, where she discovered the Metropolitan Community
Church (MCC). The church, which has “a special ministry to Gay
men, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgendered people, and in fact anyone
and everyone who seeks the truth of God’s love for us,” became an
important source of support and religious education for Payne.54
Through the MCC community, Donna “learned the scriptures, and
I then understand that I am loved by God and that I shouldn’t be
ashamed.” Her experience with the MCC transformed her relation-
ship with God and her feelings about herself. With her feeling of
God’s love for her renewed, Donna had the self-love to come out
to friends and family. When her mother was upset to hear that her
daughter is a lesbian, saying, “This is not of God!,” Donna reassured
her that “No, no, I’m fine with who I am, and God loves me. I’m
okay.” Over time, her mother gained more acceptance of her daugh-
ter’s sexual identity, and Donna grew more determined not to hide
L ov e 61
any part of herself. According to Donna, “I told her that I couldn’t

take her pain anymore, and that I had to be who I was, and that was
all there was to it. I had to live my life, and that was my life, and so she
would have to understand that.” Donna says her coming out journey
took about ten years, from when she first realized she was attracted to
women to accepting herself and being confident enough to be clear
with her family that “I had to live my life.”
Papaya Mann explains her involvement in LGBTQ politics as cen-
tering around desire and choice: “I think it’s just us having choice to
do whatever we want to do and how we want to do it, including my
sexuality, including who I feel like having sex with, including who
I love, and that means also rights for those people that choose [to]
love men and women, those people that choose to become surgically
altered to fit what they feel is their soul’s desire.” She sees LGBTQ
activism as “creating an environment for ourselves [and our partners]
where we can act out our own desires and be comfortable in the world
that we’re moving around.” The choice to change the world to make
it safe for people to “act out our own desires and be comfortable” is
an act of love for oneself and others.
For some organizers, activism is a way to develop more self-love
when one struggles with self-esteem, shame, or not feeling that one
deserves to have one’s needs met. Activists’ experiences of difference
and the feelings they have about their race, class, gender, sexual iden-
tity, body size, physical or mental abilities, or physical appearance
often challenge their political beliefs in difference and diversity as
positive.
For black queer feminist activist Monique Meadows, accepting
herself as a large woman is much more difficult than accepting her
sexuality. She reports enjoying “shocking” people at a reunion of her
predominantly white, straight high school by telling them she worked
at the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce: she loved “see[ing] every-
one’s face drop, like, ‘The black girl is gay?!’” Monique explains that
she feels shame about her size in a way that she never did about being
black or a lesbian. She remembers there being “lots of positive talk
around our blackness” in her family and not getting a lot of negative
messages about women and sexuality at home. Because her family was
okay with her being a lesbian, “I got to decide what that meant for
me.” In contrast, though, “Body stuff . . . was stuff I did hear about
constantly.” Women in her family constantly seemed to be scrutiniz-
ing their own bodies and the bodies of girl children, too, as they got
older. She remembers being told “to ‘Pay attention to what you’re
eating. You’re eating too much. You need to suck your stomach in,’”
and feeling betrayed. “And that sense of betrayal,” Monique says,

“that sense of shame, that sense of wanting to cover up and hide has
remained with me ever since. And it was reinforced by media images
and by all the women in my family . . . always talk[ing] about their
bodies in very negative ways.” Being a woman-loving woman has not
freed Monique from her negative body images: “At the end of the
day [lesbians] still carry the same crap about what our bodies are sup-
posed to look like.” Because of her awareness of body image issues
and their connection with health, particularly how bodily shame
can impair people from treating their bodies well, Monique wants
“to support women in learning basic self-care skills . . . we all need to
move our bodies, we all need to eat vegetables, we all need to drink
water, we all need to rest. Those are the things that we need to do,
and they don’t have to be done with any particular end except being
well.” She realizes that “those things have been so associated with
attempts at weight loss and dieting and failure, because you’re still
fat, so you think that you’ve failed—that I think people just often
say, ‘Oh forget it.’ Plus who always wants to be thinking about, did
I get all my vegetables? Did I exercise? Did I get my target heart rate
up enough?” Monique is trying to figure out how to make caring for
oneself fun “for my own life, so that I can then share it with others.”
She connects supporting her own health and well-being with sup-
porting other women who struggle in similar ways.
White bisexual activist Loraine Hutchins describes learning about
self-love through her involvement in bisexual activism and sexuality
education. She remembers wanting to create the anthology Bi Any
Other Name as “the book that we wanted to read that wasn’t there.”
She and her coeditor, Lani Kaahumanu, wanted to put together
a book in the voices of bisexuals. There had been books studying

bisexuals like specimens, and all of that, and there had never been a
book that was coming out stories and personal life stories rather than
more psychological scrutinizing, and a book that represented bisexual-
ity as a ordinary, healthy identity rather than as some kind of peculiar
minority marginalized aberration.
Loraine remembers seeking diversity among authors and topics in

order to portray “bisexuality in many different aspects.” She recalls,
“It just was the most important thing in our lives, basically.” By rep-
resenting bisexuality as “ordinary” and “healthy,” Loraine and her
coauthor encourage self-love among bi people.
L ov e 63
Loraine also mentions sexologist Betty Dodson, who was an early

mentor, talking about the importance of “‘self-love.’ And I’m still
learning that after many years of working on it.” Loraine says of
Dodson’s focus on masturbation that the understanding and practice
of “satisfy[ing] yourself erotically” can lead to more choices “in terms
of who you chose to have sex with, or to build longer-term relation-
ships with, where it doesn’t have to be this programmed thing of I
know I need somebody to fill all my needs, and we’re going to live
happily every after together.” For her, monogamy is “not the only
option that I’m allowing myself, so I am working to create a world
where monogamous people are supported, and where people who are
polyamorous are supported, and where we support each other, and
don’t feel that anybody has to put down anybody else for not making
the same choices.” Loraine’s activism seeks to create the support she
needs for herself and for others. She believes that the teaching and
practice of masturbation is important for encouraging and developing
self-love, which is an important basis for all human relationships. She
thinks that how her work has pushed her to deal with her own fears
and internal struggles is part of why the work is right for her. Loraine
says of her choice to work as a sex educator and sex coach, “I do know
that it feels right, and it feels like my calling and it feels like the area of
my growth, too.” She finds the work difficult, particularly for how it
leads her to continue to work with difficult emotions like shame and
fear. She explains how her personal struggles are wrapped up with her
work: “Having issues about loving my body or being in my body cer-
tainly helps me help other people that have issues, and it also blocks
me from helping myself or other people with those issues, because I
get caught by own fears or hesitations, and have to take time to get
help or work it out, however I can.”
For Latina lesbian activist Julia Mendoza, activism gave her a way
to deal with the injustice she was experiencing in her life.55 After
moving from an inner city neighborhood to a predominantly white,
affluent suburb at a young age, Julia encountered legal segregation
and was very aware of being treated poorly because she was not white.
She had a lot of anger and struggled with her mother, schoolteachers,
and other kids, going back and forth between her old and new neigh-
borhoods, joining a gang, dropping out of school, coming out at 14,
drinking, and doing drugs. A single mother and alcoholic addict at
the age of 19, Julia ended up in jail when her daughter was very young.
After getting off drugs and going through rehabilitation, it took Julia
18 months to get her daughter back, and she realized that the judge in
family court was making it more difficult because he knew she was a
lesbian. She says, “I was really aware of . . . all of the ways I was treated
differently, and I was angry about it . . . I didn’t really have the ability
to do any kind of analysis of it and certainly not in a bigger context.”
Once she got her daughter back and started attending community
college, around age 21, she started to develop “some however rudi-
mentary analysis about what it was that I experienced,” and “I started
to think about it differently and realized there was something I could
do about it and if nothing else, speak up about it.” Through activism,
Julia “found constructive ways to try and do something about these
things . . . so then it was great.” She situates her early activism histori-
cally, claiming that what helped her was the “bourgeoning of identity
politics that really kind of gave me a place and helped me find a voice
and a way to deal, to think about a lot of the things I had experienced
in my life.” It was the possibility to “be really integrated as a Latina
and as a lesbian in this one place” that was one of the big attractions
of activism at her community college, and she found that she “was
just kind of naturally a leader.” Julia was never in the closet and so was
one of the few gay and lesbian students who was willing to be visible.
Intelligent and articulate, she found that “people wanted to hear what
I had to say.” Through speaking out and working for positive change,
she found a way to turn her experience into a source of power.56
Self-love is the foundation of love for others, which can expand to
love of humanity.57 Moraga connects self-love with the capacity to
love others:
I would not be trying to develop some kind of Chicana feminist theory

if I did not have strong convictions, urgent hunches and deep racial
memory that the Chicana could not betray a sister, a daughter, a com-
pañera in the service of the man and his institutions if somewhere in
the chain of historical events and generations, she were allowed to love
herself as both female and mestiza.58
Moraga connects the pain she feels at betrayal with the lack of self-love
among Chicanas, the result of histories of oppression. A Chicana’s
self-hatred easily spills over to hatred and betrayal of other Chicanas.
This breaks Moraga’s heart and drives her work to interrupt this pat-
tern. Her writing and activism, like that of activists in my study, seeks
ultimately a world where Chicanas and all people can love themselves
and each other, where they have not only the material means of sur-
vival, but they can experience the power of passion and pleasure and
have faithful relationships with each other.
L ov e 65
Connecting with Others

Another common theme in my interviews with activists is the desire
to help others who are going through difficult experiences similar to
what the narrators experienced—they want to use their own painful
experiences to help prevent or relieve others’ pain. This love for others
is an extension of self-love through identification. Experiences of pain
and victimization, and feelings of anger often provoke a desire to help
others so that they do not have to go through the same hardships. In
this way, activists give their own suffering meaning by using it to help
others. When activists talk about the motivations for their social jus-
tice work, they often go back and forth between describing their own
experience and experiences of people whom they care about, whether
those “others” are family members, friends, or groups of people with
whom they share some identity. Their feelings of love and caring for
oneself easily become wanting to care for others who may find them-
selves in a similar situation, and their feelings of love for others who
do not deserve to be treated poorly can become determination to
stand up for themselves.
Multiracial lesbian feminist activist Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz believes
she developed empathy for others through her own experiences of dif-
ference. Growing up with a physical disability and a learning disability,
Lisa felt like her mind and body were disconnected: “When you get
told repeatedly, ‘Your body is wrong,’ you know. And then I’m get-
ting the same thing around my mind.” She says, “feeling grounded as
a person was a really hard thing for me to achieve.” Her struggles, she
believes, “created a well of empathy and a well of consciousness about
the kind of suffering and struggle that people go through, because I
was feeling it in my body, I was feeling in my mind, and then I’d see it
reflected around me and my parents, and then I’d see as another model
my grandfathers being the best of friends.” Her Ashkenazi Jewish
father and Arab Muslim mother had many conflicts and eventually
got divorced, yet their fathers, one Muslim and one Jewish, were close
friends. Growing up hearing stories of the Holocaust, Lisa absorbed
an understanding of “lack of opportunities, lack of access, people’s
meanness and their ignorance and their struggle . . . and I think that’s
what made me a feminist.” Her own frustration with her experiences of
being different, combined with her sense of possibility that conflict did
not have to arise from being different, led Lisa to work to build con-
nections between people with different backgrounds and identities.
Many activists are inspired to help others because of their own expe-
riences of discrimination, harassment, and violence. Sean describes
the harassment he received from his roommates in his first year of

college, where he shared a trailer with eight other students and no
university staff: “It was like Lord of the Flies.” Sean remembers being
insecure and not knowing how to handle the harassment. “Now, I’d
get into somebody’s face and we’d have it out.” And now, he says,
“I feel really strongly about not letting that happen to somebody
else.” South Asian queer activist Sivagami “Shiva” Subbaraman feels
similarly inspired to speak out on behalf of children who are abused,
and she keeps trying to create a space where her different identities
can come together “Because everywhere I go it seems like there’s
some part of me that doesn’t belong. Maybe that’s why this coming
together business is so important to me. Maybe other people feel that
way. Maybe they also feel that they don’t belong in a lot of different
ways in a lot of different places.” When she talks with other people
about their lives, “nothing seems that different from any of my expe-
riences,” so she feels that others must also share the discomfort she
feels in many spaces, and she hopes that by creating space for “a com-
ing together of these identities,” she will create a space for others who
need it as well.
Ruby is aware that she represents Latina trans women as a group
when she speaks in the community, and she speaks out because of
her connection with other Latinas. She understands the multiple dif-
ficulties that Latina transgenders face that keep them marginalized in
US society: “they don’t always have the opportunity to integrate to
this society because they’re alienated” due to factors such as language
differences, immigration status, education, and socioeconomic issues.
She identifies with the difficulties of young Latina trans women
because of her own experiences of hardship: “because even though
I have lived in the United States for all this time, there is that part
of me that remembers. Also, there was one point in my life when
I didn’t have anything. There was a point in my life when I didn’t
have food, and I didn’t have a place to live, and now I do, so how
can I forget?” She feels “lucky” that she can speak English and she
has a job and worries about “people who are not lucky to have what
I have.” Now that Ruby can pass as a woman, she does not always
raise trans issues in her daily life. Still, she says, “There are days when
I feel they need to know that I am trans, and I need to educate these
people.” She feels this urgency, she explains, “because I feel if they
don’t do it to me, they’ll do it to somebody else.” It is not because she
is unique, but because she knows that her experiences are representa-
tive of Latina immigrants, that Ruby feels her input is important in
the community.
L ov e 67
Papaya’s activism flows from her belief in her own dignity and her
love for others, two things that are inseparable when she discusses her
work. She says,
I got involved out of love. Got involved in HIV out of love because
I love people who are HIV-positive. I got involved in the Women’s
Rights Movement because I’m a woman and I wanted to stand up for
myself. I got involved in Civil Rights Movement because I’m a black
person and I want to be able to walk the world without feeling dis-
criminated [against] just because I’m in this color skin.
She attributes her choice of issues to caring for herself and others:
“Many of the populations of people who I have impacted and served
are populations that I belong to, things that I care about.” She does
not view getting involved in activism as a deliberate choice but just
as “me.” Even though she is not HIV-positive, Papaya sees herself
as “vulnerable,” having lost friends to AIDS. She struggles with the
disease because her loved ones struggle with the disease. Her belief in
her connection with everything, combined with her own experience
as someone with multiple marginalized identities, has led her to seek
out ways to help different people “where I saw need.” Papaya says,
“I see myself in almost everybody, but then my spirituality is about
that.” Her spiritual beliefs lead her to give to others and to show up
when called because she thinks that “you have to have people that are
willing to speak up and be present because that’s the only way we’re
going to continue to lay this foundation for future generations of not
only queer people but black people and white people and women and
so on.” Her love for future generations is implicit in the connection
she feels with them and the imperative to make the world a better
place for their benefit.
Many activists express their motivation as stemming from feelings
of love and desire to connect with others. Monique speaks of her love
for humanity as a driving force in her life. She recalls the gratitude
she felt as a child when some people from a local church brought food
and toys to her family on Christmas Eve, shortly after her parents had
divorced. She says, “It instilled a sense that people are good . . . that’s
just really stayed with me my whole life.” Monique feels no sense of
shame at having received this act of charity: “We were poor, so people
were generous, and I appreciate that.” This act of generosity instilled
in her a belief in basic human goodness: “I think that we’re beautiful
and brilliant and creative.” The emotional memory continues to hold
power for her, and she cites it as a central motivating factor for her
social involvement: “I think that’s why I feel driven to do this kind

of work, because I want other kids . . . to feel like people are good
ultimately.” Monique’s desire to share the love of people that she con-
nects with acts of generosity leads her to find ways to serve and sup-
port others.
Vietnamese American bisexual activist Truong Chinh “TC”
Duong’s political involvement grew from the combination of his
understanding of the pain caused by patriarchy and his desire to con-
nect with “a larger community.” He quotes Molly Ivins in explaining
how his politics developed: “Once you figure out they are lying to
you about race, you start to question everything.”59 For TC, it was
gender-based restrictions in his family that created a disconnect. He
says, “I had a really early realization that there’s something really
bizarre about this patriarchal system.” He “really did not want to be
trapped by gender roles,” wanting to babysit instead of doing yard-
work. He saw that “my parents were so much harder on my sister
because she was a girl. They questioned who she was dating and how
she was dressed and never questioned us. I saw a lot wrong with that.”
In addition to feeling a sense of injustice at sexism, TC “didn’t see
anybody benefiting from this.” He says, “I saw my dad was angry; I
saw my mom just totally beaten down, even though outside in the
world she was very successful. I saw my sister really angry, and I saw
myself just caught in the middle of everything. I saw my brother not
talking.” He does not think his family’s experience was traumatic
or particularly unique, but, rather, reflective of the kinds of gender-
based restrictions that his parents grew up with. His frustration pro-
voked questioning of the restrictions placed on him, which led to
“question[ing] the whole system” in order to change it. In addition
to wanting to challenge the gender-based injustice he witnessed at
home, TC realized that he wanted to connect with a larger commu-
nity. Of his childhood in Orange County, California, he says, “the
atmosphere there was so much about making money and raising your
children and not necessarily looking outside into the broader world,
which was something I didn’t know I needed until I came out here
[to DC] and realized I do want to work on a larger scale; I do want
to see that there’s a larger community out there that I never had.”
Once he was exposed to communities of people working for large
scale social change, TC realized he wanted to be involved not just
to fight oppression but to connect with others working for positive
social change.
White lesbian activist Karen MacRae also describes wanting to find
community.60 She remembers growing up feeling different because of
L ov e 69
her disability and thinking, “I can’t be the only one who is different.”
Getting older, she says, “you learn how many other different ways
you’re different. Not just one way or two ways or 10 ways.” Yet Karen
does not attribute her activism solely to her experiences of difference.
She views all the different parts of her identity as “interconnected,”
saying, “I’m not sure if being a feminist disabled woman has made
me an activist or if that was really a part of who I would have been
no matter what. I have this feeling that yes, it would have been a part
of who I was if I’d been born a straight man or whatever.” She was
strongly influenced by her mother’s activism, and “I think that it is
just something that is in my bones.” She remembers getting involved
with a local women’s spoken word event because “I was really want-
ing to get involved with some sort of women’s community group or
activism or something like that, where I could meet other women in
the community.” The desire for connection, combined with caring
about the world, led Karen to her community involvement.
Carol loves connecting with people she can help by sharing her
knowledge and energy. Describing her job, she says,
I represent 3,600 non-profit community groups around the country

who are trying to create jobs. They work in rural areas, they work
sometimes state-wide, they work in really dangerous neighborhoods.
And try to make them better places for families and communities. So
we try to raise the home ownership rate, help people start thinking
about assets, about buying homes, starting a business. Getting edu-
cation. Try to bring shopping centers to places where there’s just no
retail options, and I work with those groups.
She traces her passion for community development back to her child-
hood: “from a kid I always was interested in how you design commu-
nities and how to make them work. How people get along, and what a
neighborhood could look like.” The frustration for Carol is that “we
know how to do this. We know how to alleviate poverty. We know
how to be successful and build neighborhoods that provide support
for kids and support for their families, even if the parents weren’t
ready to be parents.” She feels passionate about using this knowledge
to support local communities. Carol’s love of community drives her
ongoing work of fighting poverty and racism by supporting people
who are improving their communities.
The desire for and feeling of connection with others is an aspect of
love grounded in the spiritual truth of universal connection. Affective
ties reflect an appreciation of human worth reflected in oneself and
one’s communities that is powered by the erotic. The challenge of

social justice movements is to expand this appreciation and connection
to encompass ever larger circles of humanity and all sentient beings.
That is also the purpose of Buddhist cultivation of compassion, which
is a helpful way to think about how intersectional activism works.
Compassion and Caring

Literary critic and philosopher Martha Nussbaum defines compas-
sion as “a painful emotion occasioned by the awareness of another
person’s undeserved misfortune.”61 In the Shambhala tradition, com-
passion is discussed as part of bodhichitta, a Sanskrit term often trans-
lated as “awakened heart.” Buddhist nun and author Pema Chödrön
equates bodhichitta, “in part, with our ability to love” and with “our
ability to feel the pain that we share with others.”62 She writes of
bodhichitta as healing: “When inspiration has become hidden, when
we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in
the tenderness of pain itself.”63 We can find compassion for others and
connect through shared experiences of pain. The pain of oppression
can be expansive when people use it as a basis to connect with and to
help others. Anzaldúa writes of the possibilities of transforming pain-
ful experiences into something that can be shared for the benefit of
others: “By redeeming your most painful experiences you transform
them into something valuable, algo para compartir or share with oth-
ers so they too may be empowered.”64 Through compassionate social
action, activists change the meaning of their own suffering, turning
their feelings of pain, anger, and fear into gifts that enable them to
help others.65
The compassion of activists is often expressed through the language
of love and caring used to describe their motivation. When asked why
she participates in so much social action, white trans activist Darby
Hickey explains, “Everything that comes up, I’m just like, I feel that,
I care about that, I want to do something about it.” Chicana lesbian
activist Letitia “Leti” Gómez explains that the issues she has worked
on as an activist “were near and dear to my heart. Being Latina, being
a lesbian, being other in this country.” Leti “felt . . . strongly about”
the unjust treatment and exploitation of Latinos in the United States,
especially the exploitation of undocumented workers. When she was
a student at the University of Texas at Austin, she volunteered with
the 1977 farmworker march from Austin to Washington. She cries
remembering “being so touched and moved by these really humble
people . . . And how strongly they believed in what they were trying to
L ov e 71
do, which was what most farmworkers march for, you know—clean
living conditions, simple things like a toilet in the field, safety pre-
cautions like not getting sprayed while you’re out in the field.” Years
later, visiting Austin to speak at the Texas Lesbian Conference in the
early 1990s, Leti recalls seeing farmworkers protesting in the streets,
calling for the same things that they needed in 1977. She cries with
this memory also, saying, “It takes a lot of guts to really stand up for
yourself when you’re faced with such overwhelming disregard.” Leti’s
admiration stems from her compassion for the workers’ suffering and
inspires her own work for social change. Activism can be infectious in
this way—when a few people stand up for themselves against so many
odds, it inspires others to work for positive change also. That is the
power of what Gandhi termed “satyagraha” or “soul-force.”66
Carol attributes her abortion rights activism to her love for women
and the compassion she feels for a particular woman in her life who,
pregnant by rape, had an illegal abortion, almost died, and then was
denigrated for having gotten pregnant. Carol says, “As a woman,
hypothetically, I could be pregnant, could be raped. And as some-
one who loves women, just you should never be in a place where you
have to decide if you’re going to take this sort of very dangerous path
and not have a child. And I love children, but I’ve always been on
the ‘abortion on demand and without apology’ side.” Her connec-
tion with one woman’s suffering through an illegal abortion produces
Carol’s commitment—which has lasted now more than 20 years—to
keeping abortion safe and legal for other women.
Feelings of compassion combine with cognitive beliefs in activists’
decisions to get involved and about how they want to help. Emotions
play a central role in Sarah Reed’s explanation of why she got involved
in rape crisis work.67 She says,
it was very much heartfelt, very coming from the heart . . . It was really
about giving back to other women what I had received from calling
those crisis lines. I had never reported it, I never did any of those
things, but there were people answering the phone at 3 a.m. when I
needed to talk. I really felt like it was passing on what was given to me
that helped me survive, that I was sharing that with other people, who
would then share that with other people who would then share that
with other people. That just felt like the right thing to do.
Sarah’s own experiences of being victimized and being supported,

combined with her feelings about morality—that she has an obligation
to share the support she received—drive her community involvement
through compassion and the desire to support others. That her view
of sharing as “the right thing to do” motivates her reveals how her
caring for others is intertwined with her desire to be a moral person,
someone who does what she feels is “right.”68 Even her description of
this belief emphasizes how it “felt” to her. She realizes that helping
others helps her as well: “For somebody to really believe that I can
offer something of comfort was incredibly self-fulfilling in a very self-
ish way. It really made me feel purposeful. With my depression and
existential angst, I needed to feel like I mattered, and this work made
me feel like I mattered in a way that nothing else had, so I couldn’t
stop doing it.” Struggling with clinical depression and unable to find
a sense of purpose through processes of reason, the experience of
providing support for others affected Sarah’s beliefs about the world
through the feelings she had—that, having received help, she wanted
to help others, and they would certainly pass on that help to others
in some way. Rape crisis work, for Sarah, is a way to care for herself
through caring for others.
Asked why she wanted to start an organization focused on women
and girls of color, black queer feminist Colette Stone talks about
women whose voices are rarely heard in public discourse. She attri-
butes the idea for the national organization she founded to
my work at [a historically black university]; it came from my work at

the shelter, and it also came from my family and knowing the stories
of the women in my family and knowing that those stories don’t ever
get heard. So feeling, I don’t want to say obligated, but feeling like I
wanted to do work where those voices would be amplified in a real way
and that we could talk about race and class and gender in a way that
was meaningful or that made sense.
Colette’s experiences in college included encounters with sexism and

homophobia and support for her feminist ideas and activism. Her
gratitude for this support, combined with the appreciation she feels
for poor and working-class women of color, who are often over-
looked, led to her desire to create a space where the lives and interests
of girls and women of color would be central. While she hesitates
to describe her feeling as “obligated,” she seems to feel a sense of
responsibility as someone with a personal connection to poor women
of color through volunteering at a DC shelter for homeless women
and through growing up poor, working-class, and sometimes home-
less in Southern California. Colette expresses a desire for inclusivity
that manifests in targeting her organization’s work to those who have
L ov e 73
largely felt excluded from mainstream women’s organizations: “I just

knew I wanted to create an organization where all women would
feel welcome, and it would challenge mainstream women’s organiza-
tions, and we’d do really good work, and . . . really look at the inter-
sections of race, class, gender, sexuality and all those things, and it’d
be really powerful.” The value Colette places on women and girls
of color reflects her love for herself, her family, and other women
of color, both those she has known individually and those she does
not. Expanding her love of particular women of color to love of “all
women” happens through a process of identification, a connection
made through compassion. Through her own experience and the
stories she knows—stories of suffering, creativity, damage, resilience,
and love—she develops compassion and love that grows naturally to
encompass more.
For Burmese American feminist Sandee Pyne, love of Burma is
intertwined with love for her family, both drawing her to political
involvement. Sandee lists some of the nation’s problems, which she
connects with militarization led by the dictatorship. In conflict over
the past 40–50 years, Burma has over 100 ethnic groups,69 the larg-
est number of child soldiers in the world,70 and genocide and rape of
women as part of the military dictatorship’s “Burmanization” cam-
paign.71 Sandee summarizes, “Militarization . . . manifests as abuse of
women; it’s abusive of the land that the farmers try and grow; they are
disrespectful of the labor. They take the crops, they don’t show any
respect for the fact that the families need to eat . . . you have this mili-
tarized space in which people have been forced to live. And I come
from that country.” Sandee’s identification as Burmese leads her to
take Burma’s problems personally. That her “whole family is politi-
cal” and that Burma is a frequent topic of conversation and always
present in family discussions contributes to Sandee’s affinity for her
country of origin. She remarks, “I love that country even though
I’ve been away for a long time . . . How much of [my commitment to
Burma] is a family influence? How much of it is just me? I can’t think
but it is all one in the same.” She is unable to separate her family’s
love for Burma from her own, or her love for her family from her love
for Burma.
Sandee discusses compassion specifically as a Buddhist practice.
She attributes to Buddhism her experience that “I can connect with
somebody, even if our situations are really different.” She views her-
self as privileged, even when she was a child in Burma and Thailand,
because her parents were educated and her father worked at the
US embassy: “They had access. They could envision a life for their
children, their two daughters, that was future-oriented. That’s amaz-

ing. We always had food to eat.” She does not confuse her experience
with theirs, but she is able to tap into her experience to “not lose
sight of the most basic kind of humanity.” When she was interviewing
Burmese migrants who survived the 2004 tsunami in Thailand, she
understood their fear of Thai police and Thai relief services because
she remembers
a certain visceral reaction to somebody who is in a position of author-

ity . . . I mean, I still have that reaction when I come back with my
American passport, and I’m going through an immigration line. I
can still feel myself standing up straighter and speaking with a hyper
American accent . . . You have this sort of conditioned response to peo-
ple who can make your life so miserable and do so, so often.
Sandee focuses on “the basic needs that we all want,” including

safety, work with dignity, and education. While working with people
in emergencies, she is able to tap into her own experiences with fear
and desires for safety and dignity in order to respond with compas-
sion and understand others’ needs.
Ruby cares for young trans women who struggle with oppression.
She relates her understanding of the challenges faced by young trans
people:
It’s very difficult if, . . . between the ages of 15 to 25, when you’re devel-
oping yourself as a human being, and you want to be free and you want
to be trans and you’re proud of yourself, and then you have this whole
society coming down on you telling you uh-uh and calling you names,
and you have all kinds of issues that you have to deal with.
She talks about her “daughters” that she keeps track of, and one in
particular, “Jennifer,” who “tests my limits . . . She has no place to live;
she has no job; she has a drinking problem; she has a drug problem;
she does sex work, and on top of that, she has been in jail so many
times. She tests my limits in the sense that I don’t know what else is
going to happen to her.”72 Ruby cares deeply for Jennifer, who she
views as basically a good person who has been through a lot and is
treated poorly even by other trans women. Ruby says, “I really care
about her a lot, because, even within the same community, a lot of
people look at her like the ugly little duck.” Ruby’s compassion enables
her to see Jennifer’s humanity and love her, where many others see
an ugly tranny with a lot of problems. Ruby says that it is people like
Jennifer who are the reason that she continues her activism: “Those
L ov e 75
are the ones that really touch me a lot.” She cries talking about her
frustration that she cannot do more to help them. Her compassion for
“those few that really have nothing” keeps her motivated to continue
her community involvement even when she feels tired or her boy-
friend pressures her not to do so much. From her personal connec-
tion with young trannies, she understands their needs and provides
what support she can. Cvetkovich calls such compassionate action in
response to human need “the activism that arises from the needs of
daily life.”73
Shiva refers to the love and responsibility taken on for others by
organizers as “the activist love.” She sees that this love often places
a lot of strain on people: “I see it in the activist love, that a lot of the
women who are activists, particularly queer women of color, are car-
rying a whole bunch of others, and I think that is why the incidence of
early death, mental illnesses of various kinds, depression, is also very
high.” What distinguishes activist love from other forms of love for
Shiva seems to be its ability to connect across differences. Speaking of
her desire to honor the life of Wanda Alston, a black lesbian activist
killed in DC in 2005, Shiva says, “To me that is activism, to be able to
take those things personally that are not obviously personal because
we are all women of color, we are all human, whatever.” For her, “that
personal sense of connection” is what drives her work.
Talking about her job supporting low-income families in DC,
Latina bisexual feminist Maria Luisa describes how she takes her
work personally: “The level of violence that marginal communities
experience on a day-to-day basis is really intense . . . I think I knew
that beforehand, but I think I feel it in a different way because I feel
so linked to such a large number of people. I feel so responsible to
and responsible for such a broad array of people.”74 She cites, as an
example, the day before the interview, in which the brother of a col-
league was killed coming from Central America to the United States,
a family decided to allow a child who was in the hospital to die, and
Maria interacted with the witness protection program. She asks, “If I
just took a slice of today, how many strands of violence and margin-
alization, discrimination did I touch today?” The personal connec-
tion that she has working in a local community grounds Maria and
enables her to “do my best work.”
The compassion and caring for others that drives people to activ-
ism and keeps them involved shows the central place of love in activist
motivation. Because of their own experiences and their understand-
ing of others’ suffering, activists take discrimination, violence, and
oppression personally and work both to support people who suffer
and to change the structures that cause suffering.
Desire to Contribute to the World

Another form that love takes in activists is the desire to be someone
who contributes in a positive way to the world. An activist identity
stems from the desire to make the world a better place, a desire that
reveals the love activists have for the world. For Darby, social change
“is what life is about to me.” She works enough to maintain a decent
living, and she does “what needs to be done to make change.” She
has a difficult time explaining the relationship between activism and
her personal life because they are so intertwined. For example, she
says, “I talk with a friend about how she was arrested and totally
harassed and beaten up in jail for being trans. I’m like, okay, let me do
a radio piece about that. Let’s start organizing about it.” As an activ-
ist, Darby responds to her friends’ suffering with the desire to change
the structures that support violence and discrimination so that others
may not have to suffer the same injustices.
Some people’s involvement is inspired by other activists’ contribu-
tions. Walker describes falling in love with activists she saw while liv-
ing and organizing in the civil-rights-era Southern United States. She
describes those activists as
warriors, who were really the least of everybody. They were poor, they
could be thrown off their land, they could be jailed, they were often
shot; you know, lynching was not uncommon. And there they were—
they would stand up to anyone and hold their ground, insist that they
were children of God, and that they had a right to exist. This was
incredibly humbling, and I just found myself loving them without
reservation.75
Activists’ humanity and fearlessness inspire feelings of love that lead

others to political involvement. White gay activist Patrick Wojahn’s
desire to contribute to social justice movements was similarly inspired
by HIV/AIDS activists that he worked with while visiting Russia. He
learned, during his trip, of how people were struggling to get their
basic needs met after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Meeting people
who were communists and nationalists challenged preconceptions he
had developed growing up in Wisconsin. Patrick learned that, before
the 1990s, HIV had not been popularly discussed in Russia much;
that homosexuality was often portrayed as a “bourgeois Western”
thing, not as Russian; and that sodomy laws were often enforced
through, for example, police raids on gay bars. He was inspired by
the struggle of Russian activists who were fighting for their rights as
gay men and reaching out to groups who are stigmatized:
L ov e 77
it helped me to reflect a little bit on the injustices that take place in

this country . . . I was like, if people in this oppressive society can do
something about this, then I certainly can do something about it back
in the United States. So that really provoked me to just get active and
do whatever I could back in the United States.
After returning to the United States, Patrick was active address-

ing LGBT and environmental issues through campus activism and
grassroots campaigns. After he finished law school, Patrick decided
he would not be happy working for a law firm: “Working 70, 80
hours a week . . . doing legal work that benefits people that I don’t
like . . . it would be soul crushing to me.” For him, making money is
less important than feeling “like I’m doing something to better our
society, to better the world.” Patrick found a fellowship program that
enabled him to work at a DC clinic providing legal assistance to peo-
ple living with HIV and AIDS. He found that he “still had a desire
to pursue change on a more systemic level,”76 so he searched for other
ways to “get involved with more grass-roots organizing type stuff
again.” After approaching a statewide LGBT organization, Patrick
and his partner decided to get involved in a lawsuit suing the state of
Maryland for marriage equality. This seeking for ways to contribute is
common among lifelong activists.
Many activists share a belief in civic engagement, a responsibility
to contribute to one’s community and the broader society. Papaya
calls her belief that somebody has to work for positive change “con-
science,” saying, “I think conscience plays a big part in my own life.
Like if you have the skills it’s a good idea to try and help.” Puerto
Rican lesbian womanist activist Lisbeth Meléndez Rivera says she
learned from her father that “if we had abilities, we should share
them.” For her, organizing is wrapped up with her ideals, her belief
“in the dignity of workers,” and her understanding that “it is what I
was born to do.” Lisbeth feels compelled to work to create the kind
of society she wants to see, a society where everyone has parity, which
she defines as “access to the best without reservation.” This sense
of responsibility reflects an affinity for the world as it is and for the
future that I call love.
Karen attributes her community involvement to the value she places
on civic engagement and her desire to be part of an engaged commu-
nity. She says, “I’m still trying to figure out, obviously right now,
how to make that kind of community a reality and is it a reality or is it
just a dream?” Karen sees the difficulty and slowness of social change
and views her commitment as “a lifelong process.” She thinks it is “a
show of optimism” to be involved in the community. Her optimism

opens her to disappointment, yet she believes she needs to hold on
to her faith in the importance of community action. Speaking with
her the night after the 2004 presidential election, Karen expresses
disappointment “in our civic community” at the election of George
W. Bush and the passage of legislation banning same-sex marriage
in 11 states. She feels an imperative to believe that her community
involvement makes a difference:
I have to believe that someone—maybe it’s just me—but someone is

grateful for that experience or for that space . . . It’s got to hold some
meaning. I was commiserating with my mother today over the phone
and I said to her, “What does this [election] mean for my social justice
passion and all the things that I’ve done?” . . . And she said that we
can’t just let it happen, that there has got to be someone saying “No,”
even if no one pays attention, but there’s got to be the voice saying
“No!” It has to be said in protest.
Karen feels compelled, and feels that it is intrinsically valuable, to

express dissent. Working for justice, regardless of the outcome, is
an act of love for herself and the world. Her feeling of responsibil-
ity—the need for a “voice saying ‘No!’”—reflects what philosopher
Ewa Plonowska Ziarek calls “an ethics of dissensus,” which finds an
“infinite responsibility for justice without the assurance of norma-
tive criteria . . . Manifesting itself merely as vigilance, urgency, and
commitment to justice, accountability is a motivating force of politi-
cal contestation and action.”77 Karen’s description of her belief that
“there has got to be someone saying ‘No’” demonstrates the intercon-
nection of emotion and political belief in the ethics of dissensus. It is
her love of community and of others, with whom she feels connected
through various communities, that leads her to feel the imperative to
dissent and to want to be someone who says “No!” to injustice. Many
activists in my study express a “lifelong” commitment to making the
world a better place, a commitment that they hold through disap-
pointment and frustration and that they reinforce with their belief in
the necessity for “someone” to work for positive change.
Open to Heartbreak
Because of the passion that often accompanies activist efforts, activ-
ists also report having experiences of great emotional pain. People liv-
ing in violent societies are filled with pain. Loving oneself in a society
L ov e 79
that attaches shame to bodies and desires marked as deviant is a real

challenge.78 And because self-love, as Moraga notes, is a requirement
for loving others and having faithful relationships, many activists
experience betrayal and disappointment. Lisa discusses the risks of
“putting your heart on your sleeve” through community work:
If you talk to a lot of people that have done this work, every single one
of us will have one of these stories [of conflict and betrayal] . . . we’ve
all been targeted, and our lives sometimes have been practically ruined
by the work . . . Because really what you’re doing when you’re doing the
work from this perspective is you’re making yourself vulnerable.
This openness to others and vulnerability is another aspect of war-

riorship, according to Trungpa, who writes, “Real fearlessness is the
product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your
heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, with-
out resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share
your heart with others.”79 The willingness to be hurt is the warrior’s
strength.
Conflicts and disappointments can be heartbreaking for activists.
Leti says of LLEGÓ, the national Latina/o LGBT organization that
she helped establish and codirected for many years, “I used to tell
people LLEGÓ was the other woman in my life. That’s how intense it
was. It was just like a love affair with the movement and with the peo-
ple and what we were doing.” When the Board of Directors asked her
to resign after she reported a $50,000 shortfall in the budget due to
bookkeeping errors, she says, “It was like I was spurned by my lover
in a sense and rejected. So that was really, really hard . . . when you
go into anything with that much intensity and passion . . . you could
get burned. I didn’t expect to get burned by my own, and that was
the hard part.” Like someone remembering a love affair, Leti adds,
“Now that so much time has passed, I have very fond memories of the
work and the people—mostly the people. I’ll always have that.” Leti’s
passion for social change work and her love of people she connected
with through that work left her vulnerable and provided motivation
for many years of world-changing work, connecting LGBT Latina/os
and making LGBT Latina/os and their demands for civil rights more
visible.
As public figures, activists are open to scrutiny and judgment by
the media and others, which can be difficult or painful to accept.
Papaya remembers, “Certainly there were times when I wanted to be
recognized more, acknowledged more, respected more, but what I’ve
realized is that you have to give yourself love. You know, the world
sometimes is just not going to do it for you.” While she says that
most of her representation in the media has been positive, “There
were times when it wasn’t . . . and that was very painful for me, and I
felt exposed.” She manages her emotional reaction through her phi-
losophy of being a public person: “One day they’re lifting you up, the
next day they’re crashing you down, and it’s just the way that it is.”80
Being a public person “just happened because I was willing to take
a risk and be on the frontlines as well as when people call me . . . I’ve
been willing to comment and to express my opinion . . . , and so some-
times that public exposure has made me feel alone or exposed or vul-
nerable, like I don’t have a private life, but then I can only look in
the mirror and say who did this to you?” Papaya takes responsibil-
ity for her willingness to be in the public eye to help her accept the
uncomfortable aspects of public life and to temper any criticism of the
media. She remarks, “Mostly I have been respected by the press, so
I can say that overwhelmingly I don’t feel that they’ve been unkind
to me.” Looking at representations of and responses to her over the
long run, she can see that the negative treatment has been infrequent,
which helps her temper her emotional response. Yet it is clear that the
negative or critical portrayals have hurt, and Papaya’s vulnerability
has felt uncomfortable.
Colette speaks directly of her “mixed feelings about the
work . . . Sometimes I’m angry about the work; sometimes I love it.”
Connecting with other activists who share “wonderful ideas” or
doing work that feels fulfilling, she feels passionate about her job:
“It’s hard sometimes, but I really love it.” Dealing with people who
are dishonest, doing “administrative stuff that’s not so glamorous, or
having to beg people for money,” Colette sometimes feels angry or
frustrated. Discussing a funder who attached burdensome restrictions
on a large amount of funding after it had already been promised,
Colette explains one dilemma of running an organization: “in those
moments I’m really angry, because I wish that I could say ‘No, we
don’t need it’ . . . but I couldn’t. I could not. Because I would’ve been
without a living, the other people would’ve been without a living,
and we would’ve had to close the doors of the organization, hands
down.” She at times feels frustrated at how the responsibilities of run-
ning an organization limit what she can say and do. She also has had
painful conflicts and disappointments in her interaction with other
activists. She admits, “Doing this work, my feelings have been hurt.”
The most painful betrayals she mentions are by other women of color,
because she wants women of color to support each other, because her
L ov e 81
connection with and love for women of color as a group is so mean-

ingful to her. The hopefulness that keeps her engaged in organizing
leaves her open to disappointment, and the passion she has for the
work makes obstacles and difficult people more frustrating.
Shiva feels frustrated at the emotional difficulties of talking poli-
tics with mainstream friends and working with like-minded activists
who are not friends. As an active member of a Hindu temple, she tries
to raise awareness of violence and homophobia in “the mainstream
Indian community . . . So that’s when I run into trouble around that
because then people resent, people get angry, people get upset, and
I find it difficult because then I get hurt as a person.” Shiva feels
hurt that people who she cares about and considers friends do not
understand or sympathize when she criticizes homophobia, violence,
and other forms of oppression. When she does the work she feels
passionate about, her difference from “mainstream” friends becomes
more apparent, and she feels disappointed at the limits of their car-
ing, which encompasses her individually though not larger groups
with whom she feels connected. On the other hand, Shiva works with
activists who are self-motivated to address such issues “because they
believe in it or because they see the need for change internally.” But
she calls it an irony that “activism and shared critical beliefs can cre-
ate change, it can create community, it can create all of those things,
but it rarely seems to create personal love and friendship of a cer-
tain kind.” Explaining what appears to be contradictory, she remarks,
“You would think that if you had shared political beliefs and you
were doing all this work to change the world that you would care for
each other at a very basic level.” Instead, she sees “a certain sort of
tendency to be tough. We’re these tough women who have to go out
and do this tough work in a tough world and you’re tough, tough,
tough. So you just don’t allow yourself to be touched in some ways.”
The pain of oppression can inhibit caring among activists, particu-
larly when we are afraid to show our vulnerability.81
Because they care deeply, activists get hurt. Yet their willingness
to get hurt reveals the fearlessness of the warrior and the tenderness
required for creating meaningful social change. Trungpa says, “In
order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart. If
a person does not feel alone and sad, he cannot be a warrior at all.”82
Conclusion
Vulnerability and caring characterize the fearlessness of the warrior
who engages with the world in order to change it for the better. Love
carries pain with it and also enables personal and political transfor-
mation. Through self-understanding and self-love, connecting with
others, compassion and caring, and wanting to contribute to the
world, activist narratives show many ways that love leads to organiz-
ing and involvement in movements for social justice. Anger at injus-
tice expresses a core of love that expands through activism. Desires
to make the world a better place through organizing reflect caring
and feelings of connection that have the potential to encompass ever-
widening circles of beings. Love can make differences less threaten-
ing, which enables political coalitions and cooperation. Love is crucial
to healing the wounds of oppression and motivating people to seek
positive change. It is love, their caring about individual and collective
good, that drives intersectional activists to seek “more than hand-
to-mouth survival.”83 As hooks writes, “When we love ourselves, we
know that we must do more than survive. We must have the means
to live fully.”84 Love thereby guides as well as fuels the work of social
change. Love enables us “to transform the present and dream the
future.”85 It is love as a feeling of universal connection that gives
the belief in human dignity and basic goodness its force.86 This is the
spiritual power that gives principled action meaning that exceeds its
often localized nature.
3
Fa i t h: C on n e c t i ng Ac t i v is t
Be l i e fs a n d M e t hods
Without faith, I’d dare not expose myself to the potential betrayal,
rejection, and failure that lives throughout the first and last gesture of
connection . . . I am talking about believing that we have the power to
actually transform our experience, change our lives, save our lives.
Cherríe Moraga1
F aith is the foundation of activists’ power to affect their own lives

and the world around them. It supports activists dealing with stress
and conflict and provides a means to evaluate and guide political
practice. The activists in my study share a belief in autonomy—that
each person deserves to live with dignity and that we can learn to
live together respectfully, with all of our differences. This is what
antiracist feminist writer Cherríe Moraga calls “the faith of activists,”
a faith in humanity and human possibility.2 When activists deeply
believe in humanity and self-determination, they trust in individual
and community self-development and support others in changing
their lives. One outgrowth of this belief is an activist method that I
call “empowerment.” Empowerment as activist strategy recognizes
that meaningful social change relies on people’s beliefs about what
is possible and seeks to expand these beliefs. After defining faith
and empowerment, I describe five technologies that compose this
method, drawing on my oral history research to provide examples
of each mode of activism. Focusing on how our methods reflect our
beliefs can help us discover—and thereby possibly change—the hab-
its of thinking that support oppression and violence and can help us
choose tactics that express our best principles.
Background: Political Faith

The word “faith” draws together intuition or spiritual beliefs and
human action. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “faith”
as “Confidence, reliance, trust (in the ability, goodness, etc., of a

person; in the efficacy or worth of a thing; or in the truth of a state-
ment or doctrine),” noting that the term often carries a spiritual con-
notation that derives from its early use in the context of religion.3
Operating beside rational knowledge and reason’s skepticism, faith
represents intuitive or spiritual knowledge. While devotees of science
have treated such knowledge with doubt and suspicion, at times going
to great lengths to suppress practices based on intuition and spiritual
belief, faith nonetheless remains foundational to human action. Even
the practice of science relies on a faith in its ability to reveal truth
through observation and reason.
Activism relies on a kind of “political faith,” a belief in the value
of political groups and systems and in the capacity of human action
to affect political systems and the lives of sentient beings. Antiracist
feminist activist-scholar Elizabeth Currans argues that, in the US
context, “political activism is an expression of devotion akin to reli-
gious dedication and that it takes place in a political climate with
overt religious overtones.”4 Even secular activism is based on faith
and affected by discourses about belief in the United States. Aside
from this, specific political actions reveal different beliefs about soci-
ety, community, and humanity that are often but not always or nec-
essarily connected with spiritual or religious faiths. Theologian and
professor of interfaith dialogue John D’Arcy May also argues against
the separability of religion and politics. Considering the historical
development of the separation of church and state, he claims that, in
freeing conscience, reason, and art from religious authority, “What
was lost . . . was the complementarity of sacred and secular, the aware-
ness that the one does not make sense without the other and that
their duality does not make sense outside its Western European con-
text of origin.”5 Identifying some of the many ways in which religions
influence politics, and also act politically, and noting that “Large
numbers of people can be simultaneously both secular and religious,”
May urges social scientists to study “political religion.”6 Politics in
the United States is inseparable from its religious history, yet many
people often experience or articulate political beliefs as secular and
distinguish between religious and political faith. Phenomenologically,
though, all kinds of faith include an experience of trust or reliance, as
captured in the term’s definition.
My focus here is on a particular belief that connects and guides the
work of activists in my study: a belief in autonomy. Antiracist feminist
activist and scholar Mab Segrest articulates this belief as “a hard-won
and fluctuating faith: that neither I, nor you, are born to segregation,
Fa i t h 85
separation, domination, subordination, alienation, isolation, owner-

ship, competition, or narrow self-interest.” She encapsulates this belief
in the South African term “ubuntu.” Segrest translates “ubuntu” as
“‘born to belonging.’ It’s a simple notion: we are all born to belong-
ing, and we know ourselves as humans in just and mutual relationship
to one another.”7 As humans, we are meant to work together in just
relationships that preserve each person’s right to self-determination.
For some of those in my study, this belief in autonomy derives from
religious or spiritual beliefs. For others, it is part of a secular belief
system that guides their ethics and politics.8
The belief in self-determination is tied to belief in intrinsic, nonop-
positional goodness: that the universe is basically good and each person
is on the path that is right for her and supports her spiritual develop-
ment. This is how Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa defines faith:
“Faith is the sense that intrinsic goodness exists in our whole being,
in all human beings.”9 In this view, growth and life are good, and the
sun is evidence of nonbinary intrinsic goodness.10 Without the sun,
there would be no life, no growth, nothing on Earth. The absence of
the sun would not mean evil, rather just another planet—minerals and
gases, perhaps in a different orbit. There is only goodness or there just
is. Nourishing generativity and creativity, in this view, is also intrinsi-
cally good. Not to do so is not necessarily evil, because it is impossible
to know all the effects of any one action. That good things often result
from evil acts is further evidence of intrinsic goodness. Black queer
feminist Colette Stone expresses her belief in intrinsic goodness by
saying, “Everything is divine; the universe is abundant, and so there’s
room for everybody.”11 She uses the sea as a metaphor: “You can’t ever
empty the sea . . . even if you take water out of the sea, there’s still a
lot left. I believe that even in my work and in my personal life, there’s
always enough to go around . . . I always have what I need.”
“Belief gives birth to power” writes aikido master Koichi Tohei.12
Black queer feminist activist Monique Meadows’s belief in goodness
gives her the power to shape her own life and to affect others as she
works to live according to her purpose. Her belief in basic human
goodness sustains her and motivates her work: “I just keep holding
on to the belief that there is still light in the world, that there’s still
good. I really believe in our core, we are ultimately good. That might
be a little naïve or whatever, but it works for me. So I hold onto that.”
She indicates an awareness that this belief in human goodness is con-
tested, even denigrated, but asserts that it “works” in her life—how
the belief affects her life is part of Monique’s justification for “hold-
ing on” to it even in difficult times.
What works about the belief in basic goodness is its focus on the
best in everything. Focusing on the positive encourages what Tohei
calls “the spirit of love and protection for all things.”13 South Asian
American queer Sivagami “Shiva” Subbaraman describes how her
faith in people’s basic goodness keeps her looking for what is positive
in everything. She says, “I do believe in the goodness of people and I
do believe that ultimately there is a higher potential in all of us, and
we just need to develop that higher potential in all of us, and that
somehow if I can relate to the better in myself and to the better in
other people, that is the closest I can come to being close to God.”
For her, the way to God is through finding the best parts of ourselves
and others. Shiva has found her faith to be indispensable in getting
through life and dealing with pain. Part of her commitment to the
Hindu temple stems from her understanding of the importance of
faith in people’s lives. Her faith in a larger purpose helps Shiva see the
positive outcome of tragic events and appreciate how the pain in her
life has made her who she is, which leads to the joy discussed in the
next chapter.
The belief in intrinsic goodness supports activists through the dif-
ficulties of their lives and work. Colette describes her spiritual beliefs
and values as resources that she can count on when she feels over-
whelmed by the struggle against injustice or hurt by other activists
she conceived of as allies and also when working across differences,
conducting trainings for police, other service providers, or com-
munity groups. She describes her beliefs as an anchor that grounds
her action and provides a way not to react out of anger when faced
with racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice and discrimina-
tion. Because the work of social change often seems endless and filled
with conflict, Colette finds it helpful to trust that there is goodness
at work beyond what she can do as one individual. Using the Grand
Canyon as a metaphor for organizing, she explains that she sees her-
self as “one small part” of larger movements for social justice. The
canyon is so big that it makes you realize your own smallness and the
many different factors that came together to produce it: “[It’s] like
everything is doing its own part.”
Black lesbian activist V. Papaya Mann directly attributes her ability
to stay “centered” and “in a place of love” to her spiritual beliefs. Her
spirituality enables her to define herself and to act from love rather
than fear when confronting others. She attributes to her spirituality—
her feeling connected to the universe and a higher power—that “I
don’t have any fears about anything that man can do to me.” Papaya’s
spirituality has helped her manage burnout and deal with her own
Fa i t h 87
mistakes and shortcomings as well as those of others. Her spiritual

belief in acceptance of everyone helps her stay in “a place of love”
when having conflicts with men who may act aggressively: she says, “I
still love them, too, because a part of my spirituality is just accepting
everybody who’s here.” Accepting her own nature and the fact that
others may have different ways helps Papaya continue her work and
negotiate differences with others. Papaya’s spiritual feeling of con-
nection keeps her from feeling lonely and helps her view criticism
and conflict as nonthreatening, a view that helps sustain long-term
political involvement.
In addition to providing mechanisms for coping with stress and
conflicts and inspiring the desire to do positive work in the world, the
belief in basic goodness and autonomy affects how activists engage
with the world and the tactics they choose in their social change
work.14 Spiritual teacher and former Harvard professor Ram Dass and
spiritual activist Paul Gorman express the belief in basic goodness,
and its relationship to activist methods, through a critique of the idea
that
We’ve got to Change Minds . . . Social action, [people] understand intu-

itively, ought to be fully voluntary if it’s to have power and endurance.
But we’re not quite leaving them enough room when we set about try-
ing to change their minds. We don’t have the inclusiveness, the steadi-
ness, the real willingness to listen that is critical at the outset of any
action. It’s not quite Us—it’s this one trying to move that one.15
Rather than trying to change minds, faith in self-determination trusts

people to follow their own paths and calls for activist methods based
on listening and cooperation. From her view of humans as intrinsi-
cally related, Segrest rejects practices that divide people and draws on
educator Paulo Freire’s description of faithful dialogue as a practice
of freedom. Freire writes, “Dialogue further requires an intense faith
in humankind, faith in their power to make and remake, to create
and re-create, faith in their vocation to be more fully human (which
is not the privilege of an elite, but the birthright of all).”16 This is
not an uncritical faith for Freire: “Although it is within the power of
humans to create and transform, in a concrete situation of alienation
individuals may be impaired in the use of that power.” Yet part of the
faith described by Freire is the belief that “The power to create and
transform” can be “reborn . . . through the struggle for liberation.”17
Activist practice can awaken human capacities for transformation
and beliefs in their own power: people empower themselves through
political struggle. Activism rooted in faith in human goodness, rather

than a desire to change minds, can change people’s beliefs about
themselves and about what is possible.
From activists’ deep faith in intrinsic goodness, autonomy, and the
possibility of change grow five technologies of an approach to social
change that seeks to empower individuals and communities to change
their own lives. Activists reflect on their own beliefs and experiences
and care for themselves; trust and accept others; support community
leadership; learn about and adapt to differences; and commit to long-
term relationships.18 These technologies make up the method that I
call “empowerment.”
Empowerment: A Practice of Faith

A popular term in activist, development, self-help, and spiritual dis-
course, “empowerment” names a process simultaneously personal and
political in which an individual or group either is given power from an
external source or realizes, through an encounter with some external
source, that it already possesses power to change lives and the world
around it.19 The OED defines “empower” as to “give (someone) the
authority or power to do something . . . make (someone) stronger and
more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their
rights.”20 This definition specifies an external source that conveys
power, and it captures the internal quality of confidence: the belief
that one can control one’s life and claim political rights is founda-
tional to making it so.21 This internal realization, for the narrators in
my study, takes the form of an initial self-acceptance often developed
through an encounter with others that share a similar identity or situ-
ation. This self-acceptance reflects their belief in intrinsic goodness.
Indeed, much of the work of empowerment involves spreading faith
in individual human worth. Here I describe how five of the activists
in my study talk about empowerment and how these understandings
of empowerment relate to beliefs in intrinsic goodness.
Colette describes feeling empowered from developing an under-
standing of intersecting oppressions through reading feminist and
womanist theory and talking with other feminists she met in DC.22
Her growing consciousness of how systems of oppression affect her
life left her with a greater sense of mobility and personal power. She
explains her use of the word “empowered”:
I felt, with all the books that I read and people that I met, that my
experiences made sense . . . It’s not our fault that we didn’t have a home
Fa i t h 89
or we were living in the way we were living. It’s not our fault; there are
institutions and structures in place. There’s racism. There’s all these
things . . . finding out those things exist and that there are actually
people working or dedicating their lives to seeing those same institu-
tions dismantled was really refreshing and really empowering, and that
I could do my part was also really refreshing and empowering.
As Colette developed a political analysis of how institutions and

socioeconomic structures had shaped her life in a poor and working-
class Southern California black family, she was able to see beyond an
individualist perspective that blames poor people for their poverty
and way of life and to develop a view of poor people as basically good
but struggling under oppressive socioeconomic structures. This view
corresponds to sociologists Aldon Morris and Naomi Braine’s defini-
tion of “oppositional consciousness,” which “directs individuals away
from explanations of their fate based on neutral impersonal forces
or personal shortcomings and identifies dominant groups and their
structures of domination as the source of oppression.”23 Colette’s
sense of group consciousness—that “It’s not our fault”—is a key part
of her individual empowerment. Realizing that others also saw those
structures as unjust and worked to change them led to her under-
standing that she could contribute to the struggle as well.
Filipina queer feminist Avelynn Mitra sees signs of empowerment
and acceptance of stigmatized identities when members of Asian and
Pacific Islander Queer Sisters (APIQS) participate in group discus-
sions about race, sex, and feminism and initiate group activities with-
out being prompted by a designated leader. She describes how, after a
period in which she was the primary one to introduce e-mail discus-
sions and event planning, other women in the group gradually started
to participate more and take more initiative: “Eventually [I] learned
that a group can totally run itself . . . I wanted the women in the group
to feel empowered enough that they could do it, and that it’s okay
to be a queer Asian woman; it’s okay to talk about certain things or
get together, or to be seen as a group.” For Avelynn, APIQS mem-
bers’ comfort engaging in discussions and planning activities without
prompting grows from their sense that who they are, individually and
collectively, as queer Asian women is valid and worthwhile. She also
theorizes that breaking silences and talking about taboo topics such
as sex is empowering for queer Asian women. She describes some con-
troversy surrounding a sex toy party that Avelynn proposed to cater
to her own and other group members’ desire to talk about sex, an
idea that was criticized as reinforcing stereotypes of queer people as
hypersexual. She refuses the stigma of being associated with sexual-

ity, saying, “Our sexual orientation has to do with sex. What’s wrong
[with that]? Let’s talk about it.” She insists that providing a space
for queer Asian women to talk openly about sex would encourage
a sense of personal power in the women. Rather than approach the
issue from a perspective of analyzing representations of hypersexual-
ity, Avelynn gives weight to what she feels her constituents want and
believes that people need to become comfortable with themselves as
individuals and as a group in order to develop the confidence and
desire for explicitly political action.24
That was indeed the process for Latina trans activist Ruby Corado,
who felt empowered being part of a group of trans women living
proudly and publicly as trans: “All of a sudden we started wearing
girl clothes and just being fully female, and it was a culture shock [for
others in the community], I think, but we took it, and it was okay,
and we were really empowered.” As Ruby and her friends expressed
their trans identities through their dress and bodies, they felt more
comfortable with themselves. Living in this place of comfort in her-
self and in her growing group, she felt that she and other trans peo-
ple “had a right” to live and be in public spaces. She connected her
belief in the intrinsic worth of herself and her trans “sisters” with the
political concept of rights. The belief that trans women are entitled
to civil rights led to her more explicitly political work of advocating
for services, support, and rights for trans people. Like Colette and
Avelynn, Ruby developed an understanding of goodness in herself
and her group, identifying a problem with the negative messages and
oppressive structures that limit their lives. This understanding gave
her the confidence to act out in public.
Belief in one’s own goodness is also part of white trans journal-
ist Darby Hickey’s understanding of empowerment. She feels that
empowering people through media training to “give their own
messages” is as important as the work of reporting. She identifies
two different ways in which media can empower people who are
disadvantaged:
Getting a news report about something that you didn’t know about
or about something in another city that’s very similar to something
happening in your community, that is a step in empowerment, but it’s
really to me nothing compared to actually on the spot getting some-
one feeling like they can make a difference and they can change the
world by their actions, big and small. That they have a voice, and that
they are worthy to speak and to be spoken to.
Fa i t h 91
Even though speaking out is no guarantee of getting a response,

Darby believes that feeling like one deserves respectful treatment is
an important part of social change: “once you see that something is
what you deserve and something is how it should be, and that you feel
that you can actually help to make it be that way, then you’re much
more likely to do something about it.” She contrasts this with the
passive experience of receiving information, which “doesn’t have that
same impact on your life.”
Monique also expresses a desire to help others realize their own
power. She describes how difficult it has been for her to resist the
“barrage of images” and cultural messages denigrating bodies like
hers—large, black, female, and queer. Racism, sexism, homophobia,
and fatphobia can make it difficult to maintain belief in one’s own
goodness. She finds “so much power for us as women” in “realizing
that we actually are the stewards of our lives and bodies. We get to
decide.” Through her work coordinating and leading health-related
programs in the DC community, Monique hopes to support other
women in discovering the power they do have to make decisions about
their own lives: “Whatever they do with their power is up to them,
but getting them to understand that it’s your show. You get to write
the script.” Her choice of embodied practice as a means to empower
women reflects the connection of mind, body, and spirit in antiracist
feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa’s description of empowerment:
Empowerment is the bodily feeling of being able to connect with inner

voices/resources (images, symbols, beliefs, memories) during periods
of stillness, silence, and deep listening or with kindred others in col-
lective actions. This alchemy of connection provides the knowledge,
strength, and energy to persist and be resilient in pursuing goals.
Éstemodo de capacitor comes from accepting your own authority to
direct rather than letting others run you.25
Anzaldúa locates empowerment in awareness of one’s body, mind,

and spirit and in connection with others. Empowerment here means
having a sense of inner strength, faith, flexibility, wisdom, or pur-
pose. To be empowered is to realize that you have the capacity to
run your own life and to affect the world around you, a realization
that comes from experiencing connection.26 Connection can happen
privately or in groups, and this feeling—the sense of being joined
with something larger—is one of the feelings that keeps activists
going. For many activists, renewing this feeling of connection, keep-
ing the faith in intrinsic goodness, and acting according to a belief in
self-determination requires the first technology of the activist method

of empowerment: self-reflection and self-care.
Reflect and Care

Reflection on their experiences and caring for themselves enables
activists to work in accord with their belief in autonomy.27 In “The
Bridge Poem,” which opens landmark feminist and womanist anthol-
ogy This Bridge Called My Back, the poet Donna Kate Rushin writes,
“I must be the bridge to nowhere / But my true self / And then / I
will be useful.”28 With these lines she highlights an important con-
tribution of that anthology: its insistence that individual self-devel-
opment is central to antiracist feminist social change.29 Because, as
antiracist feminist scholar M. Jacqui Alexander writes in her reflection
on Bridge, “Self-determination is both an individual and collective
project,” individual empowerment goes hand-in-hand with com-
munal empowerment.30 Through self-care and reflection, activists
develop a sense of their own agency and nurture their commitment to
principles of social justice, including a commitment to working across
differences. Therapy, spiritual beliefs and practices, and other forms
of self-care help keep activists from being overwhelmed by perpetual
struggle and help them develop and sustain values and beliefs that
influence their work.31
Many philosophers of social movements emphasize the necessity
of individual transformation for meaningful social change. Antiracist
feminist thinker Toni Cade Bambara writes, “Revolution begins with
the self, in the self,” emphasizing the importance of taking time to
change selves and personal relationships as a foundation for revo-
lutionary political work.32 This work at the level of the individual
and the family is crucial because she locates power within women of
color as individuals and communities. In her foreword to This Bridge
Called My Back, Bambara declares, “a new source of power: US”
and calls for radical women of color “to mutually care and cure each
other into wholesomeness” as part of “The work: To make revolution
irresistible.”33 Antiracist feminist writer Audre Lorde’s definition of
empowerment as “our strengthening in the service of ourselves and
each other, in the service of our work and future” also focuses on
developing oneself as part of the work of positive social change.34
Faith in the future and the possibility of positive change is central
to the practice of revolutionary self-care. As Bambara writes, find-
ing your “Self” involves “being responsible to some truth, to the
struggle.”35 This faith is similar to that which underlies Paulo Freire’s
Fa i t h 93
conception of liberatory struggle, in which social action and reflec-

tion go hand-in-hand. Freire defines the praxis of liberation as “the
action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order
to transform it.”36
Monique’s description of how her spiritual work provides personal
support and connects with her activism, discussed in chapter 1, pro-
vides an example of self-development as political work. Her under-
standing of oppression and belief in connection lead her to develop
her own power, so that she can contribute to the world in positive
ways. Rather than “playing small,” she found, through examining
herself and nurturing her creative powers, her own way to serve the
world.
Such individual healing and development is crucial to the health
of larger communities. Antiracist feminist scholar bell hooks argues
that because individual wounds often undermine collective work,
self-development is an important part of social movements.37 Colette’s
own experiences help her understand how activism can be an uncon-
scious way to deal with personal pain: “I think this work is hard, and
I think people come to the work for different reasons, and they have a
lot of pain. People have pain, myself included. And instead of healing
in other ways, through therapy or through help or something like that,
they escape in the work.” Because this human desire to escape pain is
so common, hooks argues that political work must go hand-in-hand
with work on the self. Similarly, womanist writer Alice Walker claims
that activists’ spiritual practices are important, “so that when we go
out into the world to confront horrible situations we can do it know-
ing we’re in the right place ourselves. Knowing we’re not bringing
more fuel to the fire, more anger, more despair.”38 Spiritual and other
self-care practices help keep individual activists working from the best
parts of themselves rather than working out their negative feelings—
their pain, anger, and fear—unconsciously through the work.
According to hooks, black women need to develop critical con-
sciousness to understand the roots of personal pain in structural
oppression and to see possibilities for relationships, large and small,
to be different in order to change the situation for themselves and the
world. Inspired by self-help literature, hooks claims that she wrote
Sisters of the Yam out of her desire “to create a context where we
as black females could both work on our individual efforts for self-
actualization and remain connected to a larger world of collective
struggle.”39 More recently, M. Jacqui Alexander also writes of the
necessity to work on oneself as part of the collective work of empow-
erment: “It requires the work of each and every one, to unearth
this desire to belong to the self in community as part of a radical

project.”40 Again and again, black feminists call for self-care in con-
nection with communal struggles for social justice. This reflects their
awareness of the psychic and spiritual damage inflicted by oppression
and the importance of healing for liberation.
Some of the narrators in my study relate the illness and death of
some earlier activists to their extensive social movement work and
express determination not to repeat what they see as self-sacrifice.
Colette takes from the lives of antiracist feminist activists like Lorde
and Bambara a lesson to take care of herself and limit how much of
herself she gives to the work.41 She explains, “I just don’t want to
give my life over to the movement in that way, where I literally give
my life. So it’s important for me to maintain perspective and really
think of the movement holistically and that I’m doing my part.” Her
perspective that “the movement” requires the contributions of many
enables her to take time for aspects of life outside of her activism. This
time has been important for Colette to deal with the anger and pain
she has about the injustice she has experienced personally and the dif-
ficulty of movement work. She uses therapy, meditation, journaling,
and self-help books to heal and to gain insight into her own mind and
feelings. She feels that having these tools for self-care and reflection
helps her act more in accordance with her purpose, rather than from
her negative emotions, when doing her social justice work.
Self-care and self-development support individuals in working for
change, and the work of social change also provides a vehicle for indi-
vidual self-development. Activism, in this way, can be a practice in the
spiritual sense of the term. Dass and Gorman argue that self-develop-
ment is central to meaningful transformation: “at the deepest level we
help through who we are . . . We work on ourselves, then, in order to help
others. And we help others as a vehicle for working on ourselves.” 42 hooks
argues that caring for oneself and others is a critical part of activism
as spiritual practice. She writes, “We find that there is a healing eroti-
cism in liberation struggle when we actively engage every aspect of
our being to bring to black experience beauty, honor, respect, and
vigilant caretaking.”43 Here, hooks uses Lorde’s notion of the erotic
to explain the powerful feeling of openness and connection that one
can access through political work, provided that increasing “beauty,
honor, respect” and “caretaking” remain central in our work.44
In addition to learning how to work within like-minded groups,
self-care and reflection helps people learn to work with people across
differences. In discussing their self-development through activism,
several of the narrators in my study describe moving from more rigid,
Fa i t h 95
judgmental views of people and politics to more accepting perspectives

and deeper, long-term commitments to individuals and communities
who may seem very different from themselves. Colette describes her
politics as becoming “a lot more fluid and understanding” over time:
I remember starting out and not understanding where people were

coming from when they didn’t think the way I thought or do the
things that I did. Now I’m just like, they’re on their own paths; they
have their own set of experiences. I’m not trying to change anybody’s
mind or the way they think; I just want to do my part.
Like Dass and Gorman, Colette sees the hopelessness of trying to

change people’s minds. Her response is to focus on her contribution
and leave others to make their own choices. Her hopelessness is simi-
lar to that expressed by the Buddhist slogan, “Give up all hope of
fruition.” Walker explains what this concept means for social change:
“Just do it because you’re doing it and it feels like the right thing to
do, but without feeling it’s necessarily going to change anything.”45
Many activists in my study share this belief in the value of “doing the
right thing” regardless of the outcome. Colette’s sense of hopelessness
stems also from her historical understanding of social justice issues—
her view that conditions have not improved much in the United States
despite civil rights; women’s; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and
queer (LGBTQ); and other progressive social movements. Because the
work is difficult, and because she has no hope of fruition but still
wants to act from her best principles, she practices self-care to balance
her activism and help her accept people who choose to act differently.
Spiritual practices such as meditation help people develop under-
standing and compassion for those who hold opposing beliefs. Of
such compassion, Dass and Gorman write, “We can’t fake it, we’ve
got to feel it. And that’s possible only when we’re quiet behind it all—
engaged and active where necessary, but rooted in a greater apprecia-
tion of concord behind all the immediate evidence of confrontation.”46
This understanding of connection “behind” apparent conflict, they
explain, enables reconciliation. They argue this must be an emotional
understanding of connection—feeling it, not just thinking it—the
kind of understanding developed through regular meditation practice.
Bisexual Latina American feminist Maria Luisa attributes to medita-
tion and therapy, as well as age, that she has “a more peace-filled sense
of what’s possible and how to get there.”47 Whereas she remembers
being “driven . . . by anger and dissatisfaction” when she was younger,
Maria says that now her “oppositionality and insurgency . . . —on a
great day, it’s driven by love and compassion and vision. On a not-so-
great day, it’s driven by impatience and stubbornness, which is still
an improvement, I think.” Meditation and therapy support her belief
in peace-making as a way to approach conflicts and help her process
the negative emotions that can get in the way of peaceful action. Dass
and Gorman explain that meditation is based on trust: “We trust that
it’s possible to hear into a greater totality which offers insight and
guidance.”48 This view is based on a spiritual belief that the universe
is all connected. Because we are one with all that is, we can gain
insight, through meditation or other spiritual practices, from sources
that we may not be able to access with our rational minds.
Activists’ political and spiritual beliefs often inform their choice of
methods for self-care and self-reflection. In addition to meditation,
narrators in my study mention counseling and faith-based worship
and communion as ways to care for themselves and reflect on their
work. While many activists find psychotherapy helpful for healing and
reflection, some critique the power differential between therapist and
client. White bisexual activist Loraine Hutchins finds a useful alter-
native in Re-evaluation Co-counseling (RC). Developed by Harvey
Jackins, the RC Communities describe RC as “a process whereby
people of all ages and of all backgrounds can learn how to exchange
effective help with each other in order to free themselves from the
effects of past distress experiences.”49 Loraine begins her description
of RC with a critique of Jackins and the RC Communities organiza-
tion. Nonetheless, she finds in RC “an amazing format for teaching
people counseling skills,” and she particularly appreciates that the
counseling relationship is reciprocal, unlike dominant psychothera-
peutic practice. She likes that RC incorporates “ways of understand-
ing how people are affected by racism and class, and sexism” and
focuses “on discharging the tension in your body through laughing,
crying, shaking, and just working towards ways of making painful
memories less painful and lightening up, and being more in the pres-
ent.” Combining embodied practice, awareness of political structures,
and nonhierarchical power relations, RC offers a politically informed
method of self-care and reflection.
Choice of a community of faith is often led by political beliefs.
Vietnamese American bisexual feminist Truong Chinh “TC” Duong
appreciates how he can bring together politics and spirituality through
his involvement with a Quaker meeting. When he first attended a
Friends meeting for gays and lesbians, “what people were saying was
really . . . ringing a chord in me about struggling with trying to fig-
ure out spirituality and also the basic Quaker tenet of . . . recognizing
Fa i t h 97
humanity in everyone and recognizing everybody has their own

truth.” Another important aspect of Quaker belief for TC is the view
of “peace as very active, vital, and sometimes confrontational” and the
corresponding practice of community “based on the voices of every-
body.” That meetings are not led is part of the appeal for him: “It
was people coming up and sharing their truth and feeling so moved
because they felt moved by the Spirit to do so.” After a couple years of
not attending meeting, he went back to it after the terrorist attacks of
September 11, 2001, because, as he saw it, “there was no other com-
munity that was going to talk about 9/11 the way I needed to talk
about it.” TC felt that he needed to be in a community that affirmed
“all people’s humanity, even the humanity of the people who per-
petuated 9/11,” and that he knew would discuss the complexity of
the situation, rather than fall into a dualist view of good Americans
versus evil Terrorists. He appreciates how the Quaker church engages
with the world and looks at political issues in their complexity. TC
sought out a spiritual community because he wanted to connect with
others through ritual and fellowship and “hearing the voices of other
people that are inspired by the Spirit.” He realized that he “wanted
to talk about God . . . but in a very critical minded way.” He describes
as “mindless” practices of faith in which people talk “about doing all
of these good works without thinking about changing the systems
that [are] undergirding that.” As someone committed to working
for social change, TC appreciates how Quakers connect politics and
spirituality and finds in the church support and space for his own self-
development as an activist and human being.
Because faith is foundational to social action, reflecting on one’s
beliefs and the actions called for by those beliefs is an important
part of activism. The individual-level work of examining and devel-
oping oneself creates and sustains the beliefs that produce the work
of empowerment, including belief in the importance of such self-
development.
Trust and Accept

Self-reflection can lead, through the discovery of one’s own capacities
for understanding and agency, to trusting in others. Anzaldúa explains
the importance of trusting people in her essay “Bridge, Drawbridge,
Sandbar or Island: Lesbians of Color Hacienda Alianzas ”:
I respect women whose values and politics are different from mine,
but they do not respect me or give me credit for self-determining my
life when they impose trendy politically correct attitudes on me. The
assumption they are making in imposing their “political correctness”
on me is that I, a woman, a chicana, a lesbian should go to an “out-
side” authority rather than my own for how to run my life.50
Like Anzaldúa, the narrators in my study emphasize the importance

of accepting people’s humanity and trusting people to be authori-
ties over their own lives.51 For Puerto Rican lesbian activist Lisbeth
Meléndez Rivera, trust is part of the understanding of womanism that
she learned by watching her mother live her life. For Lisbeth, wom-
anism means that a woman should “be able to make choices based
on your own set of criteria, not those that were imposed by others.”
Maria likewise “insist[s] on being able to imagine a way for women
to be that does not equate women’s liberation with women assuming
a kind of Westernized Americanized femininity and expectation of
development.” A similar insistence is reflected in Avelynn’s refusal to
deny queer Asian women’s desire to talk about sex because of feminist
critiques of representations of hypersexual Asian women and queer
people. This trust in people’s ability to make choices for themselves
reflects faith in people’s basic goodness. By supporting individuals in
determining what is best for themselves, activists rely on the intrinsic
goodness in each person to change the world for the better.52
Because understanding oppression and developing confidence
are internal processes, activists trust people to work things out for
themselves. Accepting the difference and humanity of all people is
part of ending oppression. Freire writes that resisting oppression
is insisting on the humanity of the oppressed, by calling for their
just treatment, and of oppressors, by refusing the dehumanization
that upholds unjust treatment of others. He writes, “The oppressed
must be their own example.”53 They must understand oppression
for themselves and work to change their own lives, and they must
enact the principles they want to see in the world. By accepting the
humanity and difference of all individuals, activists allow people to
develop their own understandings of oppression and set a compas-
sionate example.54 In the rest of this section, three examples of inter-
sectional activism demonstrate various dimensions of trust in social
change work. Through self-awareness, pragmatism, enacting beliefs,
or focusing on others’ good intentions, activists accept human limi-
tations and act with respect for differences in how people respond to
oppression.
As chair of APIQS, Avelynn focused on creating a structure to
allow people to develop as individuals and a group. For her, the
Fa i t h 99
process of queer Asian women discovering who they are is as impor-

tant as explicitly political activity:
In the beginning the desire to make us visible or to be political was

there, but you can’t have a movement unless people are talking to
each other, unless there’s dialogue. So as people are talking, I think
it’s empowering to them . . . I feel like only a small number of people
can . . . be politically involved . . . Queer Asian women just need to talk
about their experiences or how they feel or who they are . . . in a lan-
guage that they’re familiar with.
Avelynn views movement building as requiring processes of collec-

tive identity formation that can take a long time.55 She respects the
decision not to be involved in explicitly political activity, even though
it is work that she values and participates in herself. She facilitates
community among queer Asian women by encouraging dialogue on
an e-mail list and coordinating social events. She reports that, during
her term as chair, listserv membership tripled and group participa-
tion increased. Avelynn is heartened by the response of women to her
questions, posed online, and by some members’ willingness to take
responsibility for event planning tasks. The women want to dialogue
and meet each other—Avelynn views this desire as political oppor-
tunity, a crucial step in building a queer API movement, but also as
valuable in itself because it is something the women find value in, that
speaks to who they are, not an externally imposed definition of who
they should be, what they should want, or what they should do.56
Her analysis of pressures she has felt from other politically active API
queers is both classed and gendered: she notes that it is women with
educational privilege and men who seem dissatisfied with APIQS in
general or with Avelynn’s leadership in particular. Given the disap-
proval she felt, it was a challenge: “Just deciding to have APIQS stand
on its own, and deciding that what people say about our organization
and the expectations they have doesn’t matter as much as the happi-
ness or the comfort or the safety level that the members feel in the
organization . . . I really had to grow into that.” Avelynn identifies as
personal growth her realization and acceptance that she can’t pres-
sure women into doing political work if they’re not comfortable with
it and that it is valuable in itself to provide a comfortable space for
queer Asian women to dialogue on their own terms. She sometimes
sees new members to the group go through a similar process when
they really want to do something big and loud and proud, they real-
ize that they can’t do that unless you talk to the members. That’s
something that they have to go through, to be willing to decide to be

humble and be glad that we even have this rare organization . . . Because
women from all over the nation are joining our listserv.
Through her perspective that APIQS women need space to figure

out who they are as individuals and as a group, Avelynn demonstrates
what Dass and Gorman call a “politics of affinity.” They write, “We
don’t try to deny or manipulate individual differences. We honor
them; in fact we seek them out—because we understand that before
we undertake any serious social action, we need a strong sense of
who we are.”57 Avelynn supports the women of APIQS by providing
spaces for them to meet and engage in discussion and trusts in their
self-discovery. Because she believes who they are is good, all she needs
to do is support their self-development, and she trusts that the result
will be positive change.
As Avelynn’s story demonstrates, trusting communities and con-
stituents often happens through a process of decentering the self—
choosing to step aside from directing and to leave others space to do
their own work—and increasing acceptance of others. Decentering
the self often comes from self-awareness—of one’s own journey, and
the need for others to walk their own paths, and/or an awareness of
one’s own limitations. As Senior Diversity Organizer for the Human
Rights Campaign (HRC), African American lesbian feminist Donna
Payne deals with a range of political leaders and constituents, includ-
ing black organizations with homophobic histories and white LGBTQ
leaders ignorant of major events such as Black Pride occurring in their
own backyards.58 Her descriptions of her bridgebuilding work reflect
a tremendous amount of acceptance of others’ personal and political
limitations, based largely on her own limitations as she figured out
how to cope with her experiences of marginalization.59 She reflects
on her own experiences of dealing with oppression to describe her
understanding that everyone goes through their own struggles and
learning processes: “You have to allow for the humanness of . . . what
they’re trying to deal with at that time before you layer on another
layer . . . there are the different layers that you have to deal with, and
there was no way that I can handle humanly all three [(being black
and a woman and a lesbian)] at one time, so I had to deal with one at
a time and now I feel okay.” Donna draws on memories of the long
processes of coming to terms with her identities as black, as a woman,
and as a lesbian to explain the need to allow time and space for others
who experience oppression.
Fa i t h 101
Maria describes her support of others’ self-development as flowing

from an awareness of her own privilege, sense of humility, and a belief
in democracy. As executive director of a community-based organiza-
tion that supports low-income families, she tries to “modulate” her
leadership because “I know how easy it is for me to come in and take
over. I have a big, powerful presence that has to do with my energy
and incarnation but also really has to do with privilege and really
has to do with knowing how to do certain things and being trained
how to do certain things.” Referring to Anzaldúa’s work, Maria says,
“it’s all this disorientation on some level that comes from multiple
simultaneous positions.” The combination of experiences related to
occupying positions of relative privilege and of relative disadvantage
lead Maria to question her own external authority, or ability to dictate
what others should do, and to encourage others to develop their own
internal sense of authority.
While Maria, who occupies a powerful position in the structure of
her organization, chooses to authorize her paid staff based on beliefs
developed largely through her own education and experience out-
side the organization, Avelynn came to trust in her group members’
self-development through her inability, as leader of a community
organization with virtually no financial resources, to coerce mem-
bers into doing anything. Avelynn mentions that accepting “hit or
miss” attendance at the APIQS happy hours has happened over time:
“Sometimes we’ll have a room of 20 women, and sometimes we’ll
just have five, which I’ve slowly accepted, that that’s fine with me as
long as APIQS and other people know that they can depend on this
date, and they can go, and they can talk to other women.” Instead of
judging the success of events by size, she feels that what’s important
is having regular events that people can count on. She’s learned to feel
satisfied that the option is there for people and hence they can choose
to use it or not according to their own needs, rather than being dis-
appointed when few people show up. Segrest advises a similar kind
of detachment as an approach to social change. She writes, “Do your
work and step back”: make your contribution, and leave it to others to
determine their own involvement or response.60 Avelynn’s experience
led her to adopt this approach as a matter of pragmatic acceptance of
her group as it is.
Avelynn’s pragmatism also leads her to remove herself from the cen-
ter of her organization’s activities to create space for others to speak
and act. As chair of APIQS, she learned that she had to refrain from
sharing her ideas and experiences in group conversations in order for
others to participate. She withholds her own opinions about issues

discussed online because, when she shared her thoughts, “No one
would respond to what I had to say.” Avelynn is conscious of how she
may be perceived as the voice of the group because of her leadership
role. She expresses concern that others may think the group is driven
by one person or one purpose:
I don’t want people to think that they have to agree with what I have
to say. I want people to express how they feel. I wouldn’t want people
to think that APIQS is about a certain thing . . . if everybody has this
idea about what APIQS is, I guess I just don’t want to be responsible
for that . . . I don’t mind having an amorphous identity, because that is
who we are. If there’s anything that I want for the group, that’s what I
would want people to accept is that our identity is just so varied.
While Avelynn admits that she decenters herself in part because she
doesn’t want to be wholly responsible for the group, her reasoning
returns to the theory that comes up again and again in her discussion
of APIQS: that radical diversity is the primary feature of “queer Asian
women.”61 She chooses repeatedly to highlight this aspect of the
group, rather than trying to direct the group in a particular way. She
works to create both virtual and physical spaces where queer Asian
women can discover each other and engage in dialogue about the
meaning of this shared identity, and she views this as critical founda-
tional work to any significant political movement.
Donna’s trust also follows from her pragmatism about the need
for coalition work in the Left. Commenting on the conflicts among
different groups, she describes her reasons for continuing to engage
in dialogues and coalition work, rather than dismissing people or
groups with whom she disagrees:
The reality is that at some point you have to understand that in order
to get somewhere, you’re going to have to work together. There is no
“It’s going to happen just one way.” That’s not real. The overall fact is
that part of [working in] the political arena [is] . . . you need some allies,
no matter who you are. You can’t just stand out there and hold your
little sign all by yourself.
She believes that self-interest and political necessity will bring people
together despite histories of anger and conflict.
Donna’s belief that the varied struggles for civil rights are all the
same struggle supports her trust that the connections between differ-
ent groups can lead to positive change. She discusses learning about
Fa i t h 103
HRC’s ignorance of the issues and cultures of African American

same-gender-loving people, marking it as particularly problematic
in 1998–1999 and a source of understandable anger among many
black queer people.62 Donna relates her own response to her sense
of agency: because she saw that she “had a choice” to leave the orga-
nization or to “work on solutions,” she did not feel angry about the
situation. With this sense of empowerment, Donna
felt more pull towards my choice being that we need to work out some
solutions, because you can’t operate like this . . . There may be different
levels of understanding of gay civil rights and African American civil
rights, women’s rights, you know, . . . but overall, we all are fighting for
civil rights, so there has to be some type of overlap with each one.
Then supporting HRC’s board, Donna learned the extent of their

ignorance and lack of involvement with queer communities of color
and chose to focus on their shared goals. This choice was based on her
belief that HRC couldn’t help but change in order to serve its purpose
of working for LGBT civil rights. From this faith in people and politi-
cal process, she proposed concrete solutions in the form of events and
meetings to which HRC should send representatives or which HRC
should host, for example.63 HRC’s then executive director Elizabeth
Birch and many of its board members agreed with Donna and ensured
that her suggestions were followed.64 From her faith in connection,
Donna chooses to respond to conflicts by focusing on cooperative
solutions and trusts that the result will be positive.
A combination of political, spiritual, and cultural beliefs are part
of Maria’s choice to decenter herself as a leader. She describes how
she checks herself in her executive director role as “democratizing”
and “authorizing other people.” Giving people authority to direct
projects is not always productive, she explains, because people often
want to be directed. Yet her commitment to her staff’s development
and to sharing power as essential to democracy drives this method of
management. Her trust in others’ self-development, combined with
Buddhist teachings on “Beginner’s Mind”—a kind of open-minded-
ness—and the value of humility, which she attributes to her Central
American background, create an approach to leadership based on
“learning side by side with people” and “pushing people to have both
an interior focus and an external focus” through education, dialogue,
and reflection.65
Focusing on people’s good intentions enables activists like Donna
Payne to accept people where they are in order to work across
differences. Donna’s commitment to “learning side by side” with

people who are different from her rests on her choice to focus on
intentionality rather than means or outcome. She describes “clashes”
in the Women’s Coordinating Committee at her college, where the
predominantly straight white women leaders were often criticized
by black women and white lesbians. When asked why she continued
to participate with the group despite the other leaders’ ignorance of
black and lesbian issues, Donna responds,
I thought their . . . intent was good. I always support people that are
trying to do something really good, even though you may have things
that fall out underneath. You have to realize that people are people,
and they are going through their own experiences, so this experience
may help them, and you hope that it does.
After growing up in a more mixed environment, she was shocked by

the racism she encountered at her predominantly white Tennessee
university. Though she found her encounters with their ignorance
and racism difficult, Donna continued living and working with white
women and came to value the process of sharing space and “getting
used to each other.” She attributes her ability to do this to her trust
in their intentions. She saw that the women’s group leaders sought
to do good work and stuck with them through disagreements over
issues like whether or not they would invite Betty Shabazz to speak on
campus. Focusing on their intentions, Donna stuck with the group
despite the difficult feelings produced when she realized her own dif-
ference from the other members: “you feel like you fit but then you
don’t.” Seeing that people want to do good work enables trust when
there are differences and conflicts.
Learning to work together while allowing people to judge their
lives, needs, and desires for themselves seems fundamental in the-
ory, but in practice, we can easily forget. If we want a world where
all people have self-determination, we need to respect individual
and community decisions, trust not only people’s stories of victim-
ization but the choices they make, their analyses, values, and acts of
determination. Believing in self-determination also requires respect
for the processes of learning, changing, and growing we all go
through. It means trusting each person to walk her own path, and
realizing that we are also always learning and growing, remember-
ing that we also make mistakes, change our minds, could be wrong.
The political analysis we are so sure of today may not be true from
another point of view and may not be true for us later in our lives.
Fa i t h 105
Trusting people is not only about honoring others’ humanity and

right of self-determination, but accepting our own humanness, and
fallibility, as well.
Support Community Leadership

When activists accept people where they are and trust in their basic
goodness, they can support individuals and communities in creating
change for themselves. In this section, I provide three examples of
activism based on supporting community leadership and one story of
how such trust-based support can create empowered activists within
marginalized groups.
Bisexual feminist Sarah Reed’s approach to fighting violence
against native American women reflects her faith that strengthen-
ing tribal leadership and self-governance will improve native women’s
lives: “When I go there, it’s like I’m a diplomat or dignitary going to
a foreign nation and meeting with the officials in that government.
I really feel like if they’re treated as though they do have the self-
governance, then maybe the tribes that haven’t asserted themselves
will begin to do that.”66 Sarah views this attitude of respect for tribal
sovereignty as important because of the long history of subjection to
the United States, which has influenced tribal leaders’ beliefs about
what they can do.67 Her awareness of this effect of oppression affects
how she works with tribes: “They’ve been told for so many years now
[that] they don’t have the power and they don’t have rights and they
don’t have the capacity, that many tribal leaders believe that . . . I try
to educate them about what the law really says, because many times
they’ve been lied to about what the law really says about their capac-
ity and their power.” By approaching tribal communities with an
attitude of respect for their sovereignty, Sarah serves the short-term
goals of developing systems to protect women now and the long-term
goal of empowering tribal governments to act from a more powerful
position.
Sarah brings to the tribes her knowledge of the law and experi-
ence with violence against women issues, and she supports tribes in
coming up with their own responses to the problems they face. She
offers the example of finding alternatives to incarceration for native
perpetrators.
Traditionally, if somebody behaved in a way that hurt women and chil-

dren, they were basically excluded from the community, sometimes
permanently, sometimes for a period of years or months. Some folks
are reinstating that. That’s a way to not imprison more native men but
to hold them accountable for their behavior and to make a statement
as a community about what’s tolerated and what’s not.
These traditional and creative alternatives to imprisonment are par-

ticularly exciting for Sarah, because
The prison system doesn’t seem to solve a lot of violence against

women issues. And native people, there’s no evidence any anthropolo-
gist or archaeologist has ever been able to find that there was anything
like jails on this continent prior to Europeans coming, so there were
ways that these problems were dealt with, and it’s a matter of trying
to bring those back or re-create them or think about those in a new
but old way.
Aware of the histories of harmful external intervention in tribes,

Sarah offers support and ideas that can address tribal problems, but
she leaves it to the tribes to craft workable solutions. She specifically
connects this need for tribes to do-it-themselves with their need for
empowerment, even stronger after so many years of being told what
they cannot do.
In a very different context, Darby also focuses on educating people
about their rights as a way to empower them “to get their rights
respected.” Different Avenues, a nonprofit organization in DC that
focuses on “youth, homelessness, and sexual exchange or commer-
cial sex,” has what Darby describes as a “rights-based approach” that
influences how they operate as well as what they do.68 This approach
influences how Hickey interacts with the organization’s constituents.
She explains that she views her role as “supporting people” rather
than “helping” them, “That’s what communities are supposed to be
about is supporting people.” As an example, Darby mentions educa-
tional materials and programs that aim to inform people of their legal
rights “for folks in general but specifically for people that might be
targeted by the police in public spaces for their activities.” Most of the
volunteers and staff of Different Avenues have experienced homeless-
ness, drug abuse, or sexual exchange, a fact that Darby feels equalizes
power relations between service providers and clients and contributes
to destigmatization of what the organization terms “street survival
skills”—sex work, drug abuse, and other criminalized activities. The
combination of respectful treatment, information sharing, and peer-
based emotional support encourages a sense of empowerment among
the group’s constituents. Their clients may continue to engage in sex
work and other survival skills, but their sense of agency enables them
Fa i t h 107
to have more clarity and make informed choices. Darby sees these
effects in support group meetings: “You can really see the change that
they undergo in terms of empowerment and peace and feeling com-
fortable talking about themselves and who they are and what they
believe in and what they think is right, what they think is wrong.”
Darby, like Sarah, believes that treating people with respect and
supporting them in making decisions for themselves can affect how
they understand their own power and corresponding ability to create
change for themselves and their communities.
In building a national organization focused on women and girls of
color, Colette finds that it is critical to collaborate with community
leaders. She chose to create a national institution to work for social
justice in large institutions and structures, but she wanted the orga-
nization to be accountable to small community-based organizations
that address the more immediate needs of women and girls of color.
By meeting with community leaders, Colette finds ways to use her
organization’s resources to support them. She offers the example of
a public education campaign targeting a program that pays women
addicted to drugs to be sterilized. Colette recounts a meeting with
community organizers discussing the ideological problems with the
program—that it negatively impacts the reproductive rights of women
of color. She began asking questions that would enable a class-based
analysis of the issue: “Do we have any statistics or information on how
many babies are born addicted to drugs per year versus how many are
addicted to alcohol and smoking?” Colette’s offer to use her orga-
nization’s resources to research the issue and produce material that
community groups could use in their public education campaigns was
welcomed because “people love our public education . . . because it’s
from the perspective of women of color . . . We know what issues we
should be looking for and what’s going on.” Because community-
based organizations are focused on serving the immediate needs of
women of color, they are often skeptical of national organizations,
whose impact may not be as visible in the daily lives of their constitu-
ents. Colette’s organization is able to use its resources and perspec-
tives to provide research and materials that can help community-based
organizations do their work more effectively. This way, the organi-
zation serves its purpose of addressing “the needs and concerns of
women and girls of color” in social movements and communities,
large and small, while gaining insight and connections to constitu-
ents through the organizations that serve them every day.
Community-based organizations play an important role in sup-
porting people who are struggling and can encourage individuals and
groups to change their lives. Ruby’s activism developed with the sup-
port of a local clinic that provided space for Latina transgenders to
hold support groups: “We came there not because they wanted to
educate us about transgender issues . . . They wanted to heal us in a
way. They wanted to help us in covering some of the needs, the basic
human rights, which is having a place where we could meet, or hav-
ing a place where we could feel safe.” The clinic staff did not have any
particular knowledge of trans people, “All they knew is that they were
helping people who were being hurt out in the street.” Ruby views the
clinic staff’s offering a meeting space as a gesture of caring that “was
really all we needed” to make changes in their lives. She remembers
her mentor saying, “‘You have to do it for yourself’ . . . what she did
was she focused on us solving our own issues. And I feel that’s where
I got a lot of my courage, because I realized that I could do that.”
Having a space to meet outside of a bar enabled Latina transgenders
to learn about themselves and determine what changes they wanted to
make in their own lives and in their communities. With the support
of clinic staff, Ruby gained the confidence to speak out and advocate
for herself and her community of trans women. She became known
as a leader in her community and began reaching out to other Latina
trans leaders. In 2003, she organized the first Latina Transgender
Leadership Summit to bring together activists from across the coun-
try to connect and collaborate, so that these community leaders can
support each other in their struggles for trans rights.
Activists and organizations support community leaders by accept-
ing them as they are and responding to their needs by sharing infor-
mation and resources and encouraging them to change their own
lives. Providing support requires learning about a community’s his-
tory, culture, and resources, which is the next technology of empow-
erment that I will discuss.
Learn and Adapt

Supporting others’ self-development and sense of agency as an activist
often requires communicating across differences in language, educa-
tion, and culture. Activists who seek to empower others learn how
constituents understand power and justice on their own terms and
adapt their ways of operating, rather than trying to fit others into
preconceived definitions and categories. Activists draw on their own
experiences, spend time getting to know different communities, and
listen to many perspectives in order to understand what constitu-
ents need and how to work with them. From their belief in intrinsic
Fa i t h 109
goodness, activists approach differences and conflicts with a spirit

of learning, build bridges, and create possibilities for reconciliation.
With all that they learn, activists can adapt their communication to
different communities and find ways to support their empowerment.
Many activists draw on their own life experience and personal rela-
tionships to understand their communities’ needs. Ruby understands
many of the issues faced by Latina transgenders from having gone
through them herself. She realized early on the need to start a group
for Spanish-speaking trans people because she wanted a group for
herself. In the early 1990s, as she was starting to think about tran-
sitioning, there were no resources aimed at serving Latina transgen-
ders. Because Ruby needed support, she brought Latina trans women
together in support groups and in public displays of fabulousness that
sought to increase people’s awareness and acceptance of trans people
in DC. Her feeling that she has a right to be herself, visibly, in public,
and her experience being out, loud, and proud is the foundation for
her advocacy of trans rights.69 As Ruby transitioned, she encountered
more problems and continued to advocate for herself and other trans
women to be treated fairly because she understands what her “sisters”
are going through: “There’s still the people that are in the same situ-
ation that I was in 10 years ago, and they need to see a role model. So
I am still the activist, because I know what they’re going through.”
Her understanding of her friends’ lives leads her to work for systemic
changes and prompts the work that means the most to her: support-
ing individual trans women in their daily lives.
Even activists who share an identity with the group they are
engaged with need to spend time learning how to communicate and
work within the community. Through working in different politi-
cal environments, Donna discovered how important the process of
learning about a community is for political work. By working with
women’s groups, black student groups, and getting to know other
gays and lesbians in college, she learned about different perspectives
and political values. While Donna shares at least one identity with
each of the groups she discusses, she still finds a need to discover
how others work from those identities and how they work as com-
munities or organizations, which she does by spending time with
them. She explains, “It’s best to understand the overall environment
of where you are, so that you know even how to communicate and get
things done. Because if you skip over it, and you go past them, and
they either resist you, or they think you’re crazy, and you don’t get
anywhere.” Getting to know a community is crucial for empowering
political work.
In working with groups that don’t share a common culture, orga-

nizers find it important to learn about the differences within their
groups and to make space for people to represent themselves. Chicana
lesbian activist Letitia “Leti” Gómez shares what she learned from
the many conflicts that arose in organizing and conducting the First
National Lesbian Conference:70
What really struck me was if you are really committed to organizing,

you have to take the time to be inclusive . . . if you do the easy thing,
then you’re only inviting people you know, the people that you have
easy access to. It’s much harder to reach out and really look for folks
that are going to bring the different perspectives to the table . . . You
have to really work to find them. When they come to the table, you
have to be willing to give them room and space to have their voice
heard and also take it in and learn from it.
Diversity presents a challenge for organizers, because no one can rep-

resent all the different perspectives within the group. Leti learned the
importance of reaching out and actively building an inclusive group
by listening to people. Providing space for people to speak and be
heard can itself transform individuals and build communities, as Leti
also learned in her work with LLEGÓ, the first national Latina/o
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender organization.
Listening opens the door to understanding, which creates the pos-
sibility for movement and connection on all sides. Papaya explains
how much she learns by listening to people: “Sometimes by listen-
ing to other people, even if we don’t agree with them, it can deepen
our understanding of not only that individual but a whole bunch
of folks that are just like them.” Doing political work requires col-
laborating with others, she says, “and the only way you can do that
is through understanding.” Antiracist feminist scholar AnaLouise
Keating describes a kind of open listening that can lead to better
understanding: “I listen without judging. I listen with open heart and
open mind. I travel into your emotions, desires, and experiences, then
return to my own. But in the return, I am changed by my encounter
with you, and I begin recognizing the commonalities we share.”71
Working to understand others’ feelings and motivations has made
Papaya “gentler and softer” and has led her to see more possibilities
for change: “Because if I can detect that a person’s acting out of fear
as opposed to viciousness, then there’s movement possible there . . . if
I can be more compassionate and loving and more thoughtful and
forgiving, then I can have more dialogues because in some ways,
Fa i t h 111
I suspect the majority of us are doing the best we can.” Dass and
Gorman also write of the need to listen well and with compassion in
order to find openings in conflicts: “We have to listen very carefully:
for the uniqueness of each individual, including ourselves and all the
various levels of our being; for the way in which fear and polarization
outside reflect what is within us all.”72 Papaya connects her ability
to listen to her self-confidence: if people reject her, she understands
that the rejection comes from them “being who they are in their own
circumstances.” Because she knows that she is “a pretty interesting
person,” she can listen to and engage with others who are different
without feeling threatened. Listening transforms her relationship to
conflict.
Approached with a desire for understanding, conflicts become
opportunities for learning and positive change. Anzaldúa explains,
“Conflict, with its fiery nature, can trigger transformation depending
on how we respond to it. Often, delving deeply into conflict instead
of fleeing from it can bring an understanding (conocimiento) that
will turn things around.” She writes that, for nepantleras, who work
to bridge conflicts, “to bridge is an act of will, an act of love, an
attempt toward compassion and reconciliation, and a promise to be
present with the pain of others without losing themselves to it.”73
Understanding is central to this work of bridge building, as is the
clear sense of self that is developed through self-care and reflection.
By choosing to hear criticism of LLEGÓ without reacting defensively,
Leti built bridges that encouraged participation in the organization.
Remembering a man who was vehemently criticizing LLEGÓ dur-
ing the feedback session at a conference they had organized, Leti
“remember[s] thinking, ‘Okay, I have a choice here. I could be really
defensive and lash back at him, or I could just hear him and try to
understand where that is all coming from.’ And so I chose the latter.
And where I thought it was appropriate to apologize for something,
I did.” She wants to understand where the conflicts and criticism
come from and wants “people to feel like they’ve been heard,” even
when they’re directing anger at her. It’s important to Leti also that
the man “came back the next year,” that he didn’t feel so alienated
that he stayed away, and that at least one audience member expressed
appreciation that “‘you really listened to him and . . . you weren’t
defensive.’” Her listening is connected to her belief in the importance
of inclusivity and people “feel[ing] like they’ve been heard.” Dass
and Gorman explain why listening is particularly important in work-
ing with people from marginalized groups. Listening, they write, is
“immensely reassuring for a person who has felt isolated or alone in
their pain and suffering.”74 This reassurance can be a first step to

healing that enables people to engage in conflicts and political work
as empowered agents.
Listening for commonalities and understanding is work that many
activists learn to do at home in order to maintain and develop rela-
tionships with family members. Colette, a PhD candidate in Political
Science at the time I interviewed her, sees the connections in how
her mother, a bus driver with a GED, talks about her life and her
own feminist framework: “When I hear the stories that she tells, [I
understand that] she has a really strong social justice analysis. It’s a
really strong analysis of systems and what’s happening that is really
important and very on point, but it’s not in the language in which
we as activists are accustomed to hearing these things.”75 Rather
than entering into conversations from a position of activist-educator,
Colette listens to her mother’s stories and perspectives and finds simi-
larities in their understandings of the world despite big differences
in language and education. In this way, activists can learn from each
encounter with difference.
Through spending time and listening, activists can learn to adapt
their language and communication styles to different communities.
Most of the activists I interviewed found that the need to adapt lan-
guage to their communities often requires dropping the language
of feminism. Maria explains that feminism “kind of faded out for
me as a primary language” as she works with a lot of men to address
gang violence. While Maria identifies her analysis of “the male cul-
ture, and the way in which both the police and the male outreach
workers mirror the masculinity discourse of the young men in the
gangs” as feminist, feminist theory does not provide her with a lan-
guage to intervene effectively in the macho culture in which she oper-
ates. Because her focus is on encouraging people to realize their own
power, she adapts to her constituents’ language and uses the tools of
popular education to draw out the knowledge that comes from their
own experiences.76
Antiracist feminist scholar Chela Sandoval attributes the ability to
learn and adapt across lines of difference to differential conscious-
ness.77 She focuses on the ability of the oppressed to “decode domi-
nant-order sign systems in order to move among them with a certain
literacy, thus ensuring their survival.”78 This ability to understand
signs and systems is crucial not only for navigating dominant power
structures but also for adapting to marginalized groups, for under-
standing their languages, histories, and cultural practices in order to
help them find the tactics that will ensure their survival. These are
Fa i t h 113
“the procedures for achieving affinity and alliance across difference”

that Sandoval views as forms of love and, I argue, are products of
faith.79
Commit to Long-Term Relationships

The usefulness of having a spirit of learning, spending time together,
and listening becomes clearer in long-term relationships within and
among activists and groups. Continuing to work with constituents or
allies when feeling offended, angry, frustrated, hurt, or burned out
is incredibly challenging and important.80 Their long-term commit-
ment reflects activists’ deep faith in humanity and human possibility.
Because every community and individual always already possesses the
capacity for change—is always changing—there is always possibility for
transformation, though it may take a long time. Maria recognizes that
At any moment in time, in an institution, in a system, in a community,

there’s forward movement and there’s backward movement always
already there. The key is how do you find those spaces of possibility
that are already there and really amplify them and help build more
momentum and create the current that moves things forward.
This kind of long-term work requires commitment to individuals and

communities. Maria says it “means holding on to people in a way that
I don’t think I really used to believe in.” Lisbeth explains the power
that this holding on has, even in the context of media-dominated cul-
ture: “Soundbites remain; slogans, people will remember, but noth-
ing changes a mind more than getting to know someone.”
Lisbeth and her partner, Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz, spend much of
their free time developing personal bonds among activists, frequently
offering their home as a gathering place for activists. Like Lisbeth
and Lisa, TC emphasizes the importance of intentionally building
community through sharing food and stories in order to develop
long-term relationships. In describing what he views as successful
coalition work among people of color, he mentions the preparatory
work necessary to clarify expectations and build trust, such as shar-
ing a meal together, so that people could get to know each other
before beginning business meetings: “It takes food. It really takes
sharing food and seeing somebody across the table as a person and
knowing what their story is and knowing why they talk a certain way,
why they communicate a certain way.” The personal bonding that
took place in these groups also generated energy to do the group’s
explicitly political work: “What makes those kind of coalitions work

is you look forward to participating and working with these people.”
What TC appreciates most about these groups is the trust built and
the dialogues enabled by that trust: “When it works it just changes
the world.”
Holding on to people also involves committing to working through
conflicts and, again, listening to people in the midst of conflicts and
criticism. Recognizing that it is difficult to have your actions and
habits challenged, Dass and Gorman advise waiting for “those we’re
confronting [to] run through all their reactions” and showing “that
we ourselves are ready to listen.” The point of confrontation, in this
view, is not to force a change of heart/mind, but “to win a little
space for our message to work on its own.” This view of conflict as
“an opportunity to move forward” also grows from a faith in con-
nection and intrinsic goodness.81 Leti emphasizes the importance
of listening to criticism and hanging in there through the conflicts,
though she recalls organizers’ surprise at the criticism they received
in their initial meetings with community groups as they were starting
LLEGÓ: “I think afterwards we were just kind of incredulous that
it was going to be work within our community.” Leti had a similar
experience working on the National Lesbian Conference: “This is all
lesbians, right? And having the working class lesbians say, ‘Why do
you think that you could speak for me? And why do you think I can’t
do it?’” Leti realized that “This is the first opportunity, even though
it’s amongst lesbians, to have a voice and be heard, and sometimes
when that happens, the pain comes out. Someone’s willing to listen
to you, and the pain comes out or the anger.” She didn’t immediately
understand the emotional dynamics that she was encountering, but
eventually Leti connected it with the feelings that had led her to get
involved in activism: “I just felt like I wasn’t being heard, that I was
invisible.” The leaders of LLEGÓ, she says, “would laugh about it,
too . . . ‘We thought we were going to walk right in there, and we’d
be embraced.’ No, forget it.” She admits it was difficult, and that
they could have created the organization without the local organiza-
tions’ support, but “that wasn’t the spirit that we wanted to create
this. So we kind of kept going back and getting beat over the head
a few times.” Eventually, the community leaders accepted that the
national organizers wanted to include them in the process of creating
LLEGÓ. Leti sees the history of meetings and discussions as “a whole
process of education, just getting to know each other and then being
open to all the difference.” That the founders and leaders of LLEGÓ
“[kept] coming back” demonstrated their commitment to building
Fa i t h 115
relationships with community groups around the United States. Even

though it was difficult to face so much criticism and conflict, Leti and
her colleagues were able to stay focused on “the spirit” from which
they wanted to work.
While Leti describes the work of beginning to organize a national
organization and a national conference, Donna shows how already
existing organizations can change their relationships to constituent
communities through a long-term commitment to working out con-
flicts. She describes the mutual “holding on” in a series of difficult
conversations between HRC and some of its African American con-
stituents. HRC has been seen by many as a privileged organization
that primarily represents white middle-class gays and lesbians and
excludes people of color, bisexuals, transgender, and queer people.
Many HRC leaders and supporters, in turn, have been surprised or
hurt by the anger and suspicion directed toward HRC by queer peo-
ple of color, bisexuals, and trans people. The conversations Donna
discusses here, which she calls “Come to Jesus meetings,” aim to
bridge this gap and communicate directly about what constituents
wanted and what HRC leaders believed they could do.82 She explains,
“Because conversations are always difficult when there is a disconnect
and there’s anger and there’s pain. So ‘Come to Jesus meetings’ in my
terms would mean that we all had axes to grind, but at least we were
willing to come and talk eventually.” Donna describes the process
of improving relationships between HRC and its African American
constituents as a slow, ongoing process, in which HRC, by changing
its practices, gradually changed its internal and external image. This
process involves acknowledging past mistakes and demonstrating its
commitment to the relationships by being present at events and meet-
ings with African American LGBTQ and same-gender-loving people.
Donna comments, “There was a lot of acknowledgment that [HRC]
had missed a lot of stuff and that they had not honed in on it. So they
had to rebuild, establish their own credential: appear. That’s it; be
present. You say that you want to work with the African American
community, why aren’t you present at African American events?”
The pain and anger of exclusion don’t disappear easily, even with this
renewed commitment, so HRC leaders also have had to accept that
the anger and suspicion felt toward them continues even as they work
to improve their relationships with African Americans.
Building trust, healing past hurts, and maintaining a good rela-
tionship takes time and requires continuing to “be present” and have
conversations in the community. Donna claims that this approach
has been successful for HRC: “It’s gotten way better than what it was
when I first came. And it’s been a willingness on both sides to actually
interconnect and talk. Even when things are not seen the same way,
to still talk. That’s another part of it, not to just walk away from the
table.” She emphasizes that the choice of African Americans to talk
with HRC and share their thoughts is an essential part of improving
the relationship between these groups. To build connections with its
African American constituents when they refused to be at the table,
HRC had to show its commitment by attending Black Pride festi-
vals and other black LGBTQ events. By continuing to be present,
the organization was able to begin building trust, which gradually
brought African American LGBTQ leaders back into conversation
with HRC leaders. The other key factor Donna identifies is HRC’s
willingness to respond, to apologize when appropriate and to correct
its mistakes. When asked how HRC has responded to the complaints
and requests of African Americans, she replies, “They’ve responded.
If anything happens, they shouldn’t have done the way they should
have, or it didn’t go the way they thought, they apologize. So it’s a
work in progress.” HRC leaders have learned to be accountable for
mistakes by explaining what they did wrong, apologizing, and not
repeating the error, and continuing this approach and continuing to
show up at events over time. Once HRC had been present at black
LGBT events for a couple years, Donna says, African American con-
stituents began giving them “more leeway” for mistakes or oversights.
She summarizes, “So it’s building trust. It takes years to build trust,
so that’s where they are.”
Long-term involvement in a community enables activists to cre-
ate change even in conservative communities. Shiva feels that her
long-term involvement in the local Hindu temple has granted her an
acceptance that enables her to be different and still be part of the
community of faith. She thinks it’s important for progressives to stay
involved with the temple and recounts telling a friend,
The temple can be a place of just a gathering of people, it can be a

place of peace and quiet, it can be a place for culture to happen, it can
be a place where people just meet and greet, and that was its original
function. Now if it has become the sort of place of restriction, . . . it is
because people like you and me have left, and I think it is dangerous
to do that because you’ve left it to people who you don’t agree with to
define what it is.
Shiva has been encouraging members of Khush DC, a South Asian

LGBTQ organization, to go to the temple with her, even dressed in
Fa i t h 117
drag, and “have a queer take over.” She asks, “What are they going
to do? . . . The people at the temple know me. They can’t throw me
out because I do a lot of work for them, so in some ways I’ve paid
my dues.” She claims that she learned from Lorde and other African
American lesbians and queer women that “we don’t have to choose
between our race and our sexual identity.” Learning from African
American feminists like Lorde, Shiva refuses to give up parts of her
identity. Demonstrating her long-term commitment by being an
active participant at the temple, she honors her Hindu identity and
makes space for difference in her community of faith.
Replacing leaders, decision-making bodies, and policies is not
enough without transforming culture, which is slow work that can
happen only when individuals, not just institutions, change and
grow. We need to hold on to people within social justice movements,
especially, and also to people outside our political communities.
Progressive social change and our own growth are furthered by hon-
oring the humanity of those with whom we disagree, rather than
dismissing them. Activists’ commitment to the long-term develop-
ment of individuals and communities is crucial to the success of these
strategies for empowerment.
Conclusion
Empowerment is activist strategy that works toward long-term cul-
tural transformation. Maria identifies the possibilities for this kind
of work:
I think that people experience themselves as being present, and that

they experience themselves as being respected, and that things happen
that they didn’t expect. I think in the family conferences, one of the
things that happens is that people can step into a role of authority that
maybe they hadn’t before . . . in the long run, these sort of windows,
these more liminal spaces, the possibility of them unsettles the system
in some way and unexpected things can happen.
Like Sarah and Darby, Maria hopes that experiences of being respected
and of having authority they have not felt before will eventually lead
to a sense of empowerment among her constituents. She hopes that
this work, in the long term, can disrupt systems of oppression, which
rely on individual and group feelings of disempowerment.
Empowerment as activist strategy entails encouraging individu-
als to develop a sense of external and internal influences on their
situations and of their ability to affect their own lives and the lives
of others; sharing resources to support individuals and communities
in struggles for rights, resources, or justice; and promoting broad
thinking about social justice. Activists accomplish this by reflecting
on their own lives and caring for themselves in order to develop and
nourish the faith in humanity that is the root of empowering activ-
ism, by accepting people’s humanness and trusting them to grow and
develop in their own ways, by supporting people in creating change
in their own communities, by learning about others and trying to see
from other points of view, and by committing to work with people
over a long term.
4
Joy : Ac t i v ist P l e a su r es
Just writing a letter, for instance, or teaching somebody how to

vote, or picking up litter in a neighborhood where picking up litter
is unknown, and so influencing the people there . . . the tiniest thing
can be very powerful and very beautiful, and it’s something that one
should do for oneself. That’s the whole point of it. It’s not to clean up
someone else’s neighborhood, or feed their children, and just do this
for them. It is really for you; that is where your happiness is.
Alice Walker1
I n this conversation with Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg and

Shambhala Sun editor Melvin McLeod, womanist writer Alice Walker
speaks of the joy of helping others or working for positive social
change.2 In each act of advocacy or service, activists can experience
the power and beauty of connecting with others and with their own
intrinsic goodness. When one connects with others through service,
one can see the humanity of those who struggle and also of one-
self. Ram Dass, spiritual teacher and former Harvard psychologist,
and Paul Gorman, faith-based activist, describe how experiences of
helping others through service can disrupt the roles of “helper” and
“helped” and can lead people to deeper levels of insight and under-
standing about oneself and the world. They write,
The struggles of those we are helping confront us with life at its pur-
est. Their suffering strips away guile and leaves what is real and essen-
tial. The deepest human qualities come forth: openness, yearning,
patience, courage, forbearance, faith, humor . . . living truth . . . living
spirit. Moved and touched by these qualities, we’ve no choice but to
acknowledge and reaffirm our humanity.3
The joy of helping others is not just in the reinforcement of a sense of

oneself as a caring or moral person. Activists and others who seek to
make the world a better place often find deep satisfaction and plea-
sure in experiencing humanness through their work helping others.
In this chapter, I describe different ways in which activists find joy

through social justice work and how activists use joy to promote posi-
tive social change. I examine how activists in my study discuss joy,
excitement, fun, and feeling good. After describing the complexities
of activist joy, I identify different aspects of pleasure that organiz-
ers experience through understanding, connecting with others, fun
events, creativity, and satisfying work. By exploring the many plea-
sures found in activism, I hope to encourage us to find enjoyment in
social change work, particularly when we feel overwhelmed by how
far, it sometimes seems, we have to go.
Background: Activist Joy

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines joy as “A vivid emo-
tion of pleasure arising from a sense of well-being or satisfaction; the
feeling or state of being highly pleased or delighted; exultation of
spirit; gladness, delight.”4 What may sound like a simple feeling can
be very complex. The joys of activism are often closely connected with
pain, sadness, anger, and dissatisfaction as well as love, desire, and
hope. This mix of emotions is perhaps best explained by the Buddhist
concept of bodhichitta, “awakened heart.”
Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön uses “the rawness of a broken
heart” as an analogy for bodhichitta: “Sometimes this broken heart
gives birth to anxiety and panic, sometimes to anger, resentment,
and blame. But under the hardness of that armor there is the ten-
derness of genuine sadness. This is our link with all those who have
ever loved.”5 This sadness, felt by everyone who has lost someone or
something they love, is a source of compassion, a way to understand
and accept humanity, because all humans love. With this under-
standing and acceptance there is a release of doubt, a freedom from
struggling and questioning, an experience that we are all connected
and an understanding of our basic goodness and the goodness of
that connection. With this realization comes joy.6 The heart qual-
ity of activists—which brings sadness, anger, frustration, and the
desire to work for justice—is a source of joy. Antiracist feminist
scholar bell hooks also finds joy in awakened heart: “When forgive-
ness happens, when there is compassion, the groundwork for recon-
ciliation is possible. For me, that is the ultimate joy: That we learn
that there are no broken bonds that cannot be mended, no pain that
cannot be assuaged.” 7 It is because activists feel and understand
pain and suffering that they find joy in possibilities of healing and
reconciliation.8
Joy 121
Intrinsically valuable, joy also serves important functions in social

justice movements.9 One of the most important contributions of les-
bian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) activism to social jus-
tice is its sense of humor and joy. Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa
discusses the importance of a sense of humor for spiritual develop-
ment, though he mentions “the danger of making a sense of humor
into a serious thing.” According to Trungpa, “Sense of humor seems
to come from all-pervading joy,” which he connects with openness,
not fighting, and not being rigid or taking life seriously. “And if you
do try to treat life as a ‘serious business,’ if you try to impose solem-
nity upon life as though everything is a big deal, then it is funny.”10
The emphasis on humor, fun, and pleasure in LGBTQ commu-
nities—using parties, art, and parades to raise awareness and money
and to build community, for example— is not only a method of sur-
vival but also an important political resource and strategy. Feelings
of joy and pleasure produce energy that sustains activists through
conflicts and difficult work. “The sharing of joy,” antiracist femi-
nist writer Audre Lorde notes, connects people across differences
that may divide them.11 Activists also use their constituents’ desires
for pleasure and fun to do explicitly political work. Scholar activist
Ben Shepard argues for the vital importance of humor and joy for
connecting people to community organizing, noting that “joy as an
organizing model . . . presents a brief image of what activists would
like the world to actually be more like” and “When the joyful life-
affirming elements of organizing recede, participants generally do
not stick around.”12
Lorde comments that once we experience joy, “once we know how
deeply we can feel, we begin to demand from all of our life pursuits
that they be in accordance with these feelings.”13 In this way, joy
leads to social change. Psychologist Verena Kast writes, “Joy is an
emotion that wants to be shared. As joy multiplies, it opens doors to
inspiration and hope, puts us on the far side of divisiveness by focus-
ing our attention on what we share, and delivers us the energy we
need to realize our common ground.”14 Helping us find common
ground amidst our differences, joy encourages connections and pro-
vides energy that keeps activists working for social change.
Understanding
Examples of the complex joys of bodhichitta can be found when activ-
ists describe their appreciation for or the energy generated by under-
standing suffering, painful histories, and other aspects of oppression.
Native American bisexual feminist activist Sarah Reed speaks of her

exposure to federal Indian law as “Heart-wrenching but wonderful,”
a kind of falling in love that she connects with feeling “challenged as
a person.”15 Her explanation is worth quoting at length:
When you take federal Indian law and you see how systematic the
decisions were made to destroy people, destroy cultures, and that they
were made by people who were not hiding that and were not trying
in any way to conceal their motives, it really tears you down to the
core of how you think of yourself as an American . . . You’re reading
the words of . . . these incredible legal minds that shaped American law,
and they’re saying “savages” and horrible, horrible things about native
people and saying we’ll take their land because of these four illogical
reasons. And that has been the law for two hundred years . . . the whole
foundation of what America is is the destruction of indigenous people,
so coming to terms with that really stretched me in good ways, that
I became very impassioned about it. I really wanted to be part of it,
wanted to do something about it. It felt like this is what I’ve been
looking for.
Sarah’s deep sadness over the treatment of American Indians provides

the energy and passion that fuel her work. The pain of understanding
suffering leads to the joy of finding a meaningful path and discover-
ing the love and strength with which oppressed people survive.
African American lesbian feminist Donna Payne’s work with the
Healthcare Taskforce headed by then First Lady Hillary Clinton led
her to a “profound appreciation” of the work involved in creating
institutional change: “You realize that it takes so much to even move
something through, for one thing in this world to move through and
get something done. It takes so much positive energy to even get that
done.” With a greater awareness of the difficulties of political process,
Donna developed more understanding of disappointments, including
those from her earlier experiences organizing in college and working
on campaigns for black Democratic candidates. She says, “I got a grip
on the reality of things. So that’s what I learned with the disappoint-
ment, the reality.” She describes her experience with the taskforce as
“hard work, but beautiful. Hard work, because you had to dedicate
yourself—I didn’t have a personal life while I was doing that. I basi-
cally was married to the White House folks . . . Beautiful because it
was such an expansion of my mind and understanding on a bigger
level the problems in our country.” Reading through boxes and boxes
of letters sent from people all over the country, Donna came to see
the culture of healthcare as having changed from a focus on caring
Joy 123
to a focus on business, with one result being a clear division between

rich and poor in terms of health. She explains,
It was beautiful to see it, so that my eyes were totally open and aware
of what was happening. It’s one thing to . . . not even understand the
depth of what this society is about. It’s another thing to have your eyes
wide open, understand, so that you can make change. That’s the dif-
ference. So when you get there, it’s okay. Sad, but okay, but beautiful
because [at] least you can do something.
Her use of the word “beautiful” shows Donna’s appreciation for the
understanding that is foundational to social change work.16 This
understanding “opens her eyes,” and her understanding of the his-
tory and scope of the problem, rather than being overwhelming, gives
her a place to start working for change.
Latina trans activist Ruby Corado demonstrates the complexity of
bodhichitta by crying while saying how her activist work makes her
“happy.” A lot of Ruby’s activism involves helping her friends, going
to hospitals, jails, and schools to advocate for other trans women,
offering space in her home for people who do not have a place to
live, being there for young, homeless trans women who need to
talk to someone. The women she supports are often younger than
she is or do not speak much English, and Ruby is able to speak up
for them and demand decent treatment for them when police offi-
cers, healthcare providers, or school officials react with prejudice or
disrespect. Some of the people she supports are marginalized even
within the trans community: “the ones that nobody talks to, the
really neglected ones. Those are the ones that I really care about the
most.” She calls them her “daughters,” “the ones that really touch
me a lot.” Working with these women, Corado realizes how privi-
leged she is to have her citizenship, a job, and the ability to speak
English. She remembers, “There was one point in my life when I
didn’t have anything. There was a point in my life when I didn’t
have food, and I didn’t have a place to live, and now I do, so it’s like,
how can I forget? . . . in this whole community, I am the only person
sometimes they have, and I can’t close my doors.” That she can sup-
port others makes her happy; however, she also feels sad, because
she sees the challenges they have to face: “there’s a lot of people
who are really good people, and they don’t have a chance.” Because
she understands their intrinsic goodness, their suffering breaks her
heart, and because she understands their suffering, she is able to
help, which brings her great joy.
Connecting with Others

The energy generated through joyful connection with others in vari-
ous kinds of relationships sustains activists through long periods of
difficult political work. In their study of the US women’s rights move-
ment from 1945 to the 1960s, historian Leila J. Rupp and sociologist
Verta Taylor identify relationships as one of two primary “rewards of
participation” in feminist organizing.17 The pleasure found in activ-
ist relationships is often tied up with political and spiritual beliefs as
well as beliefs about intimacy, friendship, and community, as activists
meet others who support or affirm their faith in humanity and what
is possible. Activists enjoy connecting with others when they get to
know people they respect and admire, learn about human resilience
and kindness, connect with others who share beliefs and a passion
for social justice work, create supportive communities, expand their
beliefs about what kinds of relationships are possible, and feel part of
larger movements for social change.
Activists express appreciation for relationships with people they
meet through social justice work for whom they feel great respect and
admiration. Sarah expresses tremendous gratitude for the relation-
ships she has made working in Indian country. She offers the story of
an Upiq Eskimo woman who started a shelter in her village in 1984
as one that gives her hope and sustains her in her work. The shelter
is respected in the village as a “sacred” place, so that, even though
there are no police in this village and everyone knows its location, the
shelter has never had problems with batterers trying to harm people
there. Sarah connects the shelter’s safety with the personal power and
effectiveness of the woman who runs it, saying, “She’s the most tra-
ditional kind of conservative, very quiet woman and yet she has this
sense of complete empowerment and strength, and I get to be part of
her world.” Sarah describes the opportunity to know this woman as a
gift, even though they met through Sarah’s job, which was to super-
vise federal grant money awarded to the Upiq shelter. While Sarah
benefits from the privileges of appearing white, having a law degree
and, at the time, a federal government job, she speaks of this and many
other native women activists almost as her teachers, although most of
them, she indicates, have had less formal education than she. By plac-
ing herself in the position of one who has much to learn from these
women, Sarah is able to use her educational privilege to support their
work. The pleasure that Sarah gains from these relationships contrib-
utes to the dynamic in which people with more privilege choose to use
their resources to support those who have had fewer options.
Joy 125
It is not only community leaders such as Sarah’s Upiq friend who

inspire joy and gratitude among activists. Many of the narrators in
this study appreciate meeting “ordinary people” who demonstrate tre-
mendous resilience and/or caring in difficult circumstances. Burmese
American feminist Sandee Pyne describes finding “so much joy in the
field” while doing needs assessment in Burmese migrant communi-
ties in Thailand after the 2004 tsunami that devastated the region.
As an example of “People who suffer and still do the right thing,”
Sandee offers the story of a 24-year-old undocumented Burmese
migrant who had been badly injured by the tsunami but, ten days
later, had not gotten medical care because he was afraid of the police,
who “were just harassing and arresting, stealing from the Burmese
migrants.” The man had a wife and child who also survived, and
he adopted two children orphaned by the tsunami. Sandee explains,
“not adopt them in some sort of official way, but he was going to take
over and now these two kids whose parents had died, they’ve become
his kids, he said, . . . ‘I’m responsible for them now.’”18 The pleasure of
this story for Sandee is rooted in her political and spiritual beliefs. She
says, “There has to be room for justice. Has to be room for compas-
sion. Sometimes you’re amazed at how little there is of it. But then
you’re also amazed at how much of it there is, people just reaching
out.” Declaring “there has to be,” she gestures toward her faith in
basic goodness, which is affirmed by such individual narratives of
caring. The pleasure at having this faith affirmed is a complicated
joy for Sandee because of the context of horrific loss and suffering
without which this man’s story would not be possible. She says of her
fieldwork, “You meet lovely people who struggle amidst chaos and
commit amazing acts of kindness. It’s a wonderful thing, an affirm-
ing thing. But it’s also difficult.” While she does not typically develop
ongoing friendships with those she meets in the field, she finds a lot
of joy in gathering their stories, which restore for her a sense of hope
in the midst of chaos and horror. The pleasure she feels at learning
about the lives of Burmese migrants helps sustain Sandee through the
difficulties of fieldwork and motivates her to continue working with
Burmese migrant communities in the region. The joy of discovering
kindness and resilience amidst injustice and tragedy sustains activists
working in communities that are suffering.
In addition to enjoying connecting with people in communities
targeted for assistance, activists find joy in friendships and sexual
relationships with others who share their passion for justice.19 Black
queer feminist Colette Stone describes herself as “really engaged
and really energized” by the community of activist lesbians of color
in DC. Coming out as a lesbian in DC, she developed many close

friendships and had romantic relationships with other activists. She
recalls,
When I first came out, I was part of the Black Lesbian Support Group.
I was organizing against the Millennium March on Washington. I
volunteered for Whitman-Walker clinic as an HIV counselor . . . And
my girlfriends at the time were also organizing and doing that same
kind of work, so we really bonded over that, over our work. So my 20s
were filled with organizing, being really idealistic and very flying by
the seat of my pants, having a really good time.
Being involved in the community while coming out provided Colette

with a network of other progressive activists who became friends or
lovers. The drama and energy of social networking adds energy to
the organizing, and the pleasure of the work contributes energy to
personal relationships. This dynamic is very active at conferences,
which provide intense periods of networking that can lead to friend-
ships or sometimes more. Colette says of activist conferences, “the
intellectual stimulation and people from all over that are thinking in
the same way you think and vibing like that—awesome. I really like
that.” Sexual interest is an undeniable source of energy for LGBTQ
activism, as queer and feminist organizations and activist conferences
provide a social network that can lead to sexual and/or romantic rela-
tionships. Colette thinks that sexual relationships between activists
often hurt organizations and movements and split communities, yet,
she says, “I think that’s how it’ll always be, because these are the
people that I’m most attracted to, I have the most energy with, I vibe
with . . . these are the people who understand us best, other activists.”
She feels that, because her activism is so central to her understand-
ing of herself and her identity, other activists will always be central to
her life as friends and sexual partners. The sense of understanding,
political support, and intellectual challenge shared with other activ-
ists stimulate intimate relationships that provide pleasure and energy
for many activists.20
Activists enjoy meeting and developing relationships with oth-
ers who share certain identities or backgrounds with them—people
who seem familiar because of the commonalities they discover in
each other or the beliefs they share. Connections among activists
can become an important home—a kind of “family,” particularly for
people who have felt excluded from or rejected by their communities
of origin. Sharing food, music, stories, and support, activists create
Joy 127
communities that can be a source of joy and renewal.21 Black queer

feminist activist Monique Meadows recalls the sense of freedom she
felt when she began building relationships with others who she felt
were like her:
It felt really good to have people who were like me in my life, finally . . . at
23–24, when I started making friends with other young black lesbians,
it was just like, I can breathe! Wow! I’m not totally crazy and alone.
Because not only were these women [close to] my age and black and
lesbian, they also had similar backgrounds as myself—maybe they had
grown up in primarily white neighborhoods or [had] single moms.
There were these commonalities that went beyond even being black
and lesbian. So that felt like, oh wow, I’m looking in the mirror here.
Connecting with others who seemed similar in key ways that she
had not experienced before, Monique describes an expansive feel-
ing of freedom and joy. “Finding a community” was a major factor
in helping her overcome the depression she had been feeling. She
acknowledges,
It wasn’t perfect, and I wasn’t perfect in that community. There was

a lot of space to make mistakes, and I felt appreciated and valued in a
new way. Like, that I was actually being seen. That was a new experi-
ence, that I was bringing my whole self to these friendships. All of it.
The codependent parts, the fun parts, the creative parts, all of it, felt
like they could be present. That’s a wonderful gift, to be able to experi-
ence that with somebody . . . And I still have some of those friendships
today . . . I like that. I love it.
Monique is careful not to idealize the community that she found,

but she values the acceptance she felt and the feeling she had of being
able to include all the parts of her self in those relationships. She
comments on events following the 2005 murder of a local black les-
bian leader, “If there’s any gift that’s come out of Wanda [Alston]’s
murder, it has been for lots of us remembering that we’re important
to each other, and we need each other. And we can come out and
take care of each other when we need to—the webs are amazing, to
see how people are linked up and how we’re supporting each other.
It’s amazing to me. I’ve needed to remember that.” Reminded by the
demonstration of support following the loss of a community mem-
ber, Monique is grateful for the formal and informal ways that black
lesbians and queer people care for each other. Despite the difficult
conflicts, “at the end of the day it’s like family, and families fight,
and we love each other.” She remembers how important DC’s Black
Lesbian Support Group was for her when she was coming out and
she wants to be available to provide support to “young women who
are hungry to meet somebody older who’s been out and had relation-
ships.” She also hopes to “connect with older women” who may be
supportive to her, “and there are some cute women there, too, which
never hurts.” Monique finds deep satisfaction in feeling part of a local
community of women who share her marginalized identities and a
sense of connection.
Monique gestures toward another important aspect of the joy to
be found in activists’ relationships: the affirmation or expansion of
beliefs about what kinds of intimacies, support, and commitments
are possible in relationships. For white bisexual feminist Loraine
Hutchins, the depth of intimacy felt between women friends and
sexual partners met through feminist activism changed her under-
standing of what kind of relationships are possible. She says, “The
Women’s Movement showed me that women could have significant
relationships with women. And I’ve learned so much about claim-
ing an empowered sexuality through the Women’s Movement that
it’s felt integral to me.” Loraine describes here how the political is
personal, as her involvement in feminist movement led to relation-
ships and understandings that had a big impact on her life.22 She tells
the story of her friendship with Lani Kaahumanu, who coedited the
1991 anthology Bi Any Other Name with Hutchins. She calls their
20-year friendship “the most important relationship in my life.” In
addition to supporting each other through issues with family and
sexual relationships, Loraine and Kaahumanu support each other’s
political commitments and writing. Loraine emphasizes the impor-
tance of having “such an amazing friend” and summarizes, “women
have been tremendously important to me, and sex is kind of the least
of it . . . I feel really lucky that I’ve been able to build my life around a
number of really significant relationships with women who have sup-
ported [me] and my political work, and I’ve supported theirs.” For
her and many activists, intimate relationships formed with others who
share political views and a commitment to supporting each other can
change their beliefs about what kinds of human connections are pos-
sible. Such an expanded sense of possibility can bring great joy along
with the pleasures of intimacy.
In addition to enjoying intimate relationships with other activists,
many of the narrators report feeling excited by a sense of connection
with broader movements for justice. Latina bisexual feminist Maria
Luisa remembers feeling such a connection while doing antiapartheid
Joy 129
divestment work as a college student: “I loved the feeling of work-

ing together on something and taking a problem and thinking about
a solution and working towards that . . . It was great to see people’s
leadership and then also to know that it was happening at other col-
lege campuses . . . I felt very enlivened by that in a pretty distinct way.
I loved that.”23 Here, again, is the sense of gaining energy from the
feelings of connection with others through activist work. Years later,
while participating in the Fourth World Conference on Women in
Beijing, Maria got a much broader sense of a global movement. She
repeats the words “extraordinary,” “stunning,” and “amazing” in
describing her “experience of radical simultanaeity . . . this sense that
all over the world, people are doing work.” She explains,
One thing that was stunning was the level of brilliance and sophistica-
tion way beyond a US feminism . . . I was amazed by that and the inven-
tiveness and resourcefulness and generativity, the entrepreneurial kind
of framing—not in a business framing [sense], but just in institution
building, network building, social transformation . . . I loved the sense
of interconnectivity. I loved the experience, as complicated and layered
as all the dynamics proved to be, of this global community of women
leaders coming together. Really the process was ponderous to no end,
but it’s really important, and this is global framework building, which
I thought was amazing.
Despite the difficulty of the bureaucratic process involved, Maria

feels inspired by the importance of the work, its largeness and qual-
ity, and the innovative thinking by women all over the world who
are dedicated to positive social change. Maria was so struck by the
extraordinary work being done around the world, and also her ability
to contribute to it, that, a few months after returning home, she left
graduate school to work full time at a DC organization that supports
low-income families. She has posters from the conference on the wall
of her office to remind her of the connection between her local- and
national-level work and global movements for justice. Maria explains,
“I think the thing that has struck me and stuck with me is a kind of
pragmatic approach to concrete issues of daily life in the context of
a global politic.” The joys and lessons from the Beijing Conference
“powered me for a good ten years” of doing this work. Connections
with larger social movements bring joy, inspiration, and energy that
help activists continue their own work.
The joy of connecting with others in resisting oppression can sus-
tain and inspire people living through tremendous hardship. hooks
includes joy as a key element of resistance and survival for black
people in the era of Jim Crow segregation: “We knew how to invent,
how to make worlds for ourselves different from the world the white
people wanted us to live in. Even though there was so much pain and
hardship then, so much poverty, and most black folks lived in fear,
there was also the joy of living in communities of resistance.”24 Kast
describes joy as “a strengthening resource that life naturally offers.”25
Even more than this sustaining joy, activists often gain inspiration
from their connections with other activists. With this inspiration
comes a sense of power and energy that moves people to change the
world.26 Pleasure in connecting with others is also part of having fun
and finding satisfaction in activist work.
Having Fun
In this section, I provide examples of how parties, clubs, and other
fun events do political work in a range of communities. The narrators
in my study reflect the history and present of LGBTQ organizing,
in which social events, parties, clubs, and the production and shar-
ing of creative work are major forces for building communities and
political identities.27 Because most queer people do not grow up in
queer communities, developing a collective LGBTQ identity involves
the conscious creation of social connections among LGBTQ people.
Through social practices, shared spaces and activities, and conversa-
tion, people develop an understanding of what it means to be lesbian,
gay, bisexual, trans, or queer in relation to others. The seeking out
of these connections is often driven, at least in part, by the desire
to meet romantic or sexual partners and the desire for an accepting
community where one can meet and socialize with LGBTQ people
or where one can play with gender. It is important that many fun
events involve music and dancing, which, Kast notes, “are extremely
conducive to infectious joy.”28 Many LGBTQ activists develop meth-
ods that use individuals’ desire for pleasure in coming together to
have fun to build and educate a community and to connect people
through the sharing of joy.
The joy shared and friendships developed in social events provide
energy that sustains organizing. The fun Chicana lesbian activist
Letitia “Leti” Gómez had with lesbian and gay Latina/os in Texas
encouraged her to continue organizing ways for Latina/o lesbians and
gay men to meet each other. She remembers what she believes was the
first Latina Lesbian retreat, organized by the Esperanza Peace and
Justice Center in San Antonio and held at a retreat center near San
Marcos. Leti remembers enjoying the opportunity to be with other
Joy 131
Chicana lesbians: “It was like [being] with your sisters. And it was
fun. We spoke in Spanglish and made . . . Mexican food, and it was just
a wonderful time. I was very proud to be part of that.” Sharing cul-
ture, language, and food, these women created a community that felt
like home—another “family.” Because there were no visible resources
for lesbian and gay Latino/as in DC when she arrived, as there had
been in Texas, Leti organized with others to create new social net-
works, primarily through having parties. The founders of ENLACE,
DC’s “first [social] political support organization for Latino lesbi-
ans and gay men,”29 “wanted to have a community, and we were all
motivated by bringing people out and having social things and some
educational things.” At the time that Leti and others were founding
ENLACE, the Latino population in DC had grown tremendously.
Yet, according to Leti, “Back then, being gay was a white thing. And
you would hear Latinos say, ‘There is no word for gay in Spanish.’
There was homosexual, ‘homosexual,’ or lesbiana, but the gay life-
style just didn’t translate. So it was just neat to create our own life.”
The parties, which were “an opportunity to come together,” were
very popular and formed the basis of ENLACE’s work. Leti empha-
sizes the culturally specific roots of the parties and dances, or bailes :
“baile in Chicano culture is a big deal, because every Saturday you
have a baile.”30 Though the ENLACE bailes were not weekly events,
they would rent ballrooms, and many people would come out for the
events. Leti summarizes, “it was a very fun time.” Through the par-
ties, ENLACE grew a contact list of 300–400 people and developed
a network of LGBTQ Latino/as in DC. The social networking, cruis-
ing, dating, and building of friendships at parties create energy that
feeds and shapes LGBTQ organizing.31
In addition to building a constituency, parties are a way to develop
networks among organizers. Leti attributes the success of multiracial
LGBTQ coalitions in DC to the social events and friendships devel-
oped among activists: “I think it was that we actually got to know
each other as people. And it was actually the people that were willing
to be open to someone different, and be open to trying to understand
the other’s experience.” Many of the activists were going through
similar experiences in their respective groups and made an effort to
reach out to those in other groups, and some of the organizers had
personal relationships that brought different groups together: “The
black lesbians and gays, they would invite us to their events. We would
invite them to our events. For the short time that the Arab group
was around—and actually what helped there is that Dennis [from
ENLACE] and Ramzi [from the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society] were
roommates.” Partying together and sometimes living together, les-

bian and gay activists of color developed friendships that supported
their multiracial coalition work.
Parties have remained an important way to build community
among LGBTQ people of color. While ENLACE parties were spon-
sored by people consciously intending to organize a community,
many LGBTQ parties are started by people focused mainly on having
fun and meeting others who share racial and sexual identities, not
consciously political goals. Black lesbian activist Sheila Alexander-
Reid used the party-hosting skills she developed at home when she
discovered a black lesbian community “starving” for opportunities
to get together. She saw that black lesbian clubs were not run as well
as white clubs and realized she could do a better job of planning
events. After a short lived partnership called VTR Productions, Sheila
started Women in the Life in 1993, borrowing the name from parties
thrown by some friends in Brooklyn. “The event that put Women
in the Life on the map” was held in a rented warehouse during the
weekend of the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and
Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. Dubbed the “Unofficial March on
Washington After-Party for Women,” Sheila estimates that there were
around one thousand women there, including women from China,
Germany, France, Italy, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. She calls
it “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” In addition to having
fun, she enjoyed the experience of so many lesbian and bi women
from different backgrounds and from all over the world, dancing and
socializing together. The beauty she sees here is more than the visual
of attractive women, it includes the feeling of connectedness across
differences—people coming together in joy.32
Even at events organized just for fun, LGBTQ leaders often find
ways to educate the community or do other explicitly political work.
Sheila has also used Women in the Life parties as a way to address
health issues such as cancer and HIV/AIDS in the lesbian and bisex-
ual women of color community. In November of 1993, she began
creating and distributing a short newsletter with news and health
information of interest to lesbians of color. Ten years later, she pro-
duced Zora’s Journal, a magazine that contained “memoirs by breast
cancer survivors,” which she distributed using the Women in the Life
mailing list. Sheila began offering free admission to parties to peo-
ple who got tested for HIV at a 2004 party Deejayed by musician
Me’Shell NdegéOcello. NdegéOcello announced the event on the
stage at DC’s Black Pride, encouraging everyone to get tested. Sheila
believes that it “de-stigmatized the whole getting tested thing” and
Joy 133
got people connected with the Women’s Collective, a local organiza-

tion that serves the needs of women and girls living with HIV and
AIDS. She feels proud to be able to use Women in the Life parties to
support the community even beyond the need to come together and
have fun.
Nightclubs, pageants, and performances are important locations
of support and community building for trans people and drag art-
ists. Ruby describes a “huge need” that brought Latina transgenders
together through pageants and drag shows in the early 1990s. Many
of them felt like they could not “be [them]selves” with their families,
and many were immigrants, new to the United States. Telling the
story, Ruby recognizes that the pageants and their rehearsals filled
a need for space and “psychological support,” a phrase that reflects
the language of social services she learned through her activism. Back
then, she says, they “simply needed to be together.” The shows were
such a success that the group grew to about 50 Latinas doing pageants
every month. She remembers how those three nights each week pro-
vided support for the trans women and made them into a “family”:
every month it would be Miss El Salvador; or Miss Washington,

DC; Miss Virginia; and we always tried to have something to keep
the moment going because we felt good. Even though it was only
underground—Thursday, Friday nights, Saturday nights, into Sunday
mornings. It was something that we were together, and then every-
body went on to do their little thing during the daytime.
Eventually, Ruby and others realized that they needed space outside
of a bar to address “bigger issues.” While they were all feeling good in
the clubs, their alcohol and drug abuse was having a negative impact
on the lives of many participants. She says, “We already accepted our-
selves and we enjoyed it, we partied, so now what do we do? Because
you get tired of living underground for so long.” They formed a sup-
port group that met at a local clinic. They talked with each other and
educated themselves about gender identity and sexual identity, and
then they began to learn about body modification. As Ruby and oth-
ers began taking hormones and injecting silicone to make their bod-
ies look more feminine, they felt hopeful and happy: “We were happy,
we were already on our way to becoming what we wanted. It had
taken us all this time.”33 As they were going about their lives in tran-
sition, they encountered discrimination, harassment, and violence.
Ruby describes the process as addressing the mental aspect of accept-
ing themselves, then the physical aspect of changing their bodies,
followed by engaging the community and “demand[ing] respect”

through speaking out, which began around 2000, almost ten years
after Ruby got involved in pageants. “I think accepting ourselves or
finding ourselves first took a lot of years. And the process of having
people accept us after we’re so sure and happy with ourselves, that’s
another process, and that’s where we are.” The joy of having found
a community of trans women and of learning to change their bodies
provides energy for the work of gaining acceptance and respect in the
larger community.
As the AIDS epidemic grew, LGBT leaders began more and more
to use parties, performances, and social events to educate their com-
munities. Leti mentions handing out educational materials and con-
doms at ENLACE parties. At Asian and Pacific Islander Partnership
for Health (APIPH), Asian American transgender activist Irena Bui
used entertainment to educate the community about HIV and AIDS
in bars and clubs. Dressed in drag as hostess Connie Lingus, Irena
got community members involved in activities and game shows, like
the Dating Game:
We had the bachelor ask the three prospective bachelors questions

about HIV to test their knowledge and just to get people involved by
having a fun event as opposed to sort of like a support group. You’ll
get more people involved in listening without actually pointing fingers
or putting people on the spot. Plus it creates what we call a ‘com-
munity norm,’ because if you see the whole community agrees that
condoms should be used, you’re most likely to follow that.
Irena also used her drag persona, and the respect she was able to gar-
ner in that role, to influence other Asian queer folks, especially other
Asian trans women. In addition to addressing HIV, she used these
events “to provide a space for the girls who wanted to perform and
express themselves and just to see that there’s other things they could
be doing other than being in the streets.” Fun is the main appeal of
these shows, which provide a way to entertain, educate, and encour-
age creative expression.
In addition to building community and providing health education,
activists use social events to do explicitly political work. When Chicana
lesbian activist Julia Mendoza was president of a Southern California
lesbian and gay organization, the group began holding annual din-
ners honoring Latino/a elected officials.34 It was important to have
Latino/a officials attend gay and lesbian events, she explains, because
those officials did not consider lesbians and gays to be part of their
Joy 135
constituency. Julia adds, “That’s still a big part of my work today, to

have Latino electives understand that gays and lesbians are part of
their constituency and that they should be held accountable for their
positions on gay and lesbian issues.” Even beyond their positions on
legislative issues, she says, “we expect them to help us.” She thought
such explicitly political work would amplify the organization’s effects
on the community: “I really wanted the organization to not just do
the social stuff but to develop and leverage political support for our
work and to increase our standing and to develop a power base so
that we could have a bigger impact.” Using fun social events to build
political connections, the organization was able to convince politi-
cians to provide government funding for some of their work by con-
vincing them of their need to serve LGBT people of color.
As the organization grew and gained more attention, its leaders
continued to find fun ways to address social problems. Julia, in her
role as president of the organization, helped found an organization
that hosts a major annual street fair in an area where there were a
number of gay and lesbian bars in a predominantly Latino/a working
-class neighborhood, where there had been numerous incidents of
antigay violence. Rather than call for more policing, a group of com-
munity organizations got together and decided to “come up with
something that all of our organizations would work on together that
would be something positive for the community, so we could get
to know each other. What came out of it is this street fair that still
is the biggest street fair in [the city].” The festival fills ten blocks
with multiple stages providing entertainment, carnival rides, and ven-
dors. The lure of a large-scale fun event enables organizers to involve
their diverse constituents in a creative strategy for building commu-
nity and raising money for political organizations. The organizations
arrange for monitors and hire local youth to provide security for the
event: “There would be gay kids and cholos, and they’d have to work
together . . . We only hired gang kids to work security, so that they had
a real investment in it—and besides, they know who the troublemak-
ers are—and we pay them good money.” The collaboration results in
a fun event that brings different groups together, “and that was the
end of the gay bashing.” Sharing responsibility and joyful celebration,
people get to know each other, develop more communal identities,
and their differences become less threatening.
Kast explains the role of joy in building communities: “When
joy is present, affiliation takes the place of backbiting, and paranoia
disappears.”35 Given the history of suspicion, purposely fomented by
agents of the state through programs such as COINTELPRO, that
has undermined many progressive groups, sharing joy appears even

more important for social justice movements. Kast explains the trans-
formation possible through joy:
Through the elated emotions we find symbiosis, and our ego bound-
aries are not so defined. Yet by experiencing more fullness, we gather
strength and paradoxically become more autonomous. We experience
being carried and sustained, and we experience self-existence by for-
getting ourselves rather than by fighting for ourselves. We enjoy vital-
ity, the richness of the discoverable.36
By promoting joy, organizers encourage autonomy in relatedness.

Feeling ourselves connected to others and “carried by life,” we can act
from a position other than that of defending the ego.37 Discovering
ourselves as we discover others whom we connect with in joy, we gain
strength as differences become less threatening.
Creating Change
Activists in my study see creative work as another fun way to trans-
form their constituents and their communities. Creativity can change
lives by engaging the imagination and emotions and producing joy.
Antiracist feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa attributes our capacity to
change our lives to our ability to imagine: “Imagination, a function
of the soul, has the capacity to extend us beyond the confines of
our skin, situation, and condition so we can choose our responses. It
enables us to reimagine our lives, rewrite the self, and create guiding
myths for our times.”38 A number of activists in my study tap into the
pleasures of creativity and its world-changing powers. Lorde writes
of accessing erotic power through creative acts that bring feelings of
satisfaction and joy:
Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is

the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way
my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to
its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to
the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a
bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea.39
Activists appreciate art for its ability to move people emotionally and
spiritually, use art and creativity to find and express delight in margin-
alized identities, and find inspiration in sharing creative work. Activists
also value art as a means of expression and a way to build social ties,
Joy 137
view creative work as a means of personal and political development,

and enjoy the challenges of doing politics in creative groups.
Many activists appreciate the way that art affects people on an emo-
tional or spiritual level and generates energy that can spur the work of
social change. Maria came to understand cultural work as an agent of
social change through a job promoting women’s music. Working with
artists like DC-based a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock,
Maria came to understand deeply “the idea that cultural work is criti-
cal to movement building and social transformation.” Maria is unable
to describe this understanding intellectually but says, “It took me out
of my head in terms of what I understood politically.” The experience
of hearing the music, learning about the creative process, and being
part of a movement of people promoting progressive artists and polit-
ical music affected Maria emotionally and spiritually. She also relates
to this deep understanding her experience at a concert by a Latino
group: she had “an indescribable feeling at hearing traditional music
for the first time in ten years that shattered something.” The music
connected her to her home erotically—emotionally, physically, spiri-
tually, she felt a “connection to things that have been lost that you
didn’t even know were lost and that were still there.” Music provided
a kind of homecoming that helped Maria realize a connection that
had been buried but was still important for her. Describing the power
of these kinds of cultural events, Loraine Hutchins says that “art can
speak more directly to the heart than rhetoric, and is important in
any political movement because it mobilizes in a way that slogans
don’t.” 40 Maria continues to include space for creativity in her life and
appreciates how, through art, she discovers “ideas and knowledge in
me” that she didn’t know was there. Sociologists Ron Everman and
Andrew Jamison mention Sweet Honey in the Rock as a group that
reminds them of music’s potential for creating a feeling of community
and “identity pointing beyond the walls of the self.” They quote white
sociologist and rock critic Simon Frith, “‘Music constructs our sense
of identity through the experiences it offers of the body, time, and
sociability, experiences which enable us to place ourselves in imagina-
tive cultural narratives’ . . . Such narratives may well be transitory and
fragile, but when linked to social movements they can have lasting
effects on individuals and societies.” 41 By transforming people’s feel-
ings, experiences of self and community, and cognitive understand-
ings of social issues, and by encouraging political action, music, like
other forms of art, works on individuals to change culture.42 As noted
above, music and dancing’s power is connected with their ability to
produce “infectious joy.”
Organizers use creativity to encourage joy, personal development,

and celebration of marginalized identities. White queer activist Eric
Eldritch sees creativity and pleasure as ways to rupture the “heter-
onormativity or homosexual normativity” he sees in the commonly
made statement that LGBTQ people are “just like everybody else” and
to encourage imagination about how our lives could be. According
to Eric, the DC Radical Faeries, a queer earth-based spiritual group,
play with magic, ritual, and “shapeshifting” to rejoice in the differ-
ences of LGBTQ people and to help “unleash potential in people.”
Through social events, group and personal rituals, discussions, and
creative work, the Faeries encourage self- and group-exploration and
work to transform themselves and their community in positive ways.43
In the DC group, he says, “You ask two important questions about
anything you want to do: why are we doing it, and is it fun?” Putting
an emphasis on fun encourages taking pleasure in transformation of
self and society. This strategy serves a therapeutic purpose: “There’s
a way of calling that out that has you living in joy rather than angst.
Just living in joy and full potential.” Amidst popular angst-ridden
narratives of discovering one’s queer sexuality and coming out, the
Radical Faeries provide a counterculture that takes delight in sexual,
gender, and religious difference through somatic experiences such as
dressing up, creating art, performing rituals, and communing with
nature.44
As audience members, activists gain pleasure and inspiration from
others’ creative efforts. White lesbian activist Karen MacRae appreci-
ates the inspiration she found in a local organization that coordinates
monthly open mic and spoken word events for women.45 She men-
tions not only the political and social messages of the poetry but its
aesthetic qualities as inspiring:
When I think about what messages really inspired me, they were about
social justice, endurance, and really in the past four years [of the first
George W. Bush administration], also questioning the status quo,
questioning what is established or what is taken for granted to be fact.
I think that I really [have] been absorbing the power of dissent in a
lot of ways. And then there were other things about just the beauty of
language, and stories. I would run home and write my own poem or
write my own story and feel like it’s a continuation of that energy.
Karen describes the energy from poetic expressions of political dis-

sent as somehow entering her and the formal beauty of the poems
as generating energy that encouraged her own creativity. She feels
Joy 139
that there is a spiritual element in the gathering of community at

these events: “Just the idea of people hearing each other’s stories and
connecting in that way. I think it’s a really powerful thing. Gosh, I
learned so much. And I continue to learn from there. Definitely.”
Despite conflicts and the work involved in organizing the events,
Karen’s description of her experience with the group is filled with
joy and gratitude for the energy she gained from the community and
the poetry shared.
Activists’ creative projects also create communities of people who
want to make a positive contribution to the world. White Jewish les-
bian activist Carol Wayman wrote a movie, My Therapist’s Fingernails,
because “At that time I’d been a lesbian for ten years and I wanted to
see a lesbian movie that dealt with lesbians who had lesbian friends
and dealt with lesbian issues.” She contrasts this concept with the
lesbian movies she had seen, which all seemed to have the same story:
“I’m a straight girl, and I fall for a lesbian and she has no lesbian
friends, but that’s okay. And we fall in love.” Carol is struck by how
many people—300—committed to working on the movie and how
cultural and creative projects “bring people together” in a way that
direct action does not.46 Referring to a 1990s protest of a conservative
conference in DC, she says, “If I tried to have 300 people for an exor-
cism of the Christian Coalition at the Hilton, forget it.” With only
US$3000, Carol “made this movie and soundtrack and everything.
But the people who came became really good friends. I mean, people
dated, and it was a real kind of stone soup thing. Even though it was
my vision and my movie. People really gave a lot to be in it, and I wish
I had made a better movie for them.” As people come together to
develop and share creative projects, they enjoy the work as well as the
friendships and romantic relationships that develop. Telling a story
about a lesbian dealing with depression, the movie provided a way for
Carol to use her own personal struggles to connect with others, both
contributors to the film and audience members. The work of creating
something and the connections that happen in the processes of creat-
ing and sharing art can provide satisfaction and enjoyment that fuels
the work of social change.
Creative groups and productions, through their pleasurable
appeal, have provided space for social networking and creative and
personal development that has been an important part of individ-
ual development as well as developing community bonds and group
identities. When black lesbian womanist V. Papaya Mann talks about
coming out in her early twenties in Washington, DC, she describes
the “artsy fartsy community” with which she got involved as a poet
and actor, producing coffeehouses and shows in which people shared

their creative work. She refers to the late 1970s–early 1980s period
in Washington, DC, as a “black gay renaissance” in which artists like
poet Essex Hemphill, writer and filmmaker Michelle Parkerson, and
photographer Sharon Farmer felt “empowered.” She describes the
community as “eclectic” and tolerant of difference. She includes her
involvement in the arts as part of what led her to activism: “Theater
is about freedom. It’s about having a voice. It’s about breaking out
of our boundaries.” Papaya thinks the arts play an important role
in individual development. She does not think art is always political
but sees how art, as a means of expression and “break[ing] barriers”
has been part of the black LGBTQ movement. Spaces such as the
Coffeehouse enabled black LGBT folks to meet, explore, and develop
a group identity that became the basis of Black Pride and black LGBT
political organizations. In addition to fighting racial discrimination
within the broader LGBT community, black lesbians and gays fought
gender division between gay men and lesbians. The joy shared among
men and women in black LGBTQ creative and social spaces contrib-
uted to the political work of breaking down gender divisions in the
larger LGBTQ community.
Some creative groups begin with a political purpose. In such
groups, figuring out how to fulfill both artistic and political mis-
sions can be a pleasurable challenge. Asian American bisexual activist
Truong Chinh “TC” Duong finds the Lesbian and Gay Chorus of
Washington a fulfilling place to engage in creative, celebratory activ-
ity that is politically meaningful. TC describes the work of the chorus
as “singing politically,” which for him encompasses
who you’re singing with, where you’re singing, what context you’re
providing the audience, and you’re not just singing music because it’s
musically nice; although that should never not be part of the agenda.
But you’re singing music that is expressing something that challenges
oppression and that engages the audience not just with their ears but
with their heads.
He views decisions about where to sing, what to sing, with whom

to sing, and how to operate as an organization as political choices
that can further their mission. He enjoys the intellectual and creative
challenge of figuring out how the group enacts its political mission
through its art and thinks the chorus’s artistic process is “kind of
revolutionary”: “We are really challenging notions of artistic integ-
rity and how music gets made and how art gets made . . . How do we
Joy 141
live as singers what we live as activists?” In DC’s Lesbian and Gay

Chorus, TC explains, the singers have a strong voice in what the cho-
rus sings and how the chorus works, and the relationship with the
musical director is more cooperative than hierarchical, which makes
the musical productions more collaborative, a departure from how
most choral groups work.47 Figuring out how to enact the mission
of the chorus involves “a constant process of engagement” and talk
about “hard issues” using “a consensus process that doesn’t leave
anybody behind in terms of talking about issues and talking about
making sure that people are heard.” TC appreciates the intentionality
of this structure and its relationship to the group’s mission: “Every
Voice Matters.” 48 The group’s consensus process reflects this value
of “Every Voice” by providing a structure that values each member’s
input in decisions about the group’s business and activities.49 Such
spaces for doing politics and creative work together present “exciting”
and pleasurable challenges for activists to engage the intellect and
imagination in world-changing work.
The sharing of creative expression in a supportive environment is a
source of joy that promotes acceptance, self-esteem, and connection
with the world. Kast explains,
Joy promotes trust in oneself; when we are joyful, we feel self-confi-

dent and accept ourselves, knowing that our existence is not a matter
of indifference. To put it the other way around, when we accept our-
selves, we are likely to be delighted in and feel accepted by the world,
experiencing an affinity with that that transcends us, with other per-
sons, and with the spiritual. This is the basis for solid self-esteem.50
When this happens among people who have been denigrated by soci-
ety because of their race, sexual identity, class, disability, gender iden-
tity, or other marginalized identities, it is political work, it forms the
basis for political affiliations, and it inspires individuals to work for
positive social change.
Working for Satisfaction

TC’s enjoyment of community and organizational process in the
Lesbian and Gay Chorus reflects pleasures many organizers find in
the work of activism. Rupp and Taylor summarize the satisfaction
found in feminist organizing as stemming from the benefits of work
experience and the meaning found in the struggle for women’s equal-
ity.51 Sociologist James M. Jasper emphasizes a different aspect of
pleasure found in the work: he focuses more on activist vision than

learning from experience, identifying the combination of seeing that
other ways of doing things are possible and having ideas for how to
make change happen as a source of pleasure for activists.52 Like Rupp
and Taylor, Jasper points out that the activities of protest are satis-
fying in themselves—“the striving [for a better world] is partly the
goal.”53 Activists in my study report finding enjoyment in express-
ing themselves as part of a collective, in growing as people, in cre-
ative strategizing, and in discovering meaning in working for a better
world.
Street protests provide a direct way for activists to connect with
others through acts of political expression. White lesbian activist
Karen MacRae recalls the pride and pleasure she felt in her first street
protest—a small demonstration in support of abortion rights:
I remember the feeling of camaraderie and the relief of seeing there’s

other people who think like me, having that kind of experience. And
also feeling ugh, I got to stomp around for a while and boy, do I feel
better. Sort of like when you scream real loud how great that feels
afterwards; got that out, you know. I called home and I said I was just
in my first protest. I didn’t get arrested but I got to say my opinion and
wave to people, how great it was to express my beliefs publicly.54
Expressing oneself publicly, feeling supported by others with similar

beliefs, and simply being physically active in a crowd are some of the
many joys of street protests. Karen also tells of the first Dyke March
she attended, held in June 1999. Even though it was “terrible, accessi-
bility-wise,” for Karen, who uses a wheelchair, “I just remember how
great it was to be screaming with 200 women in Georgetown.” Her
favorite memory from the march is of a tour bus that drove by with
people snapping pictures of the protest:
One of the great things that I love about that march is I feel that
permission to be raucous and loud and crazy and shout at strangers,
which I would never do. That was really great. I just remember think-
ing, daydreaming in my head: mom, dad, the kids go home. They put
the slides up, show grandma and grandpa, “and here [are] the lesbians
marching in Georgetown.”
The idea of random tourists telling their stories of seeing the Dyke
March—having the protest preserved in that way—made her feel part
of a historical moment. Karen here exhibits another of the pleasures
of protest mentioned by Jasper: “a sense of collective empowerment,
Joy 143
and the expression of group solidarity[, . . . ] ‘doing what’s right’

[and . . . ] Participating in important historical events.”55 Jasper also
writes, “Among its satisfactions, protest creates a separate world for its
participants, in which they do things they can’t do in the quotidian
world, establish modes of interaction, gain a taste of a just society, or
simply dream.”56 Karen got to be part of a much larger collectivity
in the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, in which around 1 million
people assembled on the National Mall in support of women’s repro-
ductive rights.57 The event held social pleasures, as she reconnected
with old friends, as well as the emotional pleasure of feeling part of a
huge group of women and men in that moment and through histori-
cal time. She recalls,
I had this moment— . . . there was a curb and you could see the dou-
bling back. Because in your own little pocket, you couldn’t really get
a sense of how big the march was. And that just blew me away. I felt
really emotional about it in that there were women that couldn’t be
there. I felt like I was representing my ancestors, my mother, my aunts.
I felt that weight, and it really is one of those things that I’ll remember
all my life. It was really beautiful.
The vast numbers of women and men from diverse groups gave Karen
a feeling of “women-power” and also of having “support from all
different communities.” Using aesthetic terms, she conveys the bliss-
ful feeling of connection across different communities and historical
time that she felt being physically surrounded by masses of people
gathered together to express their political beliefs as one huge and
varied collectivity.58
As much as they enjoy finding others who share their beliefs
and/or cultural backgrounds, engaging with people from different
backgrounds and learning about differences is also a pleasure for peo-
ple committed to intersectional activism. Leti describes the work of
starting a national organization as “exciting”: “There was a thrill to
meeting people, getting to know people, learning about the issues,
engaging with other gays and lesbians that weren’t Latino, like black
gays and lesbians and the white gays and lesbians.” LLEGÓ’s leaders
learned about differences related to national origin, geography, race,
religion, sexuality, and gender identity. Over time, the group devel-
oped more awareness of difference and came to include bisexuals and
trans people as well as people from a range of national backgrounds.
Leti describes the process of being confronted with difference as per-
sonally “rewarding.” Her commitment to learning about and working
with differences in LLEGÓ reflects a desire to connect with others

who prioritize relationships or groups over the many differences that
divide people. Lorde writes of the need for relationships with oth-
ers who disagree without leaving the relationship, “I am hungry for
Black women who will not turn from me in anger and contempt even
before they know me or hear what I have to say. I am hungry for Black
women who will not turn away from me even if they do not agree
with what I say.”59 Far too often, we dismiss people who have views,
practices, or identities that make us uncomfortable. Finding others
who can work through disagreements and seek understanding across
difference is a source of tremendous joy for activists and others who
have felt different or marginalized.
Many of the narrators appreciate how working with different peo-
ple contributes to their personal growth and development. Working
in diverse groups of people of color, TC found another kind of home:
“I really glory in working in multicultural settings because it feels
as much like home as possible . . . you recognize each other in really
interesting ways.” There is a sense that TC shines as he discovers
things shared across differences of race and ethnicity. He also enjoys
learning about the differences in people from different cultural back-
grounds: “One of the challenges was that we all have different styles
and we all have different priorities.” He was particularly interested in
the leadership styles of native Americans in the group:
They create more space and create more time to think about things
and move forward about things than I think Western people do in
general . . . They’re okay with a decision not being made. They don’t
need to make a decision, and they need to go back to a group of people
and think about it and be able to hold a space. At least the native
Americans in our group didn’t need to appoint a leader for them. They
could speak as a group with many voices.60
While TC cites differing styles of leadership and working with groups

as a challenge, he enjoys learning about those differences and seeing
how they open up new possibilities for how the group functions. He
also enjoys the process of self-discovery and developing skills through
activist work: “I realized I’m very good at facilitating a group to come
up with concrete products.” He appreciates the conflicts that come up
as opportunities for growth: “We’re not calling it a struggle because
it’s easy and because were all going to feel comfortable. I’m very okay
with not feeling comfortable.” TC appreciates what he has learned
through people calling him out, for example, on behavior that was
Joy 145
“silencing other people.” “I’ve grown so much out of getting my ass

kicked.” He is glad that he was able to “stay engaged” through con-
flicts and grow as a person.
White trans activist Darby Hickey has enjoyed a similar experience
of finding new possibilities for working across differences through
the DC Radio Co-op, a collaborative focused on “training commu-
nity members, specifically emphasizing developing leadership among
people from marginalized communities,” as well as collecting sound
and making news stories. Learning how to work as a collective has
been difficult, Darby says, and “incredible.” She is impressed with the
group’s diversity and “the leadership of people that are usually not in
positions of leadership.” She clarifies that the group does not have
official leaders, but people who come to more meetings and offer to
work on behalf of the group end up having a greater say in what hap-
pens: “You even that out some by making everyone have equal vote . . . ,
but if someone’s really involved, they come to a lot of meetings. And
at the meetings is where decisions are made, and if someone’s not as
involved, they don’t come.”61 Summarizing the many things she has
learned through her work at the co-op, Darby says, “I just learned a
lot about working together, what real actual empowerment looks like,
what real democracy looks like.” She thinks it is exciting “just to learn
from different people about their experiences, learning about, when
you have so much difference, how do you navigate that and how do
you find common ground and find ways to respect each other that’s
not infringing on each other’s specific reality.”62 She mentions as one
example that she has learned to accept other members who disapprove
of her gender identity “as long as they’re respectful and can talk and
are willing to talk about it and expand their mind a little bit, but not
feeling like they need to be all about everything that is who I am.”
Darby has learned that, as long as she is treated with respect, she
does not need to have her colleagues’ support before they can work
together. Working with people with differing political views “very
much ends up informing the work that you do,” and she feels grateful
for all that she learns from that experience. Through the process of
working with people with whom they disagree, activists can discover
ways of relating to others that make “real democracy” possible.
Another way that activists find joy in their work is through tak-
ing creative and fun approaches to protest. On the day of George W.
Bush’s inauguration in 2001, when most protestors were separated
by barricades from the parade route and staging area, Carol Wayman
protested Bush’s inauguration in front of the Washington Hilton
Hotel, where she anticipated that many officials and Bush supporters
would be staying. She wore a jester suit and hat and brought her dog,
who was also dressed in a bright costume with bells. They walked
back and forth in front of the hotel with a sign that said, “Democracy
denied is no joke,” a comment on the Supreme Court–awarded presi-
dency. Carol recalls, “I thought, I’m not going to the little inaugura-
tion pen with protestors. I know where they are. And I was this close
[(gesturing)] to Sandra Day O’Connor.” She had part of her costume
in a bag, so she was able to get in front of the hotel and surprise
people before being pushed across the street by the police. The small
dog helped Carol attract friendly attention: “He’s so cute, he makes
me accessible. So people . . . would come up and we’d talk, and the
cops loved that I was out there, pretty much.” She also used creativity
and humor when protesting WIPP, the nuclear Waste Isolation Plant
that was nonetheless built in Carlsbad, New Mexico. She remem-
bers attending hearings with signs that would be taken away: “My
favorite always was like a happy face but with one eye and a squiggly
mouth and it said, ‘Mutants for WIPP.’ They always took that one.
I liked it.” Humor and resourcefulness make activism more friendly
and accessible to others and more enjoyable for activists themselves,
even when the work is difficult. Telling these stories, Carol shares in
one of the first sources of joy that many people report, according to
Kast: “Delight in themselves.” Kast finds the joy in doing something
well to be a primary motivator for work, although it is often not con-
sidered polite to discuss. Activists take pleasure in having done their
work well, even when the result is not what they had hoped or when
the effects are unclear.
Karen enjoys helping people see things differently through her
writing and how she lives her life. She has a lot of fun with her writing,
both the process of research and writing and sharing her work with
others, hoping to encourage her readers to think about social issues:
“There’s just something I really enjoy about trying to spread thought
and make people question . . . It takes a lot of effort and work to write
the articles and talk to people and do research and things like that.
But it’s just so satisfying.” Karen feels passionate about telling “stories
that people don’t get to hear,” citing as an example an article in which
she “interviewed four young people with disabilities who are leaders
in their communities.” She describes the work as “exciting and inspir-
ing” and particularly likes that the article was printed in a magazine
for people with disabilities that does not focus on activism:
I think it can be really overwhelming for people with disabilities to

think about being activists. But really I think most if not all of them
have to be in order to get what they want in life. And so I really felt it
Joy 147
was a really great thing, especially to see young people doing that and
having these great, interesting lives.
In addition to telling uncommon stories, Karen likes to encourage ques-

tioning and critical thinking and spread “dissenting views” through
her writing: “To me it’s just really an empowerment thing and it’s
also empowering others.” She also feels like she is “a role model” that
influences people around her. She mentions as one example a former
roommate who became an attorney specializing in disability rights.
She is proud that she keeps on “living and surviving [with a disability],
not giving up where maybe it’s an easier thing to do” and that she
lives her activism publicly: “I think . . . when activists live visibly and
proudly, that’s really important. That’s where I saw my role models;
it’s a really important tradition. I still really learn from all the people
I meet in my life; I hope that that is kind of a chain that can spread
along.” Karen feels good that she follows the example of those who
influenced her and hopes to continue their world-changing work.
Sarah enjoys helping native women find creative ways to address the
problems they face. Part of this work is ideological, helping women
understand the importance of supporting and working with tribal
governments:
What some of the native women have told me is that . . . they became
not just activists for their women’s issues or the domestic violence or
the sexual assault but that, after listening to me train or going to one
of my lectures or something, figured out that, yeah, I may not like
my tribal council right now, and it may have a bunch of misogynist
men on there that abuse women, but I still have to fight for my tribe’s
sovereignty because if my tribe disappears, then the native women
disappear.
Sarah feels most proud that she has been able to help women from
different communities understand the connection “between women’s
sovereignty and tribal sovereignty.” She also enjoys helping tribal
governments write laws because “you don’t have the constraints of
a Western legal framework,” which enables more creative solutions
to women’s problems. Sarah cites as an example writing Orders of
Protection in a small Alaskan tribe:
In a Western system, . . . you can order him to stay away from her, you
can order him to pay for some kind of child support, you can order
him to do drug and alcohol treatment or something. In Alaska, a lot of
those things aren’t really what she needs. What she needs is firewood
to make it through the winter, so he’s ordered to make sure that she
has firewood, and he’s to deliver that to the tribal council who’s to
deliver that to her, the victim.
Aware of the privilege that has enabled her to get a law degree, “that
so many native women could never get because there are so many
obstacles in the way,” Sarah feels good that she can use her skills and
knowledge to support native women: “I don’t have all the answers,
but I have a few tools that I can bring them that they can use to build
their own community back up. So it’s like I’m bringing them a ham-
mer and a saw but I’m not building it for them, and I love that. It just
feels really, really good.”
When activists see changes in their communities that reflect their
work, they feel a sense of pride and satisfaction. Leti appreciates how
ENLACE and LLEGÓ raised visibility of Latina/o LGBTQ issues
and connected Latina/o LGBTQ activists. She describes the process
of going through LLEGÓ’s materials and packing 39 boxes of mate-
rials to send to the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection
at the University of Texas. She was happy to preserve the work done
by LLEGÓ staff and volunteers—educational materials in English
and Spanish about HIV/AIDS, relationship violence, and other
issues: “This wealth of knowledge that [is] people’s ideas transmit-
ted to paper.” Leti feels proud that she played a part in developing
connections among Latino LGBTQ activists and organizations. She
explains that her belief in the importance of visibility of lesbian and
gay Latinos motivated her to contribute to the work:
What was going on then is that we had a number of gay and lesbian
organizations, predominantly white, and the common thread was that
we were all looking for gay and lesbian liberation and recognition of
our civil rights, but the messages weren’t necessarily geared towards
African Americans or Latinos or anybody who was not white . . . So
a lot of what I did during those early years, ’87 to ’96, when I was
most heavily involved, not just in ENLACE here in DC but also with
LLEGÓ—was the importance of being visible, having a voice, giving
voice to what our issues were.
LLEGÓ’s work of increasing visibility of LGBTQ Latino/as had an

enduring impact on LGBTQ Latina/o organizations. Amidst the sad-
ness of LLEGÓ closing down, Leti says, “We need to also be mindful
of the fact that even though the organization’s gone, the people aren’t
all gone . . . we have a legacy of having grown a network of GLBT
Latinos that wherever they are can continue having an impact, what-
ever organization they’re in, whatever community they’re in.” She is
Joy 149
most pleased with LLEGÓ’s “networking, the reaching out. That’s,

to me, really what worked well—staying in touch with what people
were doing, whether it was Seattle or Miami or Kansas City,” and
with people who would contact LLEGÓ from around the country to
let them know what they were doing—“just that sense of pride—‘I
want you to know we’re doing this and if you ever get out this way,
we’d love to show you what we’re doing.’” Leti felt moved by the
trans women at the last LLEGÓ conference, who spoke “about how
important it was for them to have a LLEGÓ and to have an opportu-
nity to meet other trans from other parts of the country. It was like
the same thing, 17 years later, but here it was with a different com-
munity within the community. And if that’s all it is, that was a good
thing we did.” At the 2004 Transgender Leadership Summit, Leti
saw Latina trans women enjoying being together and developing a
network, just as Latina/o lesbians and gay men had in the early days
of LLEGÓ.
Ruby is pleased with how her life and work has increased accep-
tance of trans women. Years before she was involved in organizing
the transgender summit, Ruby’s activism began with her insisting
on her right to be in public as herself, in feminine dress, though still
with a male body. In 1999, as she began transitioning from male to
female, Ruby pulled in five or six friends to support her when she
went out: “I would say, ‘Let’s go to a meeting and let’s come as we
are.’ Because otherwise . . . at night they were these gorgeous people,
and then during the day they hide themselves. And I was like uh-uh.
I’m going to put my wig on; I’m going to get on the bus, and I
don’t care. I’m going to my meeting. It was a good feeling.” Ruby
and others felt proud being openly trans in the streets and businesses
around where they lived. They were determined to “be seen” outside
of Dupont Circle, the gay ghetto, and they enjoyed being out trans
women together and seeing other people’s reactions. Ruby told her
friends, “Let’s go to Virginia, let’s go to Maryland. Let’s terrorize the
community.” She admits, “It was hard at first, because I remember
there were times they would call names, and I’m like, ‘And?’ And
they would say things.” Yet she insisted, “Every day we’re taking
the bus. No, we’re not taking taxis. Every day we’re going to walk
around. We don’t care if they call us names. We were having fun, too,
because I was young.” Ruby and her friends enjoyed being “out and
about,” living their lives as activist spectacle. She and her friends con-
tinued to live visibly as they changed their bodies through hormones,
silicone injections, and surgery. This activism has raised awareness
among Latino/a and gay communities in DC and made it possible for
more people to come out as trans: “It was really a big awakening for
a lot of Hispanic people in this city. In Columbia Heights, it was like,
‘What have these young people done?’ . . . They’re still learning, but
it’s a process . . . But people know, so now it’s not a secret, and it helps
a lot of people.” As Ruby encountered more issues, including legal
issues related to transitioning as well as discrimination, harassment,
and violence, she began speaking out more and more and was pleased
to find people who listened: “I started showing people what it was
like and having people understand that there are people like me, and
then I would have them by my side.” Doing good work is satisfying
in itself and increases connections with others.
The pleasures Colette describes in her work include connecting
with others, learning about injustice, and working from her prin-
ciples and toward her vision. As she was starting her organization,
she began doing workshops in shelters for homeless women. At the
time, she was a young college graduate and created a curriculum
based on material that had been meaningful for her, centered mostly
around the book You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay. The classes,
according to Colette, “were wonderful. It was really about—it’s not
you; there’s a whole system in place. It’s not fair. It’s not your fault.”
This is the same realization that she describes having in college when
she was first exposed to feminist antiracist thought. The women in
the workshops would talk, and
We’d go through the workbook and some stuff on self-esteem and

self-worth and really this very feminist analysis about what is sexism,
what’s racism, what’s classism, journaling about people’s experiences
with those things. People were disclosing being raped, being abused,
just fucked up shit. When [the director] wasn’t in the room, they
would talk about how they were treated at the shelter, which broke
my heart.
At the end of the six-week session, they would celebrate with a party.
Afterward, Colette would at times see some of the women around
town and liked having that connection: “it was really cool.” From
facilitating the workshops, she understood injustice more deeply and
realized the arbitrariness of her own relative privilege:
That could be my life, easily. The question I get asked the most from
people is “How come you’re different?” or “How come you came out
different than your family, your environment?” And I’m just like,
“There’s really no rhyme or reason” . . . The survivors in the group obvi-
ously never got any help or support or got kicked out or something
Joy 151
happened and then became prostitutes and then indicted, so they’re in

the system, and it’s just really crazy.
Colette’s enjoyment of the groups seems to come from the feeling of

connection with the other women and her feeling like she was able
to empower them by helping to improve their sense of self-worth. As
the organization grew, she could not continue the workshops and
misses the sense of connection she felt through workshops and com-
munity organizing. Even though she does not like the responsibilities
of administration, she says of the work,
I really like it; I think it’s really great. What I like the most is hearing
from people or other activists who are like, “It’s about fucking time,”
or “You’re doing good work,” or “This is phenomenal,” or “I cried
when I went to the web site.” That makes me happy, and also when
I think about the vision I have for the organization and its direction,
and thinking about the impact, if it’s allowed to come to fruition, the
change is magnificent.
Colette enjoys doing work that touches other people who have
similar political desires, and she feels good about her work—that she
is building an organization without compromising on political ideals
and values, an organization that holds itself accountable to communi-
ties and tries to meet the needs of its constituents as they define them,
rather than setting an agenda from the top down.
In the work of activism, organizers find pleasure in expressing
themselves with others, learning about difference, feeling personally
challenged, and discovering new possibilities for relating to others
and working together. They enjoy finding creative ways to use their
resources effectively in struggles for change and doing work that feels
important, particularly when they see tangible results. Even when the
effects are unclear, activists feel good about “doing the right thing”
and trying to make a positive difference in the world.
Conclusion
“Doing the right thing” is a source of deep satisfaction for those who
struggle for social justice. Jasper recognizes that there is an invest-
ment in identity in such action: “Doing the right thing is a way of
communicating, to ourselves as well as others, what kind of people
we are.”63 We craft our identities through the choices we make, and
activism is one way to make oneself into a moral person.64 Yet Jasper
also includes a quote from British writer Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A
Defence of Poetry” that suggests that, while at times it may shore

up the ego, the pleasure of morality can also be self-shattering: “The
great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our nature and the
identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought,
action, or person, not our own.”65 Jasper’s use of art as metaphor
throughout The Art of Moral Protest, combined with his use of phi-
losopher Alasdair MacIntyre’s concept of “practice” to describe the
“deep satisfaction” found in protest, regardless of its outcomes, also
suggest that the joys of activism, at least at times, are more like the
profound joys of the erotic described by Lorde: the pleasure of con-
necting with oneself and others through meaningful work, the plea-
sure of activities that awaken feelings of love, faith, and joy.66
C onc lusion
Spirituality can be as much about practices of compassion, love, eth-

ics and truth defined in non-religious terms as it can be related to the
mystical reinterpretations of existing religious traditions.
Leela Fernandes1
T he increasing attention paid to spirituality in popular culture, in

women’s, ethnic, and LGBTQ studies, and in US social movements
points to an important element of human life and culture that can
render scholarly and activist work more powerful. Moving away from
an emphasis on individual, often male, leaders to a focus on spiritual
practice and collectively held values and principles makes it possible for
more people to see how they can contribute to positive social change
in small and large ways. Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa notes
how the “speed of materialism” in the United States makes it fertile
ground for the Shambhala teachings. He clarifies, “[T]he potential
for being involved in this kind of speed is not limited to Americans, it
is universal, world-wide.”2 Popular interest in spirituality represents,
I suspect, increasing fatigue with this speed and desire for living a
more meaningful, more connected life. Many religious organizations
tap into this desire toward conservative ends. If the Left is losing the
battle for the hearts and minds of Americans, it is, I argue, because
we neglect this spiritual impulse.
If we do not pay attention to the emotional and spiritual dynamics
of social change work, we are missing crucial and powerful elements
of how change happens. That attention to spirit includes the feelings
we bring to our work: do we act with love and respect for the dignity
of everyone? It also includes respecting the emotional and spiritual
aspects of experience: are we speaking to people’s hearts and spirits as
well as their minds? Are we giving space for people to do their own
work? Can we amplify the love, faith, and joy that we feel to help
inspire all of us, so that we understand that the hard work of chang-
ing ourselves and our communities is worth it, regardless of whether
we accomplish measurable goals? Can we represent social justice work
as joyful possibility rather than obligation?
Using antiracist feminist scholar Leela Fernandes’s definition of

spirituality may help staunch secularists see the importance of spiritual
work and listen to what foundational progressive thinkers like Audre
Lorde, Gloria Anzaldúa, and bell hooks have been saying for decades:
that spirit is central to political work. In her 2001 foreword to This
Bridge Called My Back, Anzaldúa clarifies what she sees as the revo-
lutionary potential of spiritual work: “Our work of casting a spiritual
light on the bridge enables us to venture into unknown territories. It
prepares us to fortify the old bridges, build new ones and cross these
when we come to them.”3 Addressing spiritual health is essential to
promoting and sustaining revolutionary consciousness. Our internal
work moves us to action and sustains us through challenges and dif-
ficult work. The spiritual dimensions of activism address the psychic
damage caused by oppression and the role of ideology in producing
inequality. Anzaldúa writes, “The struggle has always been inner, and
is played out in the outer terrains. Awareness of our situation must
come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in
society. Nothing happens in the ‘real’ world unless it first happens in
the images in our heads.” 4 Spiritual wisdom and internal healing are
essential for moving people to transform societies.
Spiritual work is difficult. It refuses us the security of thinking we
know anything, including who we are and who or what is good or
bad. It challenges us to the core and refuses to let us paint anyone as
enemy, even those who commit evil, destructive acts, even ourselves. It
has implications for how we live every moment of our lives, from how
we eat breakfast to what we teach our children to what jobs we do to
how we engage in conflicts with our families, neighbors, coworkers,
and political representatives. And it reminds us that all these things
are practice, which means we will continue to get it wrong, and that
we should not take ourselves, or spirituality, seriously, “And if you do
try to treat life as a ‘serious business,’ if you try to impose solemnity
upon life as though everything is a big deal, then it is funny.”5
By showing how activists live the ideas and principles of multira-
cial feminism, I hope to bring more understanding of theories and
practices of intersectionality. When foundational antiracist feminist
thinkers like Toni Cade Bambara, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre Lorde, bell
hooks, Cherríe Moraga, Beth Brant, and Paula Gunn Allen write of
the inseparability of inner work and spirituality from politics, it comes
from a lived understanding that is shared by many people involved in
the day-to-day praxis of social change. Tracing this understanding
through the work of activists, writers, and scholars, I call attention
to an emergent consciousness that is linked with ancient knowledges,
C onc l us ion 155
some that are still taught, some forgotten, yet being rediscovered and
reinvented—remade in and for the present moment.
Intersectionality challenges us to question how we know, how our
experience affects our beliefs and emotional responses to ideas: what
feels right can reflect what I’m used to or comfortable with. Setting
aside my responses and giving authority to those “who occupy the
interstices” is crucial for feminists and others committed to democ-
racy.6 At the same time, we can cultivate our “inner voice” through
spiritual practice—not to find some core “self,” but to loosen the
grip of the ego and tap into knowledges that are accessible because
of our connectedness, our sameness with each other and all that is.
What Lorde calls the “erotic” signals when we have discovered these
deeper truths.7
The truths that come from experiencing our connectedness can
help us work across differences, practice love in our personal and
political lives, and cultivate differential consciousness. Love leads us
to bring old knowledges into our work and to find common ground
with those whom we protest and criticize. Focusing on love helps
us produce knowledge that nourishes people who suffer and encour-
ages understanding and compassion. Love helps us find alternatives
to oppositional thinking and violence so that we can create deep,
lasting change.
Recognizing the love that motivates activists helps us see them
more clearly as human and basically good, so that we can forgive mis-
takes—ours and others’—and find ways to work together. Focusing
on fundamental beliefs and principles challenges us to consider our
own and how they can guide our work. Do we believe in human
dignity and everyone’s right to govern hir own life? How can each
decision reflect that belief? How can we raise children in ways that
respect their autonomy? How do we respect each student and col-
league’s dignity when we teach? How do we respond with kindness
and lead with love in conflicts at home and work, in government, and
in other communities?
Recognizing the pleasure found in meaningful work and how fun
can change the world can inspire us to find joy in every moment.
When we encounter difficulties, we can remind ourselves of our
resources and not to take things so seriously, even when the con-
sequences seem great. This last point may be the most difficult for
progressives—how ironic it is that we sometimes find joy so hard!
Or, perhaps, that joy can be so hard for us to find. Trungpa connects
compassion with joy through a feeling of wealth: “It is the attitude
that one has been born fundamentally rich rather than that one must
become rich.” This makes struggle joyful because “Each time you are
faced with a difficult task it presents itself as a delightful opportu-
nity to demonstrate your richness, your wealth.”8 The Left is known
for its compassion for the poor and oppressed, our “bleeding heart.”
Our challenge is to extend that compassion to the rich and powerful.
When we do that, our work is a source of profound delight.
Fernandes writes, “Put into practice, this mystical knowledge can
provide an unshakable foundation for movements for social justice.” 9
We don’t need to have great leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.,
when we can focus on principles of autonomy and human dignity,
tap into ancient and internal knowledges, and find joy in the work of
social change. We have all the resources we need. When we believe
that and trust in basic human goodness, we create magic that trans-
forms the world.
As I complete this book, I keep coming back to the “Three Lords
of Materialism” that, according to Trungpa, illustrate how ego works.
The one to be most cautious of in the context of academic work is the
“Lord of Speech,” which “refers to the use of intellect in relating to
our world,” our tendency to categorize and classify in order to feel
like we understand/have a grip on our world. Ideologies—including
Buddhism, feminism, antiracism, capitalism, socialism, and science—
provide concepts that “screen us from a direct experience of what
is.” This book is a great example of the use of concepts to produce a
feeling of understanding. This line from Trungpa strikes me as most
apt: “The Lord of Speech refers to the inclination on the part of ego
to interpret anything that is threatening or irritating in such a way as
to neutralize the threat or turn it into something ‘positive’ from ego’s
point of view.”10 Here, I provide concepts in an attempt to explain
what I see as positive about activism. I hope that you may find them
useful and perhaps they will deepen your understanding of how social
change happens. Though what is more important is that it encourages
you to let go of what understanding you think you already possessed
about activists and social change and, by extension, perhaps what you
think you know about yourself.
A ppe n di x I
M e t hodol og y
Going Back: Origins

I blame it on being a Southerner that it’s difficult for me to say any-
thing without telling a story. So, by way of explaining this project,
here is its and mine.
In some ways, this project began with my entrance into political
thinking, at the age of 13, when I first got fired up about animal
rights, thanks to some literature circulated by People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals. My speaking out against vivisection, dissec-
tion, and meat was fueled by a passionate belief in equality and love
for God’s creation, inspired by reading the New Testament, in its
entirety, around that time. My political interests soon grew to include
antipoverty, antiwar, antiracist, antihomophobic, pacifist, and femi-
nist sentiments, expressed primarily in my immediate environments
of school and church. A middle-class white girl growing up in a
Southern and largely military city, I was “unique.”
In college, I let go of my Christian faith but kept my politicized
sense of ethics, joining Habitat for Humanity and the Women’s
Empowerment League. In a DC bookstore, I picked up the anthol-
ogy This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
and discovered the theoretical perspective that would drive my intel-
lectual work through my BA, MA, and PhD: multiracial feminism
or “intersectionality.” As a Women’s Studies major, I examined the
intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, and nation,
evaluating all the theories I read in relation to experience, my own
or what I could glean of others through their stories and scholarly
work. I learned about political relationships and alliances through
multiracial coalitions working on campus—coalitions largely based
on friendships made in Women’s Studies classes or through the les-
bian, gay, and bisexual student group. Through an internship with
the DC Rape Crisis Center, a couple of years organizing with the
Lesbian Avengers, and participating in the beginnings of the Rainbow
History Project, DC’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer

(LGBTQ) archive project, I learned more about community activism
in Washington, DC, and I fell in love.
I was inspired by activists who were DC people: natives or long-
term residents, mostly living in the District and committed to work-
ing with people in local communities as well as with the governmental
structures that affect them. I was fascinated with how national fig-
ures are locals in DC, interacting all the time with people pushing
far more radical agendas than are seen on the national scene. I also
saw how activists in DC travel a lot, bringing back ideas and experi-
ences from all over the nation and the world that influence political
life in DC. I was fascinated by the complexity of activist individuals
and groups: their intelligence and creativity in their best moments,
thoughtlessness and meanness in their worst; their visions and goals
that range from lofty to mundane; and the way groups could become
unified and effective and also fall apart, ravaged by personality and
interpersonal drama.
My favorite work in literature, history, and theory is that which
expresses such complexities. While I found some wonderful histories
of activism, in studying literature and theory, I kept searching for
connections with the daily work of political change. How do we enact
theory? How can theory reflect the complexity of activists’ lives and
experiences? I found myself wanting real stories that capture the her-
oism and humanity of people working for social change. I searched
for activist memoirs and found some excellent ones, but not many
of the kind of stories I sought. I wanted life stories of multiracial
feminists—how did people come to understand and enact intersec-
tionality on the ground?1
Since my love of activism took root along with and as part of my
love of Washington, DC, I decided that I needed to collect stories
there. I had a lot of ideas about arguments I wanted to make: about
DC as a queer activist location, about social movement theories and
histories, about feminism and sexuality. I wanted to interview activ-
ists in part because I refused the division between theory and practice:
activists theorize and theorists do political work. The best theory,
in my view, reflects the complexity of experience that many people
understand by living and working for social change. I wanted to find
people who engage and live out the complexities of intersectionality
through activism.
I searched for people to interview in many ways: I sent out an
e-mail to listservs and to individuals who I thought would be or know
potential research participants. I searched the web and local papers
A p p e n di x I 159
and went to pride festivals and queer conferences. I worked personal

contacts: old friends, new friends, their friends. Originally I asked for
“activists who identify as queer and feminist and who are engaged
in antiracist, global and economic justice, trans and intersex rights,
or disability rights work in the DC area.” Not long after my initial
e-mails went out, white trans activist Darby Hickey sent me an e-mail
pointing out that many trans people do not identify as either feminist
or queer, and, with appreciation to Darby, I modified my call to read:
“activists who identify as queer and feminist and/or as transgender.”
I was interested in interviewing people who are both feminist and
queer and do intersectional work because the theoretical work that
has been most meaningful to me—that I think provides the most
complex, useful analysis of social problems—is by antiracist feminist
thinkers, most of whom are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer. Feminist
scholars Elizabeth R. Cole and Zakiya T. Luna’s study similarly
sought intersectional activists: “activists whose work addressed sites
of intersection between feminist social movements and other axes of
oppression such as race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, social class, and
ability status.” In their study focusing on coalition work, they hoped
to “illuminate important fault lines within the women’s movement
in the United States.”2 Approaching my study with a similar under-
standing of the role of intersectionality, I hoped that, by focusing on
those whose experiences and interests fall between and among those
addressed by groups that focus on a single axis of oppression, I might
find common ground.
I hypothesized that I would draw from activists’ life stories a “queer
feminist” theory-in-praxis that prioritizes struggles against racism,
poverty, and violence, based on a view of these struggles as central to
the projects of women’s and queer liberation.3 Few to none of the inter-
viewees articulated a politics that was much like what I had in mind.
While each has her/his own political analysis, when I asked them why
they chose their work, they primarily described their feelings, beliefs,
values, and principles. Working inductively from the interview data, I
found evidence of a common spirit that accompanies activists’ differ-
ential consciousness.4 That is what I explore in this book.
While being feminist and queer turned out to be not so important
to the presence of this spirit or consciousness, I still am convinced
that people who work at the intersections of different identities and
issues have something particular to contribute. Often having personal
connections to multiple oppressed groups, these activists develop a
complex vision and politics, typically characterized by a focus on
inclusion and compassion. This is what I saw in multiracial feminist
work and what I sought and found in intersectional activists’ stories.5

It is a perspective shared by many but is particularly prevalent, I sus-
pect, among intersectional activists.
Seeking Stories
I chose oral history as a method to record traces of the emotional
and theoretical dynamics of activism as well as to preserve memo-
ries of activists’ lives and cultures. With each participant, I recorded
about four to seven hours of interview in two to four sessions. The
semistructured interviews cover each subject’s life history and include
questions about their identities, relationships, influences, motiva-
tions, intentions, communities, conflicts, successes, disappointments,
visions of social change, and how they view their own work.
In Cole and Luna’s study, antiracist feminist scholar activist Andrea
Smith critiques the desire for personal stories of women of color,
explaining her choice to foreground analysis and collective experi-
ence in her work.6 I found that I want to hear stories that connect
analysis to how people live their lives and work for social change. Cole
and Luna note that the narration that occurred in their interviews is
a form of theorizing, citing black feminist scholar Barbara Christian’s
landmark essay, “The Race for Theory.”7 Christian writes,
For people of color have always theorized—but in forms quite differ-

ent from the Western form of abstract logic. And I am inclined to say
that our theorizing (and I intentionally use the verb rather than the
noun) is often in narrative forms, in the stories we create, in riddles
and proverbs, in the play with language, because dynamic rather than
fixed ideas seem more to our liking.8
This link between autobiography and analysis is central to my choice

of method.9 Like Cole and Luna, I use stories of activist practice “to
hone, or even to generate, feminist theory.”10
Antiracist feminist sociologist Deborah K. King’s theoretical for-
mulation of black feminism emphasizes the importance of qualita-
tive research that honors the agency and complexity of black women’s
political engagement:
By concentrating on our multiple oppressions, scholarly descriptions

have confounded our ability to discover and appreciate the ways in
which black women are not victims. Ideological and political choices
cannot be assumed to be determined solely by the historical dynamics
of racism, sexism, and classism in this society.11
Through oral history, I seek to understand activist choices as they

express and reflect on them, viewing them as actors engaging with
institutions, structures, individuals, and groups in complex ways.
Storytelling is linked also with the spiritual aspect of this project.
Following the lines quoted above, Christian asks, “How else have we
managed to survive with such spiritedness the assault on our bod-
ies, social institutions, countries, our very humanity?”12 She con-
nects acts of narration with our abilities to survive with spirit. The
spiritual benefits of oral history affect speakers and listeners. While
many listeners may write off personal stories in the individualizing
manner that Smith mentions, many others take inspiration and ideas
from the stories of earlier activists. Their personal history is impor-
tant for inspiring new generations to activist work. Activist stories can
connect with people who view activism as something distant from
them and see activists mostly as angry or strange. Stories can lead to
greater understanding—or at least greater desire to consider—and
thereby greater appreciation for activists. In a culture that seems so
hostile to activists, listening to activist stories can increase respect
and regard for people committed to organizing. Honoring people’s
desire for personal stories also provides opportunities to challenge
them to move beyond listening to action. One thing that activists’
stories demonstrate is that one can live according to one’s principles
in both small and large ways every day.
My desire for activist stories is important not only for my choice of
method but also for how I conducted interviews. Dave Isay, founder
of StoryCorps, expresses well the reasons for collecting oral histories:
“That if we take the time to listen, we’ll find wisdom, wonder, and
poetry in the lives and stories of the people all around us. That we all
want to know our lives have mattered and we won’t ever be forgot-
ten. That listening is an act of love.”13 I found my desire to critique
easily suspended as I listened with wonder to people tell their life sto-
ries, deeply appreciating their generosity and openness and seeking to
understand their stories from their points of view. Sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu also describes oral history interviewing as a practice of love:
At the risk of shocking both the rigorous methodologist and the

inspired hermeneutic scholar, I would say that the interview can be
considered a sort of spiritual exercise that, through forgetfulness of self,
aims at a true conversion of the way we look at other people in the ordi-
nary circumstances of life. The welcoming disposition, which leads
one to make the respondent’s problems one’s own, the capacity to take
that person and understand them just as they are in their distinctive
necessity, is a sort of intellectual love: a gaze that consents to necessity

in the manner of the “intellectual love of God,” that is, of the natural
order, which Spinoza held to be the supreme form of knowledge.14
Bourdieu’s emphasis on spirituality and love in this comment reflects

the appropriateness of oral history as a method for this study. Listening
well is a spiritual practice that helps us suspend our habits of judging
and seek to understand another from hir point of view. It can also
affect the speaker, and several of the people I interviewed commented
that they appreciated the process, particularly the opportunity to
reflect on their lives and work.
Focusing on the approach of activists not only humanizes our
understanding of social justice movements, but also cedes power to
activists, centering analysis on their words and experiences. Sociologist
James M. Jasper says of his approach to studying activists, which also
focuses on cultural rather than structural dynamics,
The cultural approach is intended to give the voice back to the protes-
tors we study. We can watch them working out their interests, grap-
pling with their sensibilities, struggling over the language they use and
the visions they pursue. No one can do these things for them; no one
can predict where they will arrive in their deliberations. Our scholarly
appreciation of their cognitive, emotional, and moral struggles can
only help us cherish what protest movements can offer to society and
their members.15
Mainstream media, when it portrays activism, usually portrays only

the outcomes of lengthy processes of individual and collective deci-
sion making. It is rare to hear about the beliefs and processes that
got people there. Focusing on these struggles can convey how much
thoughtfulness and courage everyday people demonstrate in choos-
ing to organize.
Conducting Research
Throughout the research process, I was aware of the complex power
dynamics of doing fieldwork.16 Though I approached the project with
particular interests and issues in mind, I allowed the narrators to steer
much of the discussion. In my initial meetings with potential par-
ticipants, I gave brief information about myself, the project, and the
process I had in mind and offered to answer whatever questions they
had, personal or otherwise. Some wanted to know more about my
background, goals for the project, and questions I planned to ask.
Others asked next to nothing. I began each interview by asking the
participant to tell me her/his/hir life story. For some of the narra-

tors, this was enough of a prompt for the first two-hour interview.
Many, however, wanted me to ask them more questions to give them
more direction. For the bulk of each interview, I tried to follow the
narrator’s lead. At times I gave them different questions as options,
so that they had some choice in directing the conversation. I did not
push much on subjects they did not want to discuss. I also offered to
answer questions about myself, and some took me up on this, ask-
ing about my background and personal relationships. That experi-
ence of trying to answer honestly and openly while being aware I was
being recorded was strange and incredibly helpful. Through those
brief experiences of sharing personal details of my life on tape, I got
a sense of how my interviewees might feel as I encouraged them to
discuss intimate details of their lives. Because I let the narrators lead,
each interview captured a unique interaction.
I sought and achieved a diverse sample of DC activists. In terms
of racial/ethnic identification, the group includes five Asian/Pacific
Islanders (API), five blacks, five Latinas, two native Americans, two
multiracial people, and six whites (including one Jewish person).
Their ages range from 25 to 56, with a mean of 38 and almost half
of them (11) in their thirties. They are less diverse in terms of class,
with about two-thirds of them growing up in middle-class families
and about one-third whose families would have been considered poor
or working class at some point. All but 2 have college degrees, and
12 have advanced degrees. Within each ethnic group, they have very
different family and cultural histories. The API folks immigrated
from Burma, India, the Philippines, and Vietnam; African Americans
came from California, Colorado/Illinois, DC, Ohio, New York, and
Tennessee; Latinas from El Salvador, Puerto Rico, California, and
Texas. The native Americans, both of whom are part white, grew up
in Kansas and South Dakota. Their tribal affiliations are Muscogee
and Dakota/Ponca, respectively. The multiracial New Englander
grew up with an Arab Muslim mother and Ashkenazi Jewish father.
Other whites include people of English, Jewish, Irish, Scottish, and
Slavic descent. Some grew up in religious families, whether Catholic,
Protestant, Jewish, Hindu, or Buddhist, while others were very secu-
lar. The ways in which they arrived in DC, the issues on which they
focus, the communities with which they engage all vary. So much
diversity in a relatively small sample made it difficult to say much of
anything about these activists as a group. What ties them together,
though, is an activist identity and differential consciousness.
Most of my narrators did not produce “standard stories.”17 Some
of them did not know where to start with a life story, and so required
my prompting with multiple questions. Some told very brief life sto-
ries, focusing on events that they felt were most meaningful to their
political work. Some of the incoherence of their narratives may be
related to my open-ended questions about what their lives and rela-
tionships were like in various periods. When asked their reasons for
choices made, the narrators often did not have a clear answer. Many
describe feelings or preferences that they seem to always have had,
with some of them drawing on specific events—an abortion, an expe-
rience of rape, a racist teacher—to explain why certain things became
important in their lives.
Even before beginning the formal analysis of the data I collected,
I began the process of the research participants’ “talking back.” Four
of the participants joined me in a panel discussion at the American
Studies Association conference held in DC in 2005. Again, I asked
the questions, and they did most of the talking about why they chose
to participate, what they would like to come out of the project, what
kinds of things they thought about during the interviews, what they
got out of participating, what concerns they have, and what limita-
tions and possibilities they see for this kind of research.
As I began drafting chapters, I sent quotations out to people
whose interviews I cited, so that they could approve the material and
make corrections or edits before I shared it with anyone else, as the
interviews were not anonymous, and, with five exceptions, I use real
names in my analysis. I sent drafts of each section to all the research
participants and conducted three in-person meetings to discuss the
project. I offered to call anyone who could not make one of the meet-
ings. I had hoped to involve the research participants in generating
analysis of the stories, but, with so much raw data, I found that I
could not conceive of a productive way of engaging my interviewees’
feedback without actually writing out my analysis. In the writing pro-
cess, I realized that this is my project: it is my desire for stories of
intersectional activists’ lives that led to the production of the inter-
views, and this book represents what I find most important to say
about them. I could not have done it without the collaboration of my
research participants, but the analysis represents my vision, and the
mistakes represent my shortcomings.18
Developing the Analysis

What emerged from my analysis is something like what sociologist
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot and cognitive psychologist Jessica Hoffman
Davis call “portraiture,” a method they use “to document the culture
of schools, the life stories of individuals, and the relationships among

families, communities, and schools.” Portraiture, developed by
Lawrence-Lightfoot, serves a purpose that is distinct from positiv-
ist recording and classification: “It seeks to illuminate the complex
dimensions of goodness and is designed to capture the attention of a
broad and eclectic audience.”19 My research shares an emphasis on
“searching for what is good and healthy,” while assuming everything
is imperfect and seeking “to identify and document the actors’ per-
spectives,” rather than imposing my own criteria of “goodness.”20 As
with the portraiture that Lawrence-Lightfoot describes, I am inter-
ested in “how . . . actions and interactions are experienced, perceived,
and negotiated by the people in the setting,” and “the meanings
people attach to . . . behaviors.”21 Lawrence-Lightfoot identifies “the
voice of the researcher . . . everywhere,” noting also the importance
of empiricism, that the work is “grounded in systematically collected
data, skeptical questioning (of self and actors), and rigorous examina-
tion of biases—always open to disconfirming evidence.”22 Lawrence-
Lightfoot’s portraiture, though, is more focused on describing a
community, and the researcher’s experience there, in rich detail.
The other major parts of my story do not fit neatly into the intel-
lectual narrative of the project, but they convey, I hope, some under-
standing of how it took shape, of my researcher’s voice, and of my
goals for this book. The written analysis of the interviews was a long
time coming. Not long after I finished my interviews, I ended one
relationship to begin another. In the surrounding personal drama, I
lost friends and the lesbian identity that had been an important part
of my life for many years. Less than one year later, I got pregnant,
got married, drafted half of a chapter, and then, overwhelmed by the
labor of motherhood and self-doubt about the purpose of academic
research, managed little writing for what felt like ages—probably a
year and a half. Now queer and married to a white bio-man and rais-
ing our white son, I find myself in a bizarre place that, I assume,
looks completely conventional to people who do not know me or
my politics. As someone who for many years felt hostile toward most
white guys, who I mostly saw as privileged and ignorant about the
struggles of people from marginalized groups, loving two of them so
much has opened my mind and heart and led me to seek other ways
of relating.
Somewhere between completing my MA and beginning my PhD,
I learned to meditate at the DC Shambhala Center, where instruc-
tors teach a secular meditation practice developed by a Tibetan
Buddhist teacher, Chögyam Trungpa. Though it was about nine
years before I settled into daily practice, I immediately loved it and

began reading more about Buddhism and spirituality. In my first
year at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), I began
practicing Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido, or Aikido with Mind and Body
Coordinated, and I found another love.23 Aikido also fascinated me,
both its embodiment of Buddhist philosophy and the process of
kinesthetic learning. Everything I had learned about conflict as an
activist, teacher, and human being was expressed, taught, and learned
through the body through exercises that were engaging, challenging,
and fun. I practiced for two years in Santa Barbara, then continued
my training in Northern Virginia after I moved back to the DC area
to do fieldwork.
In Virginia, I began volunteering with the “Centering and
Relaxation” class taught semimonthly by dojo members at a local
Juvenile Detention Center (JDC). After my initial frustration at not
being able to do something out of Pedagogy of the Oppressed with the
students there, I saw how powerful what we were doing was.24 With
very few words, we give the kids an opportunity to relax through
movement; we teach them that they are stronger and more stable
when they are calm and centered, and we teach them meditation,
so that they can practice calming their minds. I learn so much from
working with those kids that I often think the program is more for
the volunteers. But the students are overwhelmingly appreciative, and
over time we see their attitudes change. They show pride in what they
have learned, and some begin to teach others or narrate how their
meditation practice has helped them.
Among the specific lessons that we teach with “ki exercises”—a
variety of “tests” developed by Japanese aikido master Koichi Tohei
to teach mind-body unification—are
● When you think you can do it, you are stronger than when you say
you can’t.
● When you accept responsibility, you are stronger than when you
blame others for conflict.
● When you realize your connection with someone who may be chal-
lenging you, you can influence them easily and move with them.
● When you let go of the conflict in your mind, you are more
powerful.25
All of these lessons are based on a Buddhist metaphysics: the idea

and belief that we are all connected. Conflict is something we cre-
ate with our thinking, so by changing our mind/heart, we change
our situation.26 Through the practices we share, the kids at the JDC
experience these truths for themselves.
I have experienced these truths through my practice of Shin Shin
Toitsu Aikido and in my daily life and work. The challenge, after
years of practice, was how to integrate the understanding I developed
through embodied experience into the written body of this book. For
a long time, I would tell people that I was writing about love, but I
was not able to explain what that meant. I realized that love produced
three central questions for this project:
1. What does loving activism look like?

2. What does loving research look like?
3. What does loving criticism look like?
All three questions are connected in this book. I feel so appreciative

of the people I interviewed for taking the time to share their stories
with me that I want the project to represent them well. There were
topics that some chose not to discuss, and times when it was clear
they wanted to be politic in answering, but I believe that they all
genuinely tried to answer my questions honestly.27 I take their words
at face value. I am aware that they all have complex motives for want-
ing to participate, and that there is a strong pull to represent oneself
in the best light. My goal as a researcher who aims to write loving
criticism is to try to understand my interviewees’ points of view, to
understand their intentions and decision-making processes. Loving
criticism is a form of good listening.
Drawing on my own experience as a teacher, parent, and student
of aikido, I highlight what I see as some of the best aspects of what
activists think and do in order to encourage and inspire all of us who
want to see more love, justice, and compassion in the world. Because
I appreciate their work and their willingness to talk with me about
it, it is easy for me to find their strengths and amplify them. I could
critique their weaknesses as well, but I have no heart for it, and I
see no critical advantage to be gained there, except to satisfy that
paranoid impulse that wants to anticipate the downside there must
be to everything or to demonstrate my “critical rigor.”28 Often, the
subjects critique themselves and talk about how they have changed
theories and tactics based on what they have learned. This process
of self-evaluation is everyday theorizing. By focusing on our values
and principles, we can all engage in this process of self-evaluation and
determine for ourselves how we can contribute to creating positive
change every day.29
As I learned more about Buddhist philosophy and other forms of

spirituality, I began to see an aspect of multiracial feminism and of
activism that I had not thought much about before: spirituality. I
thought about how spirituality has been central to the activism of
white Southern women, of native Americans, of struggles for African
American civil rights and decolonial struggles around the world. I
began to consider the Judeo-Christian roots of most of the authors
whose work I held dear, and how it connected with my own entrance
into political thinking through Protestant Christianity. I did not plan
to ask my research participants about their spiritual beliefs or prac-
tices, but when the subject was raised, I did pursue it, asking about
that aspect of their lives and if/how it relates to their politics. After
coding the data and asking myself what meaning I could find in it,
it occurred to me that what I find so compelling in activism, what
makes activism powerful or not, is the spirit of the work.
Working with Emotions

The third thread of this project’s story centers in the body, inter-
weaving with the development of my mind and spirit. Around the
time that I became pregnant, I began getting chiropractic treatment
and acupuncture for a number of minor chronic health issues, and I
started learning about homeopathy. I was impressed with the effec-
tiveness of these noninvasive treatments and was struck by the under-
standing of the body that underlies them. In contrast to allopathic
medicine’s treatment of the body as different parts and systems to
be managed, natural and homeopathic medicine trusts the body’s
natural intelligence and views its systems and its symptoms as all con-
nected. Rather than seeking to suppress symptoms, natural medicine
appreciates symptoms for what they can tell us about the body and
how they work toward healing and health. Listening to the body,
trusting that it is basically good—that it works, and working to sup-
port my body as it heals and processes the innumerous toxins and
stresses of daily life, I see a clear parallel between our treatment of
individual bodies and larger populations, and I see how our binary
thinking—mind/body, reason/intuition—supports attempts to con-
trol rather than trust both.
As a mother, I face the scariness of trust and understand wanting
to control, because I want to know all the possible dangers and the
best way to protect my son from them. It is easy to get caught up in
fear about diseases, accidents, and human malevolence that may harm
or kill the person whom I love more than I ever imagined possible. It
takes work—practice—to relax into trust. To see his body as good in

itself and trust that it knows how to grow and learn and be as healthy
as it can be, and to trust that we—he, his father, and myself—know
his particular body better than any doctor or other person who is not
there every day with him. This is completely counter to the medical-
ized model with which I grew up, which led to me trusting medical
doctors who failed to help me again and again and at times made
things worse, though they did this with the best of intentions. Trust
in ourselves, our bodies, and our internal wisdom—as individuals
and groups—is the foundation of empowerment. This faith requires
self-love, and it leads to the joy of understanding that we are basically
good and that we can access the power to change our own lives, to
strengthen ourselves and our communities.
The physical work of healing is inseparable from spiritual work.
When we relax into trust, we can work toward the kind of life we
want for the world—a life where people’s choices are respected, where
everyone is treated with dignity, where each person has what they
need to live with dignity—not just food, shelter, and clothing but
love, beauty, education, and a sense of purpose and connection to
something larger, be that family, community, or god.30 We can create
this world in our own lives by keeping our values in mind and work-
ing to understand others’ points of view. When we find the best in
others and ourselves, we can amplify it by nourishing desires for and
visions of love, justice, faith, connection, and joy.
This project is motivated by my faith in activists and nonactiv-
ists alike to create change—the belief that if we recognize and speak
to the best in each other and ourselves, the result will be positive
change.31 Few of us act from our best principles consistently, in every
moment, but, in every moment, each of us can. Each of us makes the
world everyday. Some choose consciously to try to remake the world
into a more just place, a more caring place, a place of connection. This
project grows from my gratitude to those ordinary and extraordinary
people and their vision, courage, creativity, and steadfastness. If we
learn how to look for it, we can honor the extraordinary aspects of
each person’s world-making through recognition and appreciation.
This kind of seeing is based in love, requires faith, and brings with
it joy.
As a white middle-class woman who feels deeply moved by texts
like This Bridge Called My Back and by the courage and resilience of
activists, I am grateful for the work of progressive activists and intel-
lectuals, which has expanded and deepened my understandings of
race, class, nation, sexuality, disability, and gender. I have always seen
protest as an act of love for oneself and one’s layers of community,

and I see in progressive activists the desire to be treated with respect
and dignity and the desire for larger communities to treat others with
respect and dignity. Activists’ expressions of anger and pain, emo-
tional and rational critiques, and demands for change are gifts calling
everyone, privileged and oppressed, to live according to our best prin-
ciples. I feel joyful when I gain new insight from or encounter unfa-
miliar ideas or pointed criticism in the work of activists and critics. I
appreciate that this work is available and that I learn so much from it.
I want to share this gratitude and joy with others who may or may not
share my positive reactions to critiques and protests of injustice.
This project also represents my wish for activists and nonactivists
alike to understand that when people behave badly or in ways that
hurt others, it both comes from and contributes to their own pain
and suffering. As I tell people when I teach ki and aikido, if someone
attacks you, it means s/he is having a bad day. Activists, being human,
are imperfect and make mistakes, and each is on her/his/hir own
path of struggle and learning. Being aware of others’ pain and work-
ing to understand their intentions and actions can lead us to respond
compassionately to each other, and compassion transforms all of us
and increases our spiritual power. That is what changes our lives and
the world. Antiracist feminist scholar bell hooks is clear that practic-
ing compassion and forgiving others is something done for the self:
“Individually, when we practice forgiveness in our lives we cleanse
our spirit of negative clutter and leave our souls free.” For her, the
practice of forgiveness coexists with and supports calls for account-
ability and justice. Forgiveness means recognizing an other’s human-
ity and refusing to carry negative emotions that bind our minds to
the past. It does not absolve anyone of responsibility. Indeed, holding
people accountable is a demonstration of respect for their humanity
and human capability. hooks specifically connects forgiveness with
struggles for social justice: “Genuine desire to change our world by
cultivating compassion and the will to forgive should make us more
able to vigilantly resist oppression and exploitation, to joyfully engage
in oppositional struggle.”32 Ultimately my wish is to share with you
the joy of working for social change, of acting out of love, guided by
faith in human dignity.
A ppe n di x I I
Na r r at or Biogr a ph ic a l
Su m m a r i es
Sheila Alex ander-Reid

Sheila is a black lesbian activist and bridge builder. Born in Ohio, she
moved to the Washington, DC, area around 1970, when her father
got a job with the Richard Nixon administration. After graduating
from Spelman College, she returned to DC and began working in
sales. She came out in her early twenties and began doing what she
calls “lesbian empowerment projects,” beginning with organizing
parties and special events for lesbians of color. In 1993, she founded
Women in the Life, a for-profit corporation that has sponsored social
events, a magazine, and a website focused on lesbians of color. In
2002, she incorporated Women in the Life Association, a nonprofit
“social justice organization advancing the rights of lesbians of color
through cultural affirmation, education and advocacy.”1
Irena Bui
Irena is an Asian American trans activist focused on HIV/AIDS and
trans youth. She came to the United States at the age of eight from
Vietnam, settling in the DC area in the mid-1980s. She began work-
ing at DC’s Whitman-Walker Clinic in the mid-1990s. She served
as Prevention Case Manager for a Philadelphia HIV/AIDS service
organization before returning to DC to serve as a program coor-
dinator at Asian/Pacific Islander Partnership for Health (APIPH).
When APIPH closed its doors, she began working at Sexual Minority
Youth Assistance League (SMYAL). She also participated in other
local groups addressing trans issues, such as the Centers for Disease
Control–funded DC Concerned Provider Coalition, and informally
mentors other Asian/American trans girls.
Ruby Corado
Ruby is a Latina trans activist and national spokesperson on issues
of violence against transgender people. She arrived in the DC area at
the age of 16, a refugee from political violence in El Salvador. She has
coordinated local support groups for drag queens and trans women
as well as the national Latina Transgender Leadership Summit and
advocated with the Metropolitan Police Department and other
Washington, DC, agencies for better treatment of trans people. In
2003, she gained national attention speaking out against violence
after the murder of her friend, Bella Evangelista. With all of her pub-
lic speaking and organizing, however, the activism that means the
most to Ruby is the personal support she provides to those who are
“really marginalized,” even within the trans community, those who
are homeless, sex workers, addicts, or HIV positive, who she calls her
“daughters.”
Truong Chinh “TC” Duong

TC is an Asian American bisexual feminist activist who came to the
United States from Vietnam in 1975, at the age of three. His family
settled in California, moving from northern California to Orange
County around 1980. After graduating from Claremont McKenna
College, he moved to DC. From an internship at the Advocacy
Institute, he worked his way up, doing administrative work at the
National Lesbian and Gay Health Association, then policy work at
the Sexuality Information and Education Council (SIECUS) before
becoming a field organizer at Parents, Families, and Friends of
Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG). After spending three years working at
Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEAR AC), TC returned to
LGBT organizing through a job at the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight
Education Network (GLSEN). TC also sings with the Lesbian and
Gay Chorus of Washington, DC. He and his husband, Jonathan, were
married in a Quaker ceremony.
Eric Eldritch
A white queer feminist activist focused on disability rights and spiri-
tuality, Eric grew up in a small Pennsylvania town. After graduating
from Milligan College, a conservative Christian college in Tennessee,
he worked at a school for blind children in Pittsburgh. He came to
DC in the 1980s to work at a school for deaf children. He worked as
A p p e n di x I I 173
an American Sign Language interpreter for ten years before accept-

ing a federal government job addressing issues related to deaf people
and people with disabilities. Eric organized against the Millennium
March on Washington and continues to work with the DC Radical
Faeries and broader pagan communities.
Letitia “Leti” Gómez

A Chicana lesbian feminist activist focused on LGBTQ and Latina/o
issues, Leti was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. She volun-
teered with the 1977 farm worker march from Austin to Washington,
while she was a student at the University of Texas at Austin. After
graduating, she moved to Houston, where she began organizing with
the Gay Hispanic Caucus. In San Antonio, where she had returned
to do her master’s in Urban Studies at Trinity University, Leti helped
plan one of the first Latina Lesbian retreats and participated in orga-
nizing the Gay and Lesbian Tejano Network before moving to DC
to begin an internship with the federal government. She arrived just
in time for the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and
Gay Rights. She was a president of ENLACE, a support organiza-
tion for lesbian and gay Latina/os in the DC metro area, and one of
the founding cochairs of LLEGÓ, the first national Latina/o LGBT
organization. She participated in organizing the 1991 National
Lesbian Conference, held in Atlanta, and served on DC’s Civilian
Complaint Review Board and Latino Civil Rights Taskforce. She has
been on advisory boards for the Lesbian Services Program of DC’s
Whitman-Walker Clinic, the Rainbow History Project, and the DC
Latino/a LGBT History Project. She also served on the boards of
DC Council on Women and AIDs, AIDS Action, and the Whitman-
Walker Clinic. She was a member and secretary of the DC Democratic
State Committee.
Sean Gray
Sean is a biracial female to male transsexual organizer. When he was
14 years old, he and his family moved from New York to northern
Virginia. After graduating from the George Washington University,
he began a career in television production. In 1998, he attended his
first True Spirit Conference, which “focused on the social, physical,
emotional, spiritual, and relational health of all gender variant people
on the FTM spectrum and their significant others, friends, families,
and allies,” and, in 2000, became one of the organizers.2 After 15
years in the television industry, he obtained a master’s in Social Work

and is working in the mental health field.
Darby Hickey
Darby, a white trans activist, arrived in DC in 2001 from rural
Maine by way of Baltimore, New Orleans, Costa Rica, Nicaragua,
Jerusalem, Germany, and Boston. She has been active in independent
media for the past decade, including helping to run a community
radio station in DC (Radio CPR 97.5), reporting on Capitol Hill for
Free Speech Radio News, and working with the Independent Media
Center movement. After several years working with street-based
youth and sex workers at Different Avenues, she transitioned out
of her position as director and joined Just Detention International,
where she worked as communications director until taking time off
to be with her infant son. Darby studied writing and community
organizing in Central America and the Middle East during her edu-
cation abroad through the Friends World Program. She has worked
with a number of local and national organizations on projects and
campaigns including Palestinian solidarity, feminist conferences,
radical queer efforts, and providing childcare at demonstrations.
Darby lives in Columbia Heights, DC, with her beloveds and can
be found around town spinning music and dancing with an amazing
crew of lady DJs.
Loraine Hutchins
Loraine is a white bisexual feminist writer, speaker, activist, and
educator. A fourth-generation Washingtonian, she helped develop
some of the first community programs for LGBT youth. She has
authored numerous articles on sexuality-related issues and coedited
the 1991 anthology Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out,
becoming a national spokesperson for the bisexual movement. She
cofounded DC’s Alliance of Multi-Cultural Bisexuals (AMBi) and
BiNet USA, the first national network of bisexuals. She has worked
on grants for several nonprofit foundations and serves on the advi-
sory board of the Rainbow History Project, DC’s LGBTQ archive
project. She completed her PhD through the Union Institute in
2001 and teaches interdisciplinary sexuality courses at two Maryland
colleges. She is a sexuality educator in private practice “who inspires
people to integrate the spiritual and the erotic in their everyday
lives.”3
Maria Luisa (Pseudonym)

Maria is a Latina bisexual feminist organizer who has addressed a
range of social justice issues. As a child, she fled her home country
with her family, settling in the United States. She went to high school
and college in the East, where she advocated for divestment in South
Africa because of its practice of apartheid. After college, she pro-
moted women’s music and was involved with the Central American
Solidarity movement and US social justice organizations. She studied
intersectionality in graduate school and participated in international
feminist efforts. She helped found a local organization focused on
supporting low-income families and addressing youth violence and
has been recognized nationally as an outstanding leader.
K aren MacRae (Pseudonym)

Karen is a white lesbian feminist activist who grew up in a rural area in
the northeastern United States. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid
arthritis at a young age. When she was in seventh grade, she began her
work of raising awareness around issues such as accessibility, the envi-
ronment, and sexual harassment and was recognized for her advocacy
on behalf of people with disabilities. She continued her activism in
college, then moved to DC in 1998 to work at a progressive nonprofit
organization. For about five years, she helped organize a women’s spo-
ken word event in DC. She currently advocates for children’s rights
and writes about issues related to living with disabilities.
V. Papaya Mann
Papaya is a black lesbian womanist activist and writer and a DC native.
Her organizing career began through her involvement with the DC
Black Repertory Theater and the Coffeehouse, a performance space
for gay and lesbian writers and musicians. She was a founding mem-
ber of the DC Coalition of Black Gays and Lesbians and the National
Coalition of Black Gays and Lesbians. She also was a founding board
member of Sapphire Sapphos, a precursor to DC’s Black Lesbian
Support Group, and she helped to organize the 1979 National Third
World Gay and Lesbian Conference. She has been involved with
HIV/AIDS education and services since the early days of the AIDS
epidemic when she organized information sessions for the African
American community as a contractor for the Whitman-Walker Clinic.
She spent seven years in California’s East Bay, where she worked with
the Horizons Foundation Board and Shanti, an organization that

supports people living with life-threatening or chronic illnesses, and
where she served as executive director of the AIDS Project of the East
Bay. Papaya returned to DC in 1997 and became executive director of
the DC Care Consortium. In 2002, she became executive director of
Africa AIDS Watch. The following year, she moved to Ghana, where
she continues to work on HIV issues, returning to DC for about half
of each year. She holds a master’s in Public Relations Management
from American University. She writes poetry and remains close with
her niece and nephew, whom she helped to raise.
Monique Meadows
Monique is a witchy, black, queer, polyamorous activist who grew up
in a small city in Illinois. Her early activism began at Illinois Wesleyan
University and led her to Washington, DC, in 1993. She began her
progressive organizing career at the now-defunct National Black
Lesbian and Gay Leadership Forum. It was there that she learned
precious lessons about the intersections of race, class, sexual orien-
tation, language, and other markers of identity. She has been hon-
ored to work with a wide array of social justice organizations such as
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Power Inside, National
Youth Advocacy Coalition, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Today, Monique
is an organization development (OD) professional, specializing in
Elemental OD (a nature-based OD model that integrates spiritu-
ality and OD). She is a published author in Spirited: Affirming the
Soul and the Black Gay/Lesbian Identity. She has a master’s degree in
Organization Development from American University in Washington,
DC, where she was awarded a Segal-Seashore Fellowship for her com-
mitment to social justice. She is currently preparing for her initiation
as a Yoruba priestess and lives in Baltimore with her partner.
Lisbeth Meléndez Rivera

Lisbeth is a Latina lesbian womanist organizer who focuses on labor,
LGBTQ, and Latina/o issues. She moved from Puerto Rico to Boston
in 1984 to attend Emmanuel College. She did some organizing for
the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights,
trained union women with the Women’s Institute for Leadership
Development, and worked with the National Organizers Alliance in
its early years. From working as an occupational safety specialist, she
got into labor organizing, working for the United Farm Workers,
Service Employees International Union, and Unite, and cofounding
Pride@Work. After moving to DC in 2000, she worked for Americans
for a Fair Chance and LLEGÓ, the first national Latina/o LGBT
organization, then organized for the 2004 March for Women’s Lives
before becoming National Mobilization Coordinator for Freedom
to Marry. Lisbeth and her partner, Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz, coparent
Lisbeth’s godson, along with his mother.
Julia Mendoza (Pseudonym)

Julia is a Chicana lesbian feminist activist who focuses on LGBTQ
and Latina/o civil rights. She was born in Southern California and
grew up in a predominantly white suburb before running away and
spending much of her teenage years on the streets, becoming a single
mom at the age of 19. As the first female president of a Southern
California Latina/o gay and lesbian organization, she helped orga-
nize the first international gay and lesbian people of color confer-
ence, which was held in 1986. She was active in Southern California
politics, cofounding several organizations serving Latino/a lesbians
and gay men before returning to school and completing her college
degree and a master’s degree in political science. She moved to DC
in 2003 to work with LLEGÓ, the first national Latina/o LGBT
organization, of which she was a founder. After LLEGÓ closed its
doors, she worked for two other national organizations before start-
ing her own consulting firm. She recently completed a master’s in
Public Administration.
Avelynn Mitra
Avelynn is a queer Filipina musician, aspiring filmmaker, former chair
of Asian and Pacific Islander Queer Sisters (APIQS), and single mom
to a teenage boy. She moved to DC from Oxnard, California, in 1984
with her family, spent a few years in Boston and Los Angeles, and
returned to the DC area in 1995 with her son, Tristan. After two
years at Berklee College of Music, Avelynn finished her BA and MFA
degree at Goddard College, where she explored the Filipina-American
Identity through her videowork, improvised music and poetry. Her
videos are regularly shown in Asian American studies courses at the
University of Maryland, and her documentary, “Suso Mo,” was exhib-
ited at ArtsFest in San Francisco, Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival,
and the Asian Pacific American Film Festival in Washington, DC.
Donna Payne
Donna is an African American lesbian activist who is originally from
Memphis, Tennessee. In 1986, she graduated from the University
of Tennessee, Knoxville, with a degree in Political Science. She has
served the political community by working with the Young Democrats
in Washington, DC, the Political Congress of Black Women, and
Congressional campaigns in the South. She volunteered with the
Clinton administration during its national health care reform efforts.
She is a founding board member and the Board Vice President of the
National Black Justice Coalition and a past board member of Zuna
Institute, a black lesbian advocacy organization. As associate direc-
tor of diversity for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), she works
closely with civil rights organizations and leaders and with a number
of other organizations across the country to increase visibility of the
LGBT community within the religious and people of color communi-
ties. Donna is a nationwide speaker and writer addressing LGBT civil
rights issues. In 2001, she was the LGBT representative for HRC and
the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights at the World Conference
against Racism in Durban, South Africa. Since 1989, she has been
a member of the Metropolitan Community Church of Washington,
DC, where she also served on the board of directors for three years.
Sandee Pyne
Sandee is an Asian American feminist activist and scholar. She fled
Burma at the age of five and lived in Thailand as a stateless person.
She completed high school in Bangkok and moved to the United
States as a humanitarian parole where she attended Lehigh University
in Pennsylvania. At Lehigh, she became one of the student leaders
in the Progressive Students Alliance (PSA). Sandee was involved in
national and local political campaigns, university divestment from
South Africa against apartheid, and organizing against violence
against women on campus. After graduation, Sandee moved to DC
and worked on global campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals. In more recent years, Sandee has worked as a researcher
and advocate with various nongovernmental organizations concern-
ing refugee women and antitrafficking, which included the opportu-
nity to conduct a rapid assessment of Burmese migrant communities
in the six tsunami-affected provinces in Thailand. She worked for the
International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Thailand and is currently a
program manager at the USAID/Regional Development Mission Asia.
She holds an MA in English from Georgetown University and a

PhD in International Education Policy from the University of
Maryland, College Park. Her doctoral research focused on nonstate/
community-based schooling and forced migration at the Thailand-
Burma border.
Sarah Reed (Pseudonym)

Sarah is a native American bisexual feminist activist, lawyer, and
national speaker on violence against women issues. Muscogee and
white, she grew up and completed college and law school in the
Midwest, where she was involved with lesbian, gay, and bisexual
activism; rape crisis counseling and advocacy; and abortion rights
organizing. A specialist in Indian law, she focuses on violent crime on
Indian reservations. She moved to DC in 1999 to work for the federal
government, monitoring grants for three years before accepting a job
with a tribal organization, doing training and technical assistance on
legal issues with tribes in Indian country. She lives with her husband
and one spoiled dog.
Colette Stone (Pseudonym)

A black lesbian feminist organizer, Colette was the founder and exec-
utive director of a national multi-issue, human rights, and social jus-
tice women of color organization. She came to DC from Southern
California in the mid-1990s to attend college and stayed in the area,
completing a PhD in Political Science. In addition to community
organizing, Colette served on a national research advisory board
and a state Coalition against Sexual Violence Advisory Board for the
Department of Justice. She taught organizing and leadership classes
for activists and attended an interfaith metaphysical chapel.
Sivagami “Shiva” Subbaraman

Shiva is a “desi” khush or queer organizer, writer, speaker, and educa-
tor. Born and raised in India, she came to the United States in 1981
to do her graduate work in English. In August 2008, she became
the first director of the LGBTQ Resource Center at Georgetown
University, the first such center in the country in a Catholic/Jesuit
school. Previously, she worked in the Office of LGBT Equity at
the University of Maryland (UMD), most recently as its associate
director. Her primary areas of research are African American, Asian
American, and Chicana feminist theories and literatures, and she has
taught at Macalester College, Drake University, and the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has published on popular cul-
ture and has written and spoken on and organized around the issue
of part-time and adjunct labor in the academic world. She serves on
the board of several organizations that serve LGBT communities;
works with domestic violence issues; and helps organize film and lit-
erary festivals. Her contributions have been recognized by Pride and
Heritage; Khush DC, a South Asian LGBT group; and the University
of Maryland. In her varied career, she is most happy to report, she
also managed a coffee shop for several years that allowed her to con-
tinue her scholarship in a way that being an adjunct could not. She
also realized, much to her consternation, that there lurked “a geek”
in her humanities soul!
Carol Wayman
A white Jewish lesbian feminist, Carol grew up in Ohio and com-
pleted her BA in political science at the University of Michigan (Ann
Arbor), where she founded a lesbian and gay student group, Lesbian
and Gay Rights on Campus. She worked in city community economic
development offices in Burlington, Vermont, and Las Vegas, New
Mexico, before coming to DC. She helped organize the first Santa
Fe Gay Pride festival and protested WIPP, the nuclear waste plant
in Southern New Mexico. In DC, she helped ensure safe access to
abortion clinics with the Washington Area Clinic Defense Task Force
and was a founding member of DC white Lesbians Against Racism
Everywhere (DCLARE). She earned a master’s degree in public pol-
icy from American University. For nearly a decade, she was the direc-
tor of Policy at the National Congress for Community Economic
Development and currently is the director of Federal Policy for the
Corporation for Enterprise Development.
Lisa Weiner-Mahfuz
Lisa is a multiracial queer feminist writer and activist. She grew up
with an Ashkenazi Jewish father and Arab Muslim mother in New
Hampshire and completed her bachelor’s in women’s studies and politi-
cal science at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She was a grassroots
organizer in Boston with the labor-based Massachusetts Coalition for
Occupational Safety and Health, the Haymarket People’s Fund, and
the Coalition for Racial Justice. She cofounded Families United against
Hate as well as SPARC: Sparking Powerful Anti-Racist Collaboration

in Boston. In 2000, she and her partner, Lisbeth Meléndez Rivera,
moved to DC, where Lisa worked for three national organizations:
the National Organizers Alliance, PFLAG: Parents, Families, and
Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and the National Organization for
Women, where she was the senior field organizer for lesbian rights.
She serves on the board of Gedakina, which seeks to strengthen the
cultural knowledge and identity of Eastern First Nations Peoples, and
operates Intersections/Intersecciones Consulting. She is featured in
the anthology Colonize This! She and Lisbeth coparent Lisbeth’s god-
son, along with his mother.
Patrick Wojahn
A white gay organizer and lawyer, Patrick grew up in a predominantly
white, conservative suburban Wisconsin community, where he became
an Eagle Scout. He organized around LGBT issues while a student at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked with a HIV/AIDS
organization while studying abroad in Russia. After graduating, he
spent one year working on grassroots campaigns for the Wisconsin
Student Public Interest Research Group, then moved to the DC area
in 1999 to attend law school at Georgetown University. He spent two
years at the Whitman-Walker Clinic representing people living with
HIV/AIDS in the Washington metropolitan area before accepting a
job with University Legal Services advocating for the rights of people
with mental illnesses. In 2007, he was elected to the City Council of
College Park, Maryland, and, in December 2010, he began working
as a public policy analyst fighting for disability rights in the federal
government. He and his partner, Dave, were married in 2005.
No t es
Introduction
1. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: Crossing P, 1984), 39.
2. Sic. Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My
Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table,
1983), n/p; original emphasis.
3. Skin: Talking about Sex, Class & Literature (Ithaca: Firebrand,
1994), 112.
4. Transforming Feminist Practice: Nonviolence, Social Justice and the
Possibilities of a Spiritualized Feminism (San Francisco: Aunt Lute,
2003), 11.
5. See, e.g., Charlene Spretnak, The Politics of Women’s Spirituality: Essays
on the Rise of Spiritual Power within the Feminist Movement (Garden
City, NY: Anchor, 1982); Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex,
and Politics (Boston: Beacon, 1982); Luisah Teish, Jambalaya: The
Natural Women’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals (San
Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985); Carol P. Christ, Laughter of Aphrodite:
Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess (San Francisco: HarperCollins,
1988); Mary E. Hunt, Fierce Tenderness: A Feminist Theology of
Friendship (New York: HarperCollins, 1989); Katie Cannon, Black
Womanist Ethics (Atlanta: Scholars P, 1988); Judith Plaskow, Standing
Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective (New York:
HarperCollins, 1990); Rita M. Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy: A
Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany:
State U of New York P, 1993); Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness:
The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993);
Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-
First Century (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996); Joan Chittister, Heart of
Flesh: A Feminist Spirituality for Women and Men (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1998). Their work deserves more attention within Women’s
Studies and social movement scholarship.
6. See, e.g., Ram Dass and Paul Gorman’s How Can I Help? Stories and
Reflections on Service (New York: Knopf, 2003) and Claudia Horwitz’s
The Spiritual Activist: Practices to Transform Your Life, Your Work,
and Your World (New York: Penguin Compass, 2002).
184 No t e s
7. See, e.g., Maria Davidson and George Yancy’s Critical Perspectives

on bell hooks (New York: Routledge, 2009); AnaLouise Keating’s
Women Reading Women Writing: Self-invention in Paula Gunn Allen,
Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1996);
EntreMundos/AmongWorlds: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Anzaldúa and Keating’s
This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation (New
York: Routledge, 2002); M. Jacqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing:
Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred
(Durham: Duke UP, 2005); Leela Fernandes’s Transforming Feminist
Practice: Non-violence, Social Justice and the Possibilities of a Spiritualized
Feminism (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2003); Ruth Frankenberg’s
Living Spirit, Living Practice: Poetics, Politics, Epistemology (Durham:
Duke UP, 2004); Akasha Gloria Hull’s Soul Talk: The New Spirituality
of African American Women (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2001);
and Mab Segrest’s Born to Belonging: Writings on Spirit and Justice
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2002). Anthologies like Judith
Plaskow and Carol P. Christ’s Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in
Feminist Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1989) col-
lect work on spirituality by Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, Audre
Lorde, and Alice Walker, along with other feminist authors.
8. “The Heat Is on Miss Saigon Coalition: Organizing across Race and
Sexuality,” in The State of Asian America, ed. Karin Aguilar-San Juan
(Boston: South End, 1994), 292.
9. Ibid., 293.
10. As an antiracist feminist middle-class, nondisabled white woman,
raised Protestant in the US, I face the dilemma of how to speak with-
out furthering white supremacy and American middle-class hegemony.
There may be no way to do this. My approach is to center my research
on the lives and work of people who are marginalized by intersecting
oppressions. I hope to amplify their voices with my own. As inter-
sectional work gets more attention, white, middle-class, nondisabled
Americans face the question of what to do when our ideas, beliefs, and
experiences lead us to have difficulty understanding or agreeing with
intersectional work. To treat this work responsibly, we can practice
setting aside our deeply held assumptions and reactions and treating
intersectional perspectives as authoritative. That means recognizing
our discomfort, prejudice, and, often, our disagreement, as habitual
responses conditioned by hegemonic discourses and practices. Instead
of—or in addition to—reacting, we can agree first and work to under-
stand points of view that differ from our own. That is our responsibility
as scholars and as citizens in democratic communities.
11. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity
Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review
43, no. 6 (July 1991): 1241–1299; Hortense Spillers, “Interstices:
A Small Drama of Words,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring
No t e s 185
Female Sexuality, ed. Carol S. Vance (Boston: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1984), 73–100; Chela Sandoval, Methodology of the Oppressed
(Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 2000); and Becky Thompson,
“Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave
Feminism,” Feminist Studies 28, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 337–360.
12. I find the term “oppression” useful for the way it can evoke a kind of
commonsense understanding that prejudice, discrimination, and socio-
economic and political forces have acted historically to limit the political
and economic power of people in certain groups or who share certain
(socially constructed) identities. I do not mean that there is any simple
division of people or groups who are “oppressed” or “not oppressed.”
13. For an overview of the analytical usefulness of intersectionality, see
Nira Yuval-Davis, “Intersectionality and Feminist Politics,” European
Journal of Women’s Studies 13, no. 3 (2006): 193–209.
14. See, e.g., Jonathan Alexander and Karen Yescavage, eds., Bisexuality and
Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others (Binghamton, NY: Haworth,
2003); George A. Appleby, ed., Working-Class Gay and Bisexual Men
(New York: Routledge, 2001); Joseph Beam, ed., In the Life: A Black
Gay Anthology, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: RedBone P, 2008). Victoria
A. Brownworth and Susan Raffo, eds., Restricted Access: Lesbians on
Disability (Seattle: Seal P, 1999); David Eng and Alice Hom, eds.,
Q&A: Queer in Asian America (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1998); Bob
Guter and John R. Killacky, eds., Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and
Their Stories (Binghamton, NY: Haworth, 2004); E. Patrick Johnson
and Mae G. Henderson, eds., Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology
(Durham: Duke UP, 2005); Sharon Lim-Hing, ed., The Very Inside:
An Anthology of Writings by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and
Bisexual Women (Toronto: Sister Vision, 1994); Eithne Luibheid and
Lionel Cantu, Jr., eds., Queer Migrations: Sexuality, U.S. Citizenship,
and Border Crossings (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2005); Catherine
E. McKinley and L. Joyce DeLaney, eds., Afrekete: An Anthology of
Black Lesbian Writing (New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1995); Juanita
Ramos, ed., Compañeras: Latina Lesbians (New York: Latina Lesbian
Herstory Project, 1987); Rakesh Ratti, ed., A Lotus of Another Color:
An Unfolding of the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Experience (Boston:
Alyson, 1993); David Shneer and Caryn Aviv, eds., Queer Jews (New
York: Routledge, 2002); Makeda Silvera, ed., Piece of My Heart: A
Lesbian of Colour Anthology (Toronto: Sister Vision, 1991). Amy Sonnie,
ed., Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology (Los
Angeles: Alyson, 2000); Lourdes Torres and Inmaculada Pertusa, eds.,
Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression (Philadelphia:
Temple UP, 2003); Shelley Tremain, ed., Pushing the Limits: Disabled
Dykes Produce Culture (Women’s P, 1996); and Carla Trujillo, ed.,
Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (Berkeley:
Third Woman, 1991). Thanks to Purvi Shah, who sparked my thinking
about how anthologies create communities.
186 No t e s
15. See, e.g., Barry D. Adam, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and Andre Krouwel,
The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics: National Imprints
of a Worldwide Movement (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1999); Rosalyn
Baxandall, “Re-visioning the Women’s Liberation Movement’s
Narrative: Early Second Wave African American Feminists,” Feminist
Studies 27, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 225–245; Brett Beemyn, “Not a ‘Lower
Capital’ People: The Rise of Transgender Activism in Washington, DC,”
in Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance, ed.
Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter
(Seattle: Bay P, 1997); Eileen Boris, “On Grassroots Organizing, Poor
Women’s Movements, and the Intellectual as Activist,” Journal of
Women’s History 14, no. 2 (2002): 140–142; Wini Brienes, “What’s
Love Got to Do with It? White Women, Black Women, and Feminism
in the Movement Years,” Signs 27, no. 4 (Summer 2002): 1095–1133
and “Sixties Stories’ Silences: White Feminism, Black Feminism, Black
Power,” NWSA Journal 8, no. 3 (October 31, 1996): 101–121; Maria
A. Gutierrez de Soldatenko, “ILGWU Labor Organizers: Chicana and
Latina Leadership in the Los Angeles Garment Industry,” Frontiers:
A Journal of Women Studies 23, no. 1 (2002): 46–66; Susan M.
Hartmann, The Other Feminists: Activists in the Liberal Establishment
(New Haven: Yale UP, 1998); Nancy A. Hewitt, Southern Discomfort:
Women’s Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s–1920s (Urbana: U of
Illinois P, 2001); Emi Minemura, “Asian Pacific Islander Lesbian and
Bisexual Women in North America: Activism and Politics,” Master’s
Thesis, Michigan State University, 1997; Gwendolyn Mink, “The Lady
and the Tramp (II): Feminist Welfare Politics, Poor Single Mothers and
the Challenge of Welfare Justice,” Feminist Studies 24, no. 1 (1998):
55–64; Diane-Michele Prindeville, “A Comparative Study of Native
American and Hispanic Women in Grassroots and Electoral Politics,”
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 23, no. 1 (2002): 67–89; Benita
Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist
Movements in America’s Second Wave (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2004); Kimberly Springer, Living for the Revolution: Black Feminist
Organizations, 1968–1980 (Durham: Duke UP, 2005); Ula Taylor,
“The Historical Evolution of Black Feminist Theory and Praxis.”
Journal of Black Studies 29, no. 2 (November 1998): 234–253; Anne
Valk, Radical Sisters: Second-Wave Feminism and Black Liberation in
Washington, DC (Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 2010); Kate Weigand,
Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s
Liberation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2001).
16. Luisah Teish, “O.K. Momma, Who the Hell Am I? An Interview with
Luisah Teish,” interview by Gloria Anzaldúa, in This Bridge Called My
Back, 222.
17. Methodology of the Oppressed (Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P,
2000). Sandoval’s theoretical contribution is based on her study of US
Third World Feminism from 1968 to 1990 and provides a cultural
No t e s 187
topography that can map forms of oppositional consciousness active in

US social movements during that period. This project began by asking
what happens to US Third World Feminism after 1990. See chapter 1.
18. “Technology,” Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989, accessed
March 25, 2009, http://dictionary.oed.com.
19. Methodology, 181–182.
20. Edwina Barvosa, Wealth of Selves: Multiple Identities, Mestiza
Consciousness, and the Subject of Politics (College Station, TX: Texas
A&M UP, 2008), 84; original emphasis. Barvosa borrows “mestiza
consciousness” from Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera.
Sandoval writes of the connection between Anzaldúa’s work and her
own in her foreword, “Unfinished Words: The Crossing of Gloria
Anzaldúa,” in EntreMundos/AmongWorlds: New Perspectives on Gloria
Anzaldúa, ed. AnaLouise Keating (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005), xiii–xvi.
21. Wealth of Selves, 155–156.
22. Ibid., 161.
23. See Robin D. G. Kelley’s Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical
Imagination (Boston: Beacon, 2002).
24. Moraga explains the importance of spiritual activism for social move-
ments, “History has taught us that the effectiveness of a movement
often depends on its ability to provide what, at least, feels at the time
like a spiritual imperative. Spirituality that inspires activism and, simi-
larly, politics that move the spirit—that draw from the deep-seated place
of our greatest longings for freedom—give meaning to our lives. Such
a vision can hold and heal us in the worst of times.” Loving in the War
Years, expanded ed. (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2000), 120–121.
25. See Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of the Erotic,” in Sister Outsider.
26. While, in popular usage, people often distinguish spirituality from reli-
gion, scholars of religion point out the ongoing connection between
the two concepts. Ursula King maintains that there is a connection:
“Historically and structurally, religions still possess a spiritual core and
still nurture much spirituality, although the traditional relationship
between spirituality and religion may now be inverted and very differ-
ent from what it was in the past . . . Their relationship is dialectic and
dynamic, so that they react and respond to each other in their mutual
transformations.” “Spirituality and Gender Viewed through a Global
Lens,” in Religion, Spirituality and the Social Sciences: Challenging
Marginalisation, ed. Basia Spalek and Alia Imtoual (Bristol, UK:
Policy P, 2008), 121. King calls for “an open-ended, general defini-
tion whereby spiritualities quite simply connote those ideas, practices
and commitments that nurture, sustain and shape the fabric of human
lives, whether as individual people or communities . . . spirituality as
lived experience linked to our bodies, nature and our relationships with
others and society.” Ibid., 122. Religious studies scholar Catherine L.
Albanese also advances a rather open definition of spiritual “as the
188 No t e s
personal, experiential element in religion—whether the religion in

question is organized or of movement status or mostly individual; and
whether it involves God, or other-than-human guides and spirits, or the
center of the Self, or an almighty Nature, or an Ideal held to be worth
living or dying for.” American Spiritualities: A Reader (Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 2001), 11.
27. American metaphysical religion developed in contact zones, drawing
on Christian evangelicalism and native American and African reli-
gious knowledge and practices, many of which resonated with tradi-
tional spiritualities that were prevalent in England. Religious studies
scholar Catherine L. Albanese draws parallels between indigenous
spiritual beliefs and practices from Europe, Africa, and the Americas
and emphasizes contact and “spiritual intimacies” among people from
these continents as shaping the development of metaphysical ideas,
experiences, and practices. Catherine L. Albanese, A Republic of Mind
and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New
Haven: Yale UP, 2007, Kindle ed.), Loc. 1719. Freemasons, Mormons,
Universalists, and Transcendentalists were part of this “new and combi-
native republic of the spirit,” which offered significant leadership roles
for women. Ibid., Loc. 1837, 2810. The association with women’s lead-
ership, Albanese argues, is one reason why metaphysical religion has
been understudied and disdained. Ibid., Loc. 3556. Albanese’s history
is helpful in explaining how significantly metaphysics has shaped US
culture: “Even the New Age movement could not contain the spiritual
efflorescence and overflow of American metaphysical religion . . . col-
onizing American minds and hearts.” Ibid., Loc. 7557. Even many
people not affiliated with New Age or other spiritual traditions have
contact with or are influenced by metaphysical ideas. This influence
appears in my interviews as philosophies and values often expressed in
the language of feeling or faith.
28. Starhawk uses “spirit” to refer to “power from within”: “our ability to
dare, to do, and to dream; our creativity. Power from within is unlim-
ited. If I have the power to write, it doesn’t diminish your power: in
fact, my writing might inspire you or illuminate your thinking.” Webs
of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising (Gabriola Island, BC, Canada:
New Society, 2002), 6–7. Antiracist feminist writer Gloria Anzaldúa
defines spirit as “a presence, force, power, and energy within and
without. Spirit infuses all that exists—organic and inorganic—tran-
scending the categories and concepts that govern your perception of
material reality.” Spirit has a power that extends through and beyond
us, a force that at times we cannot understand intellectually or control.
Anzaldúa’s notion of spirit is connected with the senses and our physi-
cal embodiment: “Spirit speaks through your mouth, listens through
your ears, sees through your eyes, touches with your hands.” “now let
us shift . . . the path of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts,” in This
Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, ed. Gloria
No t e s 189
Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2002), 558.

Spirit is not something that can be thought alone but must be felt and
experienced using the senses, emotions, and intellect. Spiritual practice
pushes us to let go of our desires for dominance and hierarchical power
and to understand power as something that moves through us that we
can sometimes direct but can never possess or control completely.
I also use “spirit” in a way similar to philosopher David Shaner’s
usage in The Seven Arts of Change: Leading Business Transformation
That Lasts. He uses “spirit” as a synonym for “culture” to emphasize
“the foundational humanity—the human spirit—from which all orga-
nizational achievement springs” (New York: Union Square P, 2010),
17. Shaner’s book presents seven arts that are considered to be part of
the processes of change, from the level of the individual to that of larger
groups or organizations. He emphasizes the necessity for an individual
or organization “to decisively answer questions about its future in the
most fundamentally sound manner—at the spiritual level” in order
to effectively change. Ibid., 16. Shaner connects individual spiritual
change with group-level change in a way very similar to what I attempt
to convey here and in a way that corresponds with multiracial feminist
theory and practice as expressed by foundational writers and by the
activists in my study. Shaner is also my aikido teacher, and his work
reflects the lessons of Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido applied to leadership
and daily life (see Appendix I).
29. Albanese, Republic, Loc. 226, 261.
30. Unitarian Universalist minister Cheng Imm Tan defines spirituality as
being “about uncovering and reclaiming our connection to ourselves
and to all of life. Spirituality is about rootedness and connectedness
to all life . . . Spirituality is a path of living in right relationship to all
of life, including ourselves. It is about loving fully, freely, and deeply.”
“Searching for the Ox: The Spiritual Journey of an Asian American
Feminist Activist,” in Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists
Breathe Fire, ed. Sonia Shah (Boston: South End, 1997), 215.
31. My analysis is heavily influenced by my training in two specific tradi-
tions brought to the US by Asian teachers: Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido
and Shambhala Buddhism. Albanese recognizes that, by the last half
of the twentieth century, there were more Buddhist institutions and
“authoritative Asian teachers. Teachers, institutions, and supports for
a sustained practice all added up to a self-conscious identity that dis-
tinguished this American Buddhism and marked its separation from
the more diffuse world of American metaphysical religion.” Republic,
Loc. 5962. The leaders of what are now international institutions,
Koichi Tohei and Chögyam Trungpa, came to the US in the 1950s and
to Britain in the 1960s, respectively, teaching extensively and train-
ing students who became senior teachers and leaders in hierarchical
organizations. Both organizations are currently headed by sons of the
founders. Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido is not explicitly Buddhist, but it is
190 No t e s
heavily influenced by Buddhism, and the training requires forms of

meditation derived from Zen. Shambhala teaches several secular forms
of meditation but also emphasizes its Tibetan Buddhist lineage. The
hierarchical teacher-student relationship maintained in these orga-
nizations reflects the epistemology of intimacy discussed below and,
according to Trungpa, is essential for “cutting through spiritual mate-
rialism.” Cutting through Spiritual Materialism (Boston: Shambhala,
2002). The role of Asian teachers and institutions is also important to
note because their involvement distinguishes these forms of spirituality
from forms that borrow widely and often creatively in ways that some
view as disrespectful to religious traditions and often as Orientalist,
contributing to representations of Asia and Asian people as “exotic.”
Orientalism certainly plays a role in American Buddhism, but practi-
tioners’ relationships to Asia and its representations are more complex
than is captured by critiques that focus on more popular and diffuse
borrowings of Asian spiritual traditions and imagery. See, e.g., Jane
Naomi Iwamura, Virtual Orientalism: Asian Religions and American
Popular Culture (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011). See Appendix I for more
on my experience with this training.
32. I write of Buddhism because I have benefited greatly from teachings
passed down from Siddhartha Gautama, and I view it as a useful source
of theorizing and understanding spirit, life, politics, and activism. I do
not claim that Buddhism is superior to other religious or philosophical
traditions, only that Buddhist teachings that have been brought to the
US can help explain the spiritual dynamics of social change work. One
could use texts from other traditions to make similar points. Because
my understanding of these concepts has developed largely through
spiritual practices transmitted to me through Buddhist teachers, I have
chosen texts that reflect those sources.
Contrary to popular representation, Buddhists have not been uni-
versally peaceful. Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer’s collec-
tion Buddhist Warfare details cases in which Buddhist teachings have
been used to justify or promote violence, most recently in Sri Lanka
and Thailand (New York: Oxford UP, 2010). Still, as Gross comments,
Buddhism has much to offer feminism. Gross writes that Buddhism
can help “feminists deal with the anger that can be so enervating, while
allowing them to retain the sharp critical brilliance contained in the
anger. Buddhist meditation practices can also do wonders to soften the
ideological hardness that often makes feminists ineffective spokesper-
sons in their own behalf. Buddhist teachings on suffering help feminists
remember that basic human sufferings and existential anxieties are not
patriarchy’s fault and will not be eliminated in post-patriarchal social
conditions. Finally, Buddhist spirituality, with its long-tested spiritual
disciplines, can do much to undercut the tendencies towards trippiness
and spiritual materialism that often plague feminist spirituality move-
ments.” Buddhism after Patriarchy, 133.
No t e s 191
33. This epistemology, may feel threatening to academics, I suspect, for

two reasons: first, because it undermines academic authority. Students
don’t need gatekeepers to knowledge when it lies within. Second,
because tapping into that knowledge requires experience and is not
something that can be discovered through reading or research alone or
conveyed through traditional classroom practices. Also, because part
of what one has to learn on a spiritual path is how much one cannot
know, this path runs counter to the drive to produce knowledge that
characterizes the contemporary research university.
34. Lorde, Sister Outsider, 56.
35. The discomfort that arises in so many of us when people discuss spir-
ituality in an academic context is also evidence of prejudice learned
from cultural messages that promote science as the sole way to truth
and devalue spiritual and intuitive ways of knowing, which are often
associated with women, people of color, and poor people. I use “we”
and “us” here to indicate my own complicity and shared feelings of dis-
comfort and to indicate how widespread I believe these feelings are in
US academic and dominant culture. But rationality and the demands
of scholarly inquiry require that we approach issues with an open heart
and open mind, setting aside prejudicial reactions and considering dif-
ferent points of view. As philosopher Alison M. Jaggar writes, “For
contemporary Western feminists to open our basic commitments to
critical scrutiny requires considering or reconsidering perspectives we
have hitherto excluded.” “Globalizing Feminist Ethics,” in Decentering
the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist
World, ed. Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding (Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 2000), 11. This is particularly important for feminists and others
committed to social justice because “empirical discussions are always
infused with power, which influences who is able to participate and
who is excluded, who speaks and who listens, whose remarks are heard
and whose dismissed, which topics are addressed and which are not,
what is questioned and what is taken for granted, even whether a dis-
cussion takes place at all.” Ibid., 5. The exclusion of discussions of
spirituality from most academic discourse is an act of power that coin-
cides with and reinforces exclusions of underserved populations and
underrepresented groups, especially white women and people of color.
It also limits our ability to understand human experience, what moves
people to work for social justice, and how to strengthen movements for
positive social change.
36. Webs of Power, 262.
37. Feminist scholar Sandra Harding notes that what distinguishes right-
wing from feminist uses of emotions and religiosity is the antidem-
ocratic commitment of the former. “Negotiating with the Positivist
Legacy: New Social Justice Movements and a Standpoint Politics of
Method,” in The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences, ed. George
Steinmetz (Durham: Duke UP, 2005), 359. That is why the emphasis
192 No t e s
on belief in autonomy and human dignity is central to the spirit of

social change.
38. For example, Anzaldúa writes in This Bridge Called My Back, “Our
spirituality does not come from outside ourselves. It emerges when we
listen to the ‘small still voice’ (Teish) within us which can empower
us to create actual change in the world . . . We must act in the everyday
world. Words are not enough. We must perform visible and public acts
that may make us more vulnerable to the very oppressions we are fight-
ing against. But, our vulnerability can be the source of our power—if
we use it ” (195; original emphasis; citing Luisah Teish, same volume).
AnaLouise Keating points out how scholars often “ignore Anzaldúa’s
politics of spirit and focus on the more conventionally political dimen-
sions of her work” in EntreMundos/AmongWorlds, 242.
39. Charlene Spretnak writes that “spirituality is an intrinsic dimension of
human consciousness and is not separate from the body” in The Politics
of Women’s Spirituality, xv.
40. Loving, 123.
41. Ibid., 126.
42. See Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge,
Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. (New York:
Routledge, 2000).
43. Loving, 125.
44. Sister Outsider, 53.
45. Borderlands/La Frontera, 36.
46. Born to Belonging, 7.
47. Webs of Power, 195.
48. Transforming, 16. Fernandes also argues that spirituality needs to be
transformed by social justice movements. Ibid., 21. See Gross, Buddhism
after Patriarchy and Thich Nhat Hanh, Interbeing (Berkeley: Parallax,
1987) for discussions of transforming Buddhism.
49. Transforming, 19. The spiritual-political work of examining and chang-
ing oneself involves letting go of the ego, recognizing its defenses, and
experiencing our connectedness. It requires honesty, gentleness, and
awareness of ego’s tendency to co-opt spiritual practice to reinforce itself
as separate, and often better than, others. Trungpa cautions against
what he calls “spiritual materialism”: “we can deceive ourselves into
thinking we are developing spiritually when instead we are strengthen-
ing our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.” Cutting, 3. It is
easy to feel good about ourselves when we do “spiritual” things or to
treat spirituality heavily, as something of Great Importance. The feeling
that one’s spiritual work is important calls for one to look more closely
and honestly at one’s mind. Trungpa teaches that spirituality is not a
big deal: “One cannot take spirituality so seriously. It is self-defeating,
counter to the true meaning of ‘giving up.’” Cutting, 116. Truly let-
ting go of concepts is painful, as signaled by Fernandes, though it also
involves profound joy.
No t e s 193
50. Spiritual Activist, xi.

51. Transforming Feminist Practice, 10.
52. Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-recovery (Boston: South End,
1993), 83.
53. Barbara Smith defines “authentic representation” in The Truth That
Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom (New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers UP, 1998).
54. I use emotion, like psychopharmacologist Candace B. Pert, in the broad-
est sense: “to include not only the familiar human experiences of anger,
fear, and sadness, as well as joy, contentment, and courage, but also basic
sensations such as pleasure and pain, as well as the ‘drive states’ studied
by the experimental psychologists, such as hunger and thirst. In addi-
tion to measurable and observable emotions and states, I also refer to an
assortment of other intangible, subjective experiences that are probably
unique to humans, such as spiritual inspiration, awe, bliss, and other
states of consciousness that we all have experienced but that have been,
up until now, physiologically unexplained.” Molecules of Emotion: The
Science behind Mind-Body Medicine (New York: Scribner, 1997), 132. I
use “emotion,” “affect,” and “feeling” more or less interchangeably.
55. Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977), 132.
56. Ibid., 132.
57. The lingering resistance to discussing, and particularly revealing, emo-
tions in academic work demonstrates the ongoing power of prejudices
constructed with and through ideas about race, class, and gender.
Barvosa expresses the social significance of revaluing the emotions:
the “subordination of affect . . . became instrumental in justifying the
subordination of women, non-European peoples, and others, whose
political voices were strategically defined as dominated by emotion and
hence invalid.” Wealth of Selves, 63. Our desire to avoid discussions of
emotions both denies how they are part of our thinking and reinforces
discrimination against groups that have been associated, in dominant
representations, with feeling rather than thinking.
Literary critic and philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues extensively
for the inseparability of thinking from emotions in her interdisciplin-
ary study, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. The
refusal of thought and feeling as dichotomous can be traced through
the study of emotions across disciplines, although the binary still
seems dominant in both popular and scholarly discussions of emo-
tions. See, e.g., philosopher Cheryl Hall’s “Passions and Constraint:
The Marginalization of Passion in Liberal Political Theory,” Philosophy
and Social Criticism 28, no. 6 (2002): 729–748; Pert’s Molecules of
Emotion; psychologists Joseph P. Forgas’s Feeling and Thinking:
The Role of Affect in Social Cognition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2001); A. Mathews and C. MacLeod’s “Cognitive Approaches to
Emotion and Emotional Disorders,” Annual Review of Psychology 45
(1994): 25–50; sociologist Verta Taylor’s “Watching for Vibes: Bringing
194 No t e s
Emotions into the Study of Feminist Organizations,” in Feminist

Organizations: Harvest of the New Women’s Movement, ed. Myra Marx
Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1995),
223–233, and Sandra Morgen’s “Towards a Politics of ‘Feelings’:
Beyond the Dialectic of Thought and Action,” Women’s Studies 10
(1983): 203–223. Nussbaum explains the importance of understanding
the relationship between cognition and emotion: “the world enters into
the self in emotion, with enormous power to wound or to heal. For it
enters in a cognitive way, in our perceptions and beliefs about what mat-
ters.” Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2001, Kindle ed.), Loc. 1209. It is because our emo-
tions are wrapped up with our thoughts, beliefs, and values that they
are so powerful and so useful for helping us understand social problems
and social change.
58. Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP’s Fight against AIDS (Chicago:
U of Chicago P, 2009, Kindle ed.), Loc. 370.
59. Foreword to The I Ching or Book of Changes, the Richard Wilhelm
Translation, trans. Cary F. Baynes (New York: Princeton UP, 1967
[1950]), xxiv.
60. Sister Outsider, 127. For more on the emotions of stasis, see Sianne
Ngai’s Ugly Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2005).
61. Upheavals, Loc. 2211.
62. Ibid., Loc. 2540.
63. Arlie Hothschild refers to how people affect their emotions, inhibit-
ing undesired feelings and inducing others, as “emotion management.”
“Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure,” American
Journal of Sociology 85, no. 3 (November 1979): 551–575.
65. Ibid., 101.
66. In an interview with Claudia Tate, Lorde comments, “Our real power
comes from the personal; our real insights about living come from that
deep knowledge within us that arises from our feelings . . . Our feelings
are our most genuine paths to knowledge. They are chaotic, sometimes
painful, sometimes contradictory, but they come from deep within us.
And we must key into those feelings and begin to extrapolate from
them, examine them for new ways of understanding our experiences.
This is how new visions begin, how we begin to posit a future nour-
ished by the past.” “Audre Lorde,” in Conversations with Audre Lorde,
ed. Joan Wylie Hall (Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi, 2004), 91.
67. Feminist philosopher Wendy Brown also proposes a focus on the
creative political possibilities of desire in “Wounded Attachments.”
Political Theory 21, no. 3 (August 1993): 407.
68. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures
(Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003), 241. Cvetkovich and other contribu-
tors to David L. Eng and David Kazanjian’s anthology Loss identify
ways in which memories of loss contribute to forming communities. By
No t e s 195
arguing that melancholia is “a structure of everyday life,” they refuse to

pathologize and individualize loss, instead highlighting loss as part of
everyday life in “an unforgiving social world.” Eng and Shinhee Han,
“A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia,” Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed.
Eng and Kazanjian (Berkeley: U of California P, 2003), 366.
69. Emotions can be detected in the sounds of crying, moments of anima-
tion, sighs, and breaks in speech, as well as in the tone of some nar-
rators who resist verbal exploration of the emotional aspects of some
experiences.
70. Author James Baldwin describes this bind in “Notes of a Native Son.”
The acceptance of injustice as commonplace, he writes, must go along
with the idea “of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life,
accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all
one’s strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now
had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and
despair.” Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon, 1955), 113–114.
71. “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and
around Social Movements,” Sociological Forum 13 (1998): 414. To
argue that love is more powerful than anger does not negate the
power of anger that seeks change nor the responsibility to listen well
when others are angry. See Barbara Deming, We Are All Part of One
Another: A Barbara Deming Reader, ed. Jane Meyerding (Philadelphia:
New Society, 1984), 212; Aída Hurtado, The Color of Privilege: Three
Blasphemies on Race and Feminism (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P,
1996), 21; and Lorde, Sister Outsider, 145. I agree with Amanda
Espinosa-Aguilar’s argument that when what she calls “angry rhetoric”
“is devalued, hegemonic structures remain undisturbed. The result is
maintenance of status quo behavior that restricts disempowered indi-
viduals to lives of oppression, inactivity, or complacency.” “Radical
Rhetoric: Anger, Activism, and Change,” EntreMundos/AmongWorlds,
228). Our tendency to react with defensiveness or aggression or to
shut down when faced with other people’s anger represents a failure
of respect for both ourselves and the other(s). By tracing the roots of
anger at injustice, I hope to encourage curiosity and good listening.
See Appendix I for more on my experience with aikido.
72. Nussbaum notes that different emotions work differently on the self:
“Some expand the boundaries of the self, picturing the self as consti-
tuted in part by strong attachments to independent things and per-
sons . . . Some emotions, on the other hand, draw sharp boundaries
around the self, insulating it from contamination by external objects.”
She identifies love, grief, and compassion as examples of expansive
emotions and disgust as strengthening ego’s boundaries. Upheavals,
Loc. 4352. By focusing on the love and joy found in activist work, I
hope to encourage their development as emotions that strengthen and
connect us to others.
73. Molecules of Emotion, 193.
196 No t e s
74. Audre Lorde connects experiencing love and joy with social change: “If
we feel deeply, and we encourage ourselves and others to feel deeply,
we will find the germ of our answers to bring about change. Because
once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can
feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts
of our lives produce that kind of joy. And when they do not, we will
ask, ‘Why don’t they?’ And it is the asking that will lead us inevitably
toward change.” “Audre Lorde,” 92.
75. Jambalaya: The Natural Women’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical
Rituals (San Francisco: Harper, 1985), 206–207.
76. “In the Presence of Spirit(s): A Meditation on the Politics of Solidarity
and Transformation,” in This Bridge We Call Home, 534.
77. Ibid., 535.
79. It took over one century of research on human and animal subjects
for science to begin to understand the unity of mind and body, a con-
cept that has been conveyed by spiritual teachers for thousands of years.
While I am pleased to see that science is finding a way to more robust
understandings of life and the universe, I am not sure that it is worth the
violence committed along the way. I suppose the answer will be deter-
mined by whether we use this knowledge to benefit all sentient beings
or whether we continue to act in ways that perpetuate separation.
81. Ibid., 187; original emphasis.
82. Ibid., 185.
83. Ibid., 312.
84. Ki Sayings (Haga-gun, Tochigi, Japan: Ki No Kenkyukai, H.Q.:
2003), 15.
85. See Patricia Hill Collins. There is a long tradition of just such work
in the fields of feminist and womanist spirituality, which deserve a
more central place in Women’s Studies and Religious Studies. See,
e.g., Charlene Spretnak’s The Politics of Women’s Spirituality. Prejudice
against ideas and experiences that are not understood by the insti-
tutions and methods of scientific and rational traditions is not rea-
son. Emotions and irrational judgments based on lack of experience
or familiarity are often at work in what may seem to be reasonable
demands for intelligibility. An exclusive focus on rational analysis
and ideas in intellectual and activist work reflects and reinforces the
continued dominance of European patriarchal traditions and ignores
the work of multiracial feminists and others who have insisted on the
centrality of spiritual change for antiracist feminist transformation.
The tradition of feminist of color spirituality goes back to nineteenth-
century African American feminists who used Christianity for libera-
tory purposes and continues through the vital contributions of Lorde,
Anzaldúa, hooks, Moraga, Alice Walker, and many more. Lorde writes,
“When we view living in the European mode only as a problem to be
No t e s 197
solved, we rely solely upon our ideas to make us free, for these were
what the white fathers told us were precious. // But as we come more
into touch with our own ancient, non-European consciousness of liv-
ing as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more
and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources
of our power from where true knowledge and, therefore, lasting action
comes.” Sister Outsider, 37. The belief in rationality as the sole way to
truth reinforces mind/body dualism, overvalues those trained in tradi-
tions of reason, and ignores the contributions of spiritual thinkers from
a diverse range of cultures whose teachings empower everyone by valu-
ing what we all can learn through intuition, emotion, and experience.
As Lorde notes, we need to fuse both European traditions of reason
and spiritual knowledge—“our own ancient, non-European conscious-
ness of living”—in order to survive. Respecting spiritual power is cen-
tral to the understanding and action required for deep social change.
86. Sandra Harding, Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from
Women’s Lives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1991), vii. Leela Fernandes
views feminist critiques of epistemology as “a kind of collective strug-
gle and plea for a space where we are allowed to write with spirit.”
Transforming, 21.
87. Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of
Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991).
88. Literary and cultural critic Phillip Brian Harper points out that both
everyday living and critical analysis rely on intuition and “speculative
logic.” “The Evidence of Felt Intuition: Minority Experience, Everyday
Life, and Critical Speculative Knowledge,” in Black Queer Studies: A
Critical Anthology, ed. E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson
(Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2005), 117.
89. Most of the works I cite throughout this book are part of this body of
work. In her study of work by Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and
Audre Lorde, AnaLouise Keating points out how these writers “rein-
terpret non-Western beliefs and invent nondual metaphysical systems
that locate the spiritual in material and intellectual life.” Rupturing
dualism, they create “spaces where new forms of connection can
occur.” Women Reading, 6. Monica Torres calls this refusing binaries
an “epistemology of relationship,” which she defines in relation to the
work of Anzaldúa and Patricia Williams. “‘Doing Mestizaje’: When
Epistemology Becomes Ethics,” in EntreMundos/AmongWorlds (see
note 13), 195–203. Researcher John Heron argues for the importance
of participatory social scientific inquiry into different spiritual experi-
ences in Sacred Science: Person-Centred Inquiry into the Spiritual and
the Subtle (Ross-on-Wye, UK: PCCS Books, 1998).
90. Intimacy or Integrity: Philosophy and Cultural Difference (Honolulu: U
of Hawai’i P, 2002), 24.
91. Ibid., 25.
92. Black Feminist Thought, 264.
198 No t e s
93. Intimacy or Integrity, 77.

94. Ibid., 77–78. Collins observes the role of experience in black feminist
epistemology. She notes that similar ideas are characterized as “black”
or “female” by members of their respective groups and “suggests that
the actual contours of intersecting oppressions can vary dramatically
and yet generate some uniformity in the epistemologies used by sub-
ordinate groups.” Black Feminist Thought, 269. This uniformity is evi-
dence of nonpublic objectivity.
95. Haraway, Simians.
96. In Anne Bancroft, Weavers of Wisdom: Women Mystics of the Twentieth
Century (London: Arkana, 1989), 9.
98. Anagarika Govinda, A Living Buddhism for the West, Trans. Maurice
Walshe (Boston: Shambhala, 1990), 17.
99. “After Bridge: Technologies of Crossing,” in This Bridge We Call
Home, 25.
100. Elizabeth R. Cole and Zakiya T. Luna, “Making Coalitions Work:
Solidarity across Difference within US Feminism,” Feminist Studies
36, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 73.
101. As Nussbaum cautions, “The first responsibility of any good account
is to the phenomena, and classifications that make boundaries seem
unrealistically sharp or rigid are to that extent suspect.” Upheavals,
Loc. 2001.
102. Nussbaum explains, “When we express the content of an emotion
in words, we are already, in many cases, performing a translation of
thoughts that did not originally take an explicitly verbal form.” Ibid.,
Loc. 3869.
103. Joy has a special salience in the US context, where we have a declared
right to pursue happiness. However, I draw the language of joy and my
explanation of its complexity from Buddhist teachings.
105. Lorde, Sister Outsider.
106. “Passions and Constraint,” 741.
107. William A. Tiller, “Subtle Energies,” Science & Medicine 6, no. 3 (June
1999): 28–33.
1 Loving Criticism: A Spiritual

Philosophy of Social Change
This chapter was inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s audio CD Touching
the Earth (Sounds True, 2005).
2. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating, eds., This Bridge We Call Home:
Radical Visions for Transformation (New York: Routledge, 2002), 2.
3. US third world feminist Cherríe Moraga writes of the necessity of spiri-
tual and material liberation for feminism, “Simply put, if the spirit and
No t e s 199
sex have been linked in our oppression, then they must also be linked
in the strategy toward our liberation. // To date, no liberation move-
ment has been willing to take on the task. To walk a freedom road that
is both material and metaphysical. Sexual and spiritual. Third World
feminism is about feeding people in all their hungers.” Loving in the
War Years, expanded ed. (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2000), 123.
4. Antiracist feminist scholar Chela Sandoval writes of Anzaldúa and
herself, “We believed that no social change for justice was possible if
that change was not informed by a physics of love.” Here, I medi-
tate on what that physics of love looks like in organizing and intellec-
tual work. “Unfinished Words: The Crossing of Gloria Anzaldúa,” in
EntreMundos/AmongWorlds: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa, ed.
AnaLouise Keating (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), xv.
5. I am indebted to the work of many feminist scholars who have taken
spirituality seriously in their work, particularly Ruth Frankenberg’s
Living Spirit, Living Practice: Poetics, Politics, Epistemology (Durham:
Duke UP, 2004); bell hooks’s Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-
recovery (Boston: South End, 1993); Akasha Gloria Hull’s Soul Talk:
The New Spirituality of African American Women (Rochester, Vermont:
Inner Traditions, 2001); Mab Segrest’s Born to Belonging: Writings on
Spirit and Justice (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2002); M. Jacqui
Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual
Politics, Memory, and the Sacred (Durham: Duke UP, 2005); Anzaldúa
and Keating’s This Bridge We Call Home; and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s
Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham: Duke
UP, 2003).
6. “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave
Feminism,” Feminist Studies 28, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 337.
7. Koichi Tohei, Ki in Daily Life, complete revised ed. (Tochigi, Japan: Ki
No Kenkyukai, 2001), 75.
8. Here I think of such critical studies as Ruth Frankenberg’s White
Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness
(Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993); Ewa Plonowska Ziarek’s An
Ethics of Dissensus: Postmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of Radical
Democracy (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2001); Ann Cvetkovich’sAn
Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures
(Durham: Duke UP, 2003); Jose Esteban Muñoz’s Disidentifications:
Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: U
of Minnesota P, 1999); as well as feminist anthologies such as Lisa
Albrecht and Rose Brewer’s Bridges of Power: Women’s Multicultural
Alliances (Philadelphia: New Society, 1990); Joanna Kadi’s Food for
Our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian
Feminists (Boston: South End, 1994); Penny A. Weiss and Marilyn
Friedman’s Feminism and Community (Philadelphia: Temple UP,
1995); Anzaldúa and Keating’s This Bridge We Call Home; and
M. Jacqui Alexander, Lisa Albrecht, Sharon Day, and Mab Segrest’s
200 No t e s
Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray! Feminist Visions for a Just World (EdgeWork
Books, 2003).
9. See Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters (New York: Vintage, 1980);
Anzaldúa and Moraga’s This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by
Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color
P, 1983); Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1982), In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens (San Diego:
Harcourt Brace, 1983), The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart (New
York: Ballantine Books, 2000), and We Are the Ones We Have Been
Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness (New York: New P, 2007);
Moraga’s Loving in the War Years; Lorde’s Sister Outsider; Paula Gunn
Allen’s The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian
Traditions (Boston: Beacon P, 1992) and Grandmothers of the Light:
A Medicine Woman’s Sourcebook (Boston: Beacon P, 1991); Anzaldúa’s
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute
Books, 1987); Beth Brant’s A Gathering of Spirit: A Collection by
North American Indian Women (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1988);
hooks’s Sisters of the Yam; Hull’s Soul Talk; Sandoval’s Methodology
of the Oppressed (Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 2000);
AnaLouise Keating’s EntreMundos/Among Worlds: New Perspectives
on Gloria Anzaldúa (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); and
“‘I’m a Citizen of the Universe’: Gloria Anzaldúa’s Spiritual Activism
as Catalyst for Social Change,” Feminist Studies 34, no. 1/2 (Spring/
Summer 2008): 53–69; Anzaldúa and Keating’s This Bridge We Call
Home; Segrest’s Born to Belonging; Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing;
and Leela Fernandes’s Transforming Feminist Practice: Non-violence,
Social Justice and the Possibilities of a Spiritualized Feminism (San
Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 2003). Religious studies scholar Ursula
King also notes the growth of “spiritual feminism,” which, she writes,
“is now a trend of global diffusion that can be perceived in most reli-
gions and cultures.” “Spirituality and gender viewed through a global
lens,” in Religion, Spirituality and the Social Sciences: Challenging
Marginalisation, ed. Basia Spalek and Alia Imtoual (Bristol, UK:
Policy P, 2008), 123.
10. See Segrest, Born to Belonging; Sedgwick, Touching Feeling; hooks,
Sisters of the Yam; and numerous contributions by hooks and Walker
to American Buddhist magazine Shambhala Sun, http://www
.shambhalasun.com.
11. I am indebted to Sandoval’s work on differential consciousness for
helping me think about how a worldview and way of thinking can be
found in different places with tentative, or even no, historical connec-
tions. See Methodology.
12. The five forms Sandoval identifies are
● Equal rights form
● Revolutionary form
● Supremacist form
No t e s 201
● Separatist form
● Differential form
The Equal Rights form of oppositional consciousness argues for rights
based on the premise that all humans are created equally and, there-
fore, deserve the same basic rights. While differences such as race, gen-
der, class, sexual orientation, disability, and religion have been used to
assign inferior status to underrepresented groups, these differences are
not “real” but are superficial—we all have the same basic human capac-
ities irrespective of our different identities; therefore, we all deserve the
same rights. The revolutionary form insists that differences cannot be
assimilated within the present social order. Instead, the categories by
which the dominant is ordered must be fundamentally restructured.
The basic premises on which political and economic systems rest must
be changed, because they are structures based on domination and sub-
ordination. The Supremacist form of oppositional consciousness claims
that differences provide “access to a higher evolutionary level than that
attained by those who hold social power.” Those who are marginal-
ized, therefore, can provide “a higher ethical and moral vision” for
society. Practitioners of the Separatist form of oppositional conscious-
ness “recognize that their differences are branded as inferior” and
organize separately with others who share those differences in order
“to protect and nurture the differences that define its practitioners
through their complete separation from the dominant social order.”
Methodology, 57.
13. I use “tactics” following transnational feminist scholar Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak in Outside in the Teaching Machine (London:
Routledge, 1993) and philosopher Michel de Certeau in The Practice
of Everyday Life (Berkeley: U of California P, 1984). “Tactics” refers to
choices often made in a short timeframe, whereas “strategies” are more
thought out. Literary scholar Paula M. L. Moya explains well the role
of tactics in Sandoval’s study: “Sandoval . . . proposes that U.S. third
world feminists who participated in exclusively gender-based orga-
nizations during the heyday of the women’s movement never did so
naively or because they were caught within the all-encompassing web
of ideology. Rather, they were conscious of the temporary and strategic
need to privilege one aspect of themselves over others in the service of
political or social change. Their behavior was self-conscious, a strate-
gic tactic they used to mobilize more effectively against the particular
oppressive power with which they were struggling at the moment.”
Learning from Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles
(Berkeley: U of California P, 2002), accessed July 26, 2011, http://ark
.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt8t1nd07c/: 80.
14. Sara Mills explains, “differential consciousness should not be seen as a
pressure which ‘forces’ white feminists to admit their implicit racism;
it is a productive way of thinking through the changes necessary for
more recognition of difference without forcing difference into a static
202 No t e s
and oppositional categorization.” “Postcolonial Feminist Theory,” in

Contemporary Feminist Theories, ed. Stevi Jackson and Jackie Jones
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1998), 109.
15. Methodology, 58.
16. “What’s Love Got to Do with It?: Consciousness, Politics and
Knowledge Production in Chela Sandoval’s Methodology of the
Oppressed,” American Quarterly, 53, no. 4 (December 2001): 734.
17. Arturo J. Aldama clarifies how Sandoval, like US third world feminist
scholars Chandra Mohanty and Norma Alarcón, links “the politics of
resistance to the social-political and corporeal consequences of living
in and on the margins of nation-states, especially the U.S./Mexico
border, and the ensuing violence and exclusion on multiple fronts pro-
duced by the ‘borderless’ travel of global capitalism.” Aldama notes
that these theorists refuse a simple identity or position in relation to
that experience, instead describing a “subject-in-process” that responds
according to the situation at hand. Embodied experience thus influ-
ences politics but does not determine it in any simple or fixed way.
Disrupting Savagism: Intersecting Chicana/o, Mexican Immigrant, and
Native American Struggles for Self-representation (Durham: Duke UP,
2001), 33.
18. In using US third world feminism, Sandoval refers to a form of con-
sciousness that she connects with the work of specific women of color,
also referred to at times as US third world women because of their fam-
ily history, present location in the United States, and the connection
they assert between their experiences of oppression and the oppression
of women in “third world” nations. Some readers miss the distinc-
tion between the form of consciousness and the specific bodies whose
words and actions articulate that consciousness. See Tapia, “What’s
Love,” 741, and Moya, Learning, 82. Because of the ease of this con-
fusion, I prefer to use “multiracial feminism,” “intersectionality,” or
“differential consciousness” to refer to the ways of thinking and acting
that Sandoval calls “US third world feminism.”
19. Methodology, 59.
20. Methodology, 197 n. 61.
21. Sedgwick specifies that her critical project in Touching Feeling is
“beside” other work, not an attempt to disavow or overturn her pre-
decessors. Touching Feeling, 8. Like Sedgwick, I do not seek critical
interventions that invalidate or expose error in previous positions. I am
interested in examining the reasons for the critical stances we take and
their multiple effects beyond the production of knowledge. I also real-
ize, as Sedgwick notes, the understanding “that knowledge does rather
than simply is” is quite common. Ibid., 124. Nonetheless, I find I need
frequent reminders to consider the effects of my work and determine if
it brings more love, faith, and joy to the world. It is in this spirit that I
offer this meditation to you.
22. Cutting, 101.
No t e s 203
23. Ibid., 100.

24. Ibid., 103.
25. Healing the Soul of America: Reclaiming Our Voices as Spiritual
Citizens (New York: Touchstone, 2000), 43.
26. Touching Feeling, 143.
28. Ibid., 143.
29. In an interview with Stephen M. Barber and David L. Clark, Sedgwick
confirms that most people oscillate between paranoid and reparative
positions while reading. She clarifies, “It’s just that what counts as an
argument to make, at this juncture of critical theory, emerges from
only one of those positions, the paranoid one. One notion of what
criticism, and for that matter politics, might be is paranoid, and it is
that through and through, so it has almost effaced the evidences of
the reparative impulse and structure.” “This Piercing Bouquet: An
Interview with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,” in Regarding Sedgwick: Essays
on Queer Culture and Critical Theory, ed. Barber and Clark (New York:
Routledge, 2002), 247.
30. Ibid., 128, 130.
31. See, e.g., Sandra Harding’s Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking
from Women’s Lives (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1991); Donna Haraway’s
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New
York: Routledge, 1991); and Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing
Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books,
1999).
32. Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 133.
33. “The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and
around Social Movements,” Sociological Forum 13 (1998): 406.
35. Ibid., 149. Queer studies scholar Jonathan Flatley clarifies the clear
connection between Sedgwick’s understanding of oppression and her
reparative criticism: “Sedgwick appears to marshal her most reparative
prose precisely in response to a hostile environment, where she is aware
that she and her friends and allies are unvalued, unnourished, indeed
under attack.” “Unlike Eve Sedgwick,” Criticism 52, no. 2 (2010): 226.
Feminist scholar Ann Cvetkovich discusses some of the struggles and
possibilities of reparative work in queer studies in “Public Feelings,”
South Atlantic Quarterly 106, no. 3 (Summer 2007): 459–468.
36. Women Reading Women Writing: Self-invention in Paula Gunn Allen,
Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1996),
180.
37. Sisters of the Yam, 82.
38. The earliest uses of the term “bodymind” that I have found in print
are in psychologist Ken Dychtwald’s Bodymind (New York: Penguin
Putnam, 1977) and philosopher David E. Shaner’s The Bodymind
Experience in Japanese Buddhism: A Phenomenological Perspective on
204 No t e s
Kukai and Dogen (Albany: State U of New York P, 1985). Though

these are very different studies, both use the term to connote experi-
ence of the unity of mind and body. Dychtwald borrows the term from
the title of a 1970 workshop at California’s Esalen Institute led by
Hector Prestera and William Schultz. He describes his experience at
the workshop as one of “psychosomatic unity.” Bodymind,10. Shaner
argues that our experience tells us that mind and body are insepa-
rable, and “Mind-aspects and body-aspects may be separated from
the context of lived experience only through abstraction.” He refers
to “the presence of both aspects in all experience as ‘bodymind.’” The
Bodymind Experience, 45.
40. Keating describes the erotic as “an embodied way of thinking that
synthesizes multiple dimensions of thought.” Women Reading, 7. She
points out that Lorde is not making a simple distinction between inter-
nal and external ways of knowing, nor does she rely on an uncompli-
cated notion of a “true self.” Keating writes, “Instead, she describes
a complicated series of layers that take into account the ways social
structures, conscious thought, and personal belief have been shaped by
oppressive discursive systems.” Ibid., 52.
41. hooks, Sisters of the Yam, 82.
42. For example, Maria Luisa (pseudonym) keeps an altar in her office
as well as posters from the Beijing Conference on Women, an event
that inspired her own work. I discuss her experience with the Beijing
Conference in chapter 4.
43. “Performing Gender, Enacting Community: Women, Whiteness,
and Belief in Contemporary Public Demonstrations” (Diss., U of
California, Santa Barbara, 2007), 164–165 and 141–142.
44. Ibid., 143.
45. Currans sums up the political message of the festival, claiming “Public
celebrations of people experiencing discrimination refuse implicit and
explicit assertions that their lives are less worthy of respect.” Ibid.,
145–146. She also describes Sistahs Steppin’ as an act of caring: “By
bringing women together to honor themselves and those who paved
the path to create spaces for queers, especially queer women of color,
to live openly and celebrate in public, they care for themselves as a
community.” Ibid., 161. Caring for and celebrating themselves and
their roots in a culture in which they are marginalized is also political
work. Changing themselves, they change the world—Anzaldúa writes,
“I change myself, I change the world.” Borderlands/La Frontera, 70.
46. Trans. Tyler Dewar, “Kindness Is the Most Important Thing,” by
Melvin McLeod, Shambhala Sun 17, no. 1 (September 2008): 106.
47. Ibid. Thich calls this interconnectedness our “interbeing dependent
co-arising nature.” Interbeing (Berkeley: Parallax, 1987), 24.
48. See, e.g., Myra Marx Ferree and Ali Mari Tripp’s Global Feminism:
Transnational Women’s Activism, Organizing, and Human Rights
No t e s 205
(New York: New York UP, 2006); Cynthia Enloe’s Bananas, Beaches,
and Bases (Berkeley: U of California P, 1990); Vandana Shiva’s Stolen
Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (Cambridge, MA:
South End, 2000); Deborah Barndt’s Tangled Routes: Women, Work,
and Globalization on the Tomato Trail (Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2002); Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A
Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2007); Rhacel
Salazar Parreñas’s Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and
Domestic Work (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2001); and Miriam Ching
Yoon Louie’s Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on
the Global Factory (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2001).
49. The 17th Karmapa acknowledges that our interdependence also means
that all sentient beings are involved in our suffering, but “There’s no
benefit, personally, spiritually, or mentally, in obsessing about how
others have caused you suffering.” “Kindness,” 106.
50. “When the Ground Is Black, the Ground Is Fertile,” in Handbook of
Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, ed. Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna
S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
2008), 289; my emphasis.
51. Ibid.
52. While many have critiqued dualism, I am particularly interested in the
spiritual dynamics of that critique, which have not received as much
attention in women’s studies and American studies scholarship. Keating
prefers the term “commonality,” fearing that “sameness” implies that
we are identical. “’I’m a citizen of the universe,’” 63. By “sameness,”
I do not mean that we are identical, but that we share more than the
qualities that we have in common as humans. The energy that runs
through each person—our “ki” or “qi,” in Japanese or Chinese phi-
losophy, respectively—is the same energy that flows through all of the
universe. In terms of physics, we are all constantly exchanging molecu-
lar and subatomic particles. Our bodies are built with these elements
and return these elements to the world. Taking the perspective of bio-
chemistry, we are constantly exchanging air, water, and nutrients with
the world and people around us. Neuroscience and psychology tell us
that we share thoughts and feelings. Physically and spiritually, we are
the same in many ways. Indeed, our differences are also part of our
sameness—we are all different and, in that way, also the same. The
fact of our sameness does not erase or minimize the very real differ-
ences that divide us. Amala Levine, a scholar of comparative literature,
describes Anzaldúa’s “nondual vision of self and world” that integrates
reason, emotion, imagination, and spirit. This nonduality is the basis
of “an ethic of care predicated on trust, respect, responsibility, and
love.” “Champion of the Spirit: Anzaldúa’s Critique of Rationalist
Epistemology,” in EntreMundos, 173, 182. Keating argues that “It is
the refusal to acknowledge and accept differences—rather than the
reverse—that erects what Lorde describes as ‘the wall that separates /
206 No t e s
our sameness.’” Women Reading, 59. Focusing on our sameness can

make our differences less threatening and encourage creativity and
cooperation in the search for ways to live together. Recognition of
sameness does not need to erase difference. Gross explains Buddhist
nonduality, which she distinguishes from dualism, which reifies differ-
ence, and monism, which collapses all differences into an underlying
unity. In nonduality there are “vivid and specific phenomena” per-
ceived in “basic primordial space,” everything connected. Buddhism
after Patriarchy, 196.
53. “Something larger than ourselves” can be God(dess), Spirit, the
Universe, or a sense of shared humanity or purpose—a sense that, as
humans or even as all of creation, we are interconnected, regardless of
whether we believe in a divine presence. I hope my purposeful vague-
ness leaves room for differences in belief while also conveying a sense
of things shared across different systems of belief.
54. William A. Gamson, Talking Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1992).
56. Lorde, Sister Outsider, 170; Alexander, Pedagogies of Crossing, 99;
Fernandes, Transforming Feminist Practice, 27.
57. While Jasper notes that demonization of those seen as responsible for
or benefiting from injustice is an important source of motivation for
activism, I view such treatment of individuals and institutions as par-
ticipating in the same kinds of divisiveness that progressive activists
struggle against and that ultimately defeats the purpose of promoting
respect and compassion. Jasper argues, without providing supporting
evidence, that negative emotions are a stronger motivating force than
powerful emotions. “The Emotions of Protest,” Sociological Forum 13,
no. 3 (September 1998): 412, 414. I argue that we can amplify the love
that is at the root of activist anger to build a stronger and more endur-
ing force for social change.
58. Sandee later clarified that she would protest to show “resistance and
to raise awareness,” but she avoids tactics that she thinks create fear.
E-mail communication (January 6, 2009).
59. Sandee does not characterize all animal rights activists in this way but
specifies that she can describe only her own experience of the work.
60. Personal communication.
62. Ibid., 79.
63. Moraga, for example, writes of the need “to seriously address ourselves
to some very frightening questions: How have I internalized my own
oppression? How have I oppressed?” “La Güera” in This Bridge Called
My Back, 30. This work is difficult and important, she claims, “for
each of us in some way has been both oppressed and the oppressor. We
are afraid to look at how we have failed each other. We are afraid to
see how we have taken the values of our oppressor into our hearts and
No t e s 207
turned them against ourselves and one another.” Ibid., 32. Moraga,
Anzaldúa, and the other authors of This Bridge Called My Back call for
self-searching and honesty to see “how we have failed each other” and
ourselves. Such honesty creates a bridge with “the oppressor,” with
more privileged people, and insists on our shared humanity. This kind
of introspection is a key part of restoring humanity to oppressed and
oppressor alike and realizing our intrinsic connection.
64. “Healing Sueños for Academia,” in This Bridge We Call Home, 434.
65. Segrest traces the idea of interconnection through many spiritual tradi-
tions, naming specific thinkers such as King, Gandhi, Thich, as well
as religious and philosophical traditions including Christianity and
Taoism. She also incorporates secular experiences that leads to under-
standings of interconnection: “Women in most times and places, for
biological and cultural reasons, begin with assumptions of mutuality
without having them canonized in sacred texts.” Segrest summarizes,
“From many points on the globe we can assert our interdependence,
a mutuality from which we can (however contingently) know, act, and
create with faith that we are always acting and creating both within and
beyond what we understand, imagine, or intend. If we are not to rep-
licate and extend the terrible history of human violence from the last
century to the next, we will need more grounding in such realities.”
Born to Belonging, 8.
66. Buddhist teacher Ken McLeod explains the importance of develop-
ing emotional understanding: “In the midst of action, intellectual
understanding is much slower and less powerful than emotional under-
standing. To access intellectual understanding, we have to remember
to bring what we know intellectually to bear on the situation. With
emotional understanding, the understanding is part of our experi-
ence of the situation. We don’t have to remember. For this reason,
emotional understanding leads to deeper and more extensive changes
in our lives.” Wake Up to Your Life: Discovering the Buddhist Path of
Attention (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 95. There are three main
centers of intelligence in the body: the head, center of the intellect; the
heart, center of emotional intelligence; and the hara (in Japanese) or
dantian (in Chinese)—a few inches below the navel, the center of grav-
ity when standing on one’s feet, the center of physical or kinesthetic
intelligence (Thanks to Gregory Ford-Kohne for this explanation). As
McLeod notes, the head is the slowest of these centers. We rely on
cognitive processes to use our intellectual understanding—we have to
access our memory and think about how our concepts relate to the
situation at hand, which takes time. The hara is the seat of intuitive
knowledge, whose speed is popularly celebrated in Malcolm Gladwell’s
Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking (New York: Back Bay
Books, 2007) and further explained by German psychologist Gerd
Gigerenzer in Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious (New
York: Viking Penguin, 2007). When we act from the hara, we do not
208 No t e s
need to take time to sort everything out—our bodies know what to do.
Spiritual practices such as meditation often work with the hara or heart
center, developing capacities for emotional and intuitive understand-
ing by building a sense of connection with God/god/the universe/all
beings.
67. For a definition of “womanist,” see Walker’s In Search of Our Mother’s
Gardens, xi.
69. Thanks to Koichi Kashiwaya, from whose comments I adapted this
statement. Maryland Ki Aikido Summer Camp (seminar at Frostburg
State University, Frostburg, MD, August 10, 2008).
70. Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (Boston: Shambhala,
1984), 33.
71. Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard UP, 2007), 1–2.
72. Ibid., 4.
73. Ibid., 29.
74. Thich explains that because the inner and outer worlds are not sepa-
rate, “If we look deeply into our mind, we see the world deeply at the
same time.” Interbeing, 4. This understanding empowers us to create
change.
76. This is similar to the concept of “ki” as described by Koichi Tohei in Ki
in Daily Life.
77. Meadows here refers to the oft-cited quote from Marianne Williamson:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is
that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness
that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are
a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is
nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel
insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We
were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not
just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we
are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates
others.” A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in
Miracles” (New York: HarperCollins, 1992, 190–191).
78. Interbeing, 31.
80. To say that one can choose to be empowered is not to deny the reality
of structural oppression and other limits to what one can do in the
world. Keating calls this “the paradox of personal agency and struc-
tural determinacy” and notes that Anzaldúa writes from within this
contradiction, declaring her inability to resolve it. “I’m a Citizen of
the Universe,” 59. Nussbaum writes, “People are dignified agents,
No t e s 209
but they are also, frequently, victims. Agency and victimhood are not
incompatible: indeed, only the capacity for agency makes victimhood
tragic.” Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2001, Kindle ed.), Loc. 5852.
81. E-mail communication (January 6, 2009).
82. This Bridge We Call Home, 572.
83. Shiva’s statement recalls a verse from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet: “Your
joy is your sorrow unmasked. / And the selfsame well from which your
laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. / And how else can
it be? / The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy
you can contain” (New York: Knopf, 2008 [1923]), 29.
84. Sister Outsider, 41–42.
85. Ibid.,55.
86. I take the approach to gender neutrality of alternating pronouns: I use
zie/hir, then she/her, then he/him when a singular, unspecific pro-
noun is grammatically required.
87. The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on
Screen and Scene (Durham: Duke UP, 2007), 23.
88. Ibid., 21.
89. How Can I Help? Stories and Reflections on Service (New York: Knopf,
2003), 156.
92. This is why Thich calls for “openness and nonattachment from views[,
which] creates respect for the freedom of others.” Interbeing, 25.
93. Pseudonym. See chapter 3 for more on Colette’s beliefs.
94. These terms come from Tohei, who borrows from Zen Buddhist teach-
ings, explaining, “In Zen, the usual thing is to refer to oneself as shoga,
or the smaller self, and to our basic essence as taiga, or the greater self.
Zen also teaches us that to discard shoga is to give birth to taiga. This
is the same as admonishing us not to be a slave to our smaller selves but
to open our eyes to the basic essence that is one with the universal.” Ki
in Daily Life, 73.
96. “Internal oppression” refers to the situation when oppressed people
take on oppressive beliefs and/or actions, that is, they may believe in
their own inferiority or they may act in an unkind or hostile way toward
members of their oppressed group. See also Keith Boykin, One More
River to Cross: Black & Gay in America (New York: Anchor Books-
Doubleday, 1996), 58 and Kobena Mercer, Welcome to the Jungle: New
Positions in Black Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1994), 145.
97. See also Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue (Boston:
Beacon, 1998), 55–56.
98. Thanks to Shaner for helping me think in terms of creating new hab-
its. “Seeing Illusion, Feeling Connection, Finding Rhythm” (seminar
at Five Rivers Ki Society, Gloucester, VA, November 8, 2008). Gross
210 No t e s
insists on the importance of viewing feminism as a practice, more than

a theory: “To be effective, feminism needs to become an ongoing prac-
tice of changing one’s language, one’s expectations, one’s ideas of nor-
malcy.” Buddhism after Patriarchy, 128.
99. While Sandee distinguishes structural critique from Buddhism, it is
consistent with Buddhist practice, particularly with forms of socially
engaged Buddhism. See, for example, Thich, Interbeing.
100. By “overdetermination” I mean the ways that political, economic, and
social structures and practices contribute to individual experiences of
oppression, victimization, and privilege. With “arbitrariness,” I refer
to those aspects of life and personal experience that are not directly
connected with human structures, such as climate, weather, and geo-
logical phenomena, or the ways that some people find the resources to
survive or thrive despite the odds stacked against them. Here I think of
Irena Klepfisz’s poem “Bashert,” which illustrates in the dedication the
simultaneous overdetermination and arbitrariness of death and survival
during the Holocaust. In Against Forgetting, ed. Carolyn Forché (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 391–403. By “the illusion and reality of
separation,” I mean that, while we are all interconnected—through
intricate ecological and economic systems and, more fundamentally,
through matter and energy, which we are all exchanging all the time—
our beliefs in separation have real effects on our lives. The experience
of separation is real at the same time that it is fiction. Understanding
the depth of our interconnection enables compassion even in difficult
circumstances.
101. “Remembering This Bridge, Remembering Ourselves: Yearning,
Memory, and Desire,” in This Bridge We Call Home, 100.
102. “Del puente al arco iris: transformando de guerrera a mujer de la paz-
From Bridge to Rainbow: Transforming from Warrior to Woman of
Peace,” in This Bridge We Call Home, 48.
103. This has been the slogan of the World Social Forum since its first
meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001. World Social Forum
International Council, “World Social Forum Charter of Principles,”
World Social Forum, accessed June 29, 2009, http://www.forum
socialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=4&cd_language=2.
104. “Del puente al arco iris,” 49.
105. Ibid., 50.
106. For more on peacemaking, see Ira Chernus, American Nonviolence:
The History of an Idea (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2004).
107. Interbeing, 27.
108. Touching Feeling, 150–151.
109. Ibid., 136–137.
110. A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood (Toronto:
Sumach, 2000), 15.
111. Ibid., 51.
112. Ibid., 55, 15.
No t e s 211
113. Ibid., 14.

115. The use of “paranoid” to refer to a critical position or view of society,
as this case demonstrates well, should recall the saying “Just because
you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”
117. Ibid., 54, 64.
118. Sisters of the Yam, 62; original emphasis.
119. Ibid., 62. Educator and activist Sheila Radford-Hill also connects
expressing emotions with healing: “When we simply jettison the pain,
bury the shame, and hide the confusion of our disappointments, the
power of our emotions becomes unavailable for healing use.” Further
to Fly: Black Women and the Politics of Empowerment (Minneapolis,
MN: U of Minnesota P, 2000), 40.
122. Thanks to Jim Bobbit for his discussion of intrinsic goodness at
Shambhala Training, Level 2 (lecture, Shambhala Center, Washington,
DC, October 17, 2008). See chapter 3 for further discussion of this
concept.
2 Love: Activist Motivations

1993), 129–30.
2. Literary critic and philosopher Martha Nussbaum connects anger—as
well as fear, grief, and joy—with love, viewing these emotions in
“dynamic relationship to one another. Given a deep attachment to
something outside one’s own control, the very accidents of life, com-
bined with that attachment to an object” will produce different emo-
tions. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 2001, Kindle ed.), Loc. 1343. She views emotions “as
a certain sort of vision or recognition, as value-laden ways of under-
standing the world.” Ibid., Loc. 1362.
3. Brazilian educator Paulo Freire writes of revolutionary love, “Because
love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others. No
matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment
to their cause—the cause of liberation” and “I am more and more con-
vinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because
of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love.” Pedagogy of the
Oppressed, 30th anniv. ed., trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (New York:
Continuum, 2000), 89; 89 n. 4. Poet Adrienne Rich distinguishes
revolutionary love from technocratic hatred: “The revolutionary art-
ist, the relayer of possibility, draws on such powers, in opposition to
a technocratic society’s hatred of multiformity, hatred of the natural
world, hatred of the body, hatred of darkness and women, hatred of
212 No t e s
disobedience. The revolutionary poet loves people, rivers, other crea-

tures, stones, trees inseparably from art, is not ashamed of any of these
loves, and for them conjures a language that is public, intimate, invit-
ing, terrifying, and beloved.” What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry
and Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993), 250.
4. Social movement scholars identify political opportunities (Doug
McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency
[Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982]; William Gamson and David S.
Meyer, “Framing Political Opportunity,” in Comparative Perspectives
on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures,
and Cultural Framings, ed. Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy,
and Mayer N. Zald [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996], 275–290),
strategic capacities (Marshall Ganz, “Resources and Resourcefulness:
Strategic Capacity in the Unionization of California Agriculture,
1959–1966,” American Journal of Sociology 105 [2000]: 1003–1062),
resource mobilization (John McCarthy and Mayer Zald, “Resource
Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” American
Journal of Sociology 82 [1977]: 1212–1241; Bert Klandermans,
“Mobilization and Participation: Social-Psychological Expansions
of Resource Mobilization Theory,” American Sociological Review
49 [1984]: 583–600; Myra Marx Ferree, “The Political Context of
Rationality: Rational Choice Theory and Resource Mobilization,”
in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon Morris and Carol
McClurg Mueller [New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1992], 29–52), fram-
ing processes (David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Ideology,
Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization,” in From Structure
to Action: Comparing Social Movement Research across Cultures, ed.
Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Sidney Tarrow [Greenwich,
CT: JAI, 1988]; David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, “Master
Frames and Cycles of Protest,” in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory,
133–155), collective identities (Alberto Melucci, “Getting involved:
Identity and mobilization in social movements,” International
Social Movement Research 1 [1988]: 329–48; William A. Gamson,
Talking Politics. New York: Cambridge UP, 1992); Joshua Gamson,
“The Organizational Shaping of Collective Identity: The Case of
Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals in New York,” Sociological Forum 11,
no. 2 [June 1996]: 231–261; Verta Taylor and Nancy E. Whittier,
“Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian
Feminist Mobilization,” in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory,
104 –129; Debra Friedman and Doug McAdam, “Collective Identity
and Activism: Networks, Choices, and the Life of a Social Movement,”
in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon Morris and Carol
McClurg Mueller [New Haven: Yale UP, 1992], 156–73), social
networks (David A. Snow, Louis A. Zurcher, Jr., and Sheld Ekland-
Olson, “Social Networks and Social Movements: A Microstructural
Approach to Differential Recruitment,” American Sociological Review
No t e s 213
45 [1980]: 787–801; Roberto Fernandez and Doug McAdam, “Social

Networks and Social Movements: Multiorganizational Fields and
Recruitment to Mississippi Freedom Summer,” Sociological Forum 3,
no. 3 [June 1988]: 357–382; Roger V. Gould, “Collective Action and
Network Structure,” American Sociological Review 58, no. 2 [April
1993]: 182–96; Doug McAdam and Ronnelle Paulsen, “Specifying
the Relationship Between Social Ties and Activism,” American
Journal of Sociology 99 [1993]: 640–667), emotions (Sandra Morgen,
“Towards a Politics of ‘Feelings’: Beyond the Dialectic of Thought and
Action,” Women’s Studies 10 [1983]: 203–223; Taylor, “Watching for
Vibes: Bringing Emotions into the Study of Feminist Organizations,”
in Feminist Organizations: Harvest of the New Women’s Movement, ed.
Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin [Philadelphia: Temple
UP, 1995], 223–233; James M. Jasper, “The Emotions of Protest:
Affective and Reactive Emotions in and around Social Movements,”
Sociological Forum 13 [1998]: 397–424; Jeff Goodwin, James M.
Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and
Social Movements [Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001]), and combina-
tions thereof (Jean L. Cohen, “Strategy or Identity: New Theoretical
Paradigms and Contemporary Social Movements,” Social Research 52
[1985]: 663–716; Bert Klandermans and Dirk Oegema, “Potentials,
Networks, Motivations, and Barriers: Steps towards Participation in
Social Movements,” American Sociological Review 52 [1987]: 519–
531; Pamela E. Oliver, “Formal Models of Collective Action,” Annual
Review of Sociology 19 [1993]: 271–300; Doug McAdam, John D.
McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds., Comparative Perspectives on
Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and
Cultural Framings [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996]), as factors that
lead people to engage in collective action in the short-term. Alexandra
F. Corning and Daniel J. Myers draw on a wide range of social move-
ment research to propose a scale to measure individuals’ likelihood
to have a relatively stable propensity to be involved in social move-
ments, which they call “activist orientation.” “Individual Orientation
toward Engagement in Social Action,” Political Psychology 23, no. 4
(December 2002): 703–729. While I am more interested in exploring
emotional dynamics than predicting who is likely to engage in activist
behavior, I appreciate the concept of “activist orientation” for how it
conveys the idea that some people have an enduring propensity to be
involved in the work of social change. Jasper’s discussion of “activist
identity” also reflects this understanding. The Art of Moral Protest:
Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago: U
of Chicago P, 1997).
5. Jasper argues for the usefulness of “‘life course’ analysis” because
“Research that focuses on organizations of protest, as important as
these are, loses sight of careers of protest, the personalities of protest-
ers, and the pleasures of protest.” Ibid., 215. Focusing on activist life
214 No t e s
stories enables a view of the many complex emotions that accompany

protest. Other sociologists who use in-depth interviews with small sam-
ples of activists to examine sustained participation in social movements
include Florence Passy and Marco Giugni and James Downton, Jr.,
and Paul Wehr, though these scholars focus more on beliefs and social
networks than emotions. Florence Passy and Marco Giugni, “Life-
Spheres, Networks, and Sustained Participation in Social Movements:
A Phenomenological Approach to Political Commitment,” Sociological
Forum 15, no. 1 (March 2000): 117–144. James Downton, Jr., and Paul
Wehr, “Persistent Pacifism: How Activist Commitment Is Developed
and Sustained,” Journal of Peace Research 35, no. 5 (September 1998):
531–550.
6. While I treat feelings and cognition as different aspects of decisions to
get involved in activism, they are not dichotomous. Feelings involve
cognitive identification and processing as well as physical sensation.
For an overview of cognitive aspects of emotions, see A. Mathews
and C. MacLeod, “Cognitive Approaches to Emotion and Emotional
Disorders,” Annual Review of Psychology 45 (1994): 25–50.
7. “Watching for Vibes,” 232–233. Nussbaum makes an extensive argu-
ment for the role of cognition in emotion in Upheavals of Thought.
8. “The Emotions of Protest.”
9. Ibid., 417.
10. Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement,
1945 to the 1960s (New York: Oxford UP, 1987), 86.
11. “The Emotions of Protest,” 415.
12. Ibid., 414.
13. Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency (Chicago: U
of Chicago P, 1982), x; original emphasis.
14. “Second that Emotion?: Lessons from Once-Novel Concepts in Social
Movement Research,” in Passionate Politics, 305. “Watching for
Vibes,” 230. Feminist pacifist and civil rights activist Barbara Deming
distinguishes two kinds of anger: anger that manifests as determina-
tion to bring about change and “murderous” anger. The first is an
anger based in respect: “To oneself it says: ‘I must change—for I have
been playing the part of the slave.’ To the other it says: ‘You must
change—for you have been playing the part of the tyrant.’” The other,
unhealthy anger, is based in fear that “you can’t change—and I can’t
change if you are still there. It asserts not: change! But: drop dead!”
Deming writes, “Our task of course, is to transmute the anger that is
affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change.”
She suggests that that could be “a definition of revolution.” We Are All
Part of One Another: A Barbara Deming Reader, ed. Jane Meyerding
(Philadelphia: New Society, 1984), 212–213.
15. “Identity, Emotion, and Feminist Collective Action,” Gender and
Society 13, no. 1 (February 1999): 34–55.
No t e s 215
16. An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures

(Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003).
17. While part of my interest in emphasizing love as the foundation of anger
is in response to the widespread discomfort with and dismissal of activ-
ist anger, I also agree with Audre Lorde’s critique and her view of anger
as regenerative: “It is not the anger of Black women which corrodes into
blind, dehumanizing power, bent upon the annihilation of us all unless
we meet it with what we have, our power to examine and to redefine
the terms upon which we will live and work; our power to envision and
to reconstruct, anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a future
of pollinating difference and the earth to support our choices.” Sister
Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: Crossing P, 1984), 133. As
Nussbaum notes, “Anger . . . is an appropriate response to injustice and
serious wrongdoing.” She validates its importance as “a major force for
social justice and the defense of the oppressed.” Upheavals, Loc. 5691.
18. “Identity,” 53, 49.
19. Nussbaum also argues that morality grows from and relies on emo-
tions. Upheavals, Loc. 3284.
20. The issue of recruitment is notable because most studies of activist
motivation focus on organizations or other activists recruiting people
to participate. This focus overlooks the experience of activists who seek
out ways to respond to injustice. Many activists get involved in social
justice movements without being directly recruited and maintain a
commitment to social change throughout their lives. Understanding
the motivations of such people, who often have an “activist identity,”
requires oral history or longitudinal methods that enable a view of
changing understandings about the work.
21. “The Emotions of Protest,” 409. My use of “morality” seems similar to
Jasper’s. I use “morality” to connote judgments made based on feelings
about what is right. I would use “ethics” to refer to such judgments
when described as based in reason or intellectual processes. In the inter-
views conducted for this project, research participants speak much more
about what “feels right” than a more abstract system of ethics.
22. Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My
Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table:
Women of Color P, 1983), xiv.
23. bell hooks, Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-recovery (Boston:
South End, 1993), 130–131.
24. “Passions and Constraint: The Marginalization of Passion in Liberal
Political Theory,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 28, no. 6 (2002): 742.
25. Ibid., 742, 736. Philosopher Michael Walzer summarizes his discussion
of the “entanglement” of reason and passion in politics, writing, “the
dichotomies that set ‘passionate intensity’ against some sort of inter-
ested or principled rationality, heat against light, are so pervasive in
political thinking that perhaps it is enough to say simply that they are
216 No t e s
useless, that they correspond to nothing at all in the actual experience of

political engagement.” “Passion and Politics: Introduction,” Philosophy
and Social Criticism 28, no. 6 (2002): 631. Philosopher Chantal Mouffe
connects passion with democracy, arguing, “Modern democracy’s legit-
imation of conflict and the refusal to suppress it through the imposition
of an authoritarian order is why we are required to acknowledge social
division and to come to terms with the different passions that are at
stake in its many forms of expression.” Democracy requires understand-
ing what passions drive political involvement. Ibid., 616.
26. Ibid., 736. Despite such work in philosophy, sociology, and psychology
insisting that reason and emotion are inseparable, there remains wide-
spread discomfort in academic circles with love’s seeming irrationality.
Cultural studies scholar Laura Kipnis takes issue with conventional dis-
courses of love and obligation, arguing, “If without love we’re losers
and our lives bereft, how susceptible we’ll also be to any social program
promoted in its name.” Against Love: A Polemic (New York: Vintage
Books-Random House, 2003), 26. Still, she finds possibilities: “Love
could be a zone to experiment with wishes and possibilities and even
utopian fantasies about gratification and plenitude.” Ibid., 199. Kipnis’s
analysis of how the rhetoric of love often supports the status quo points
to the necessity for the kind of internal work discussed as self-care and
self-reflection in chapter 3. Experiences of erotic power (Lorde, Sister
Outsider) and connection help people feel revolutionary love even when
bombarded with cultural messages that attempt to dictate the meaning
of love. The possibility for each person to understand love intuitively in
ways that counter cultural messages is part of its revolutionary promise.
27. “Playfulness, ‘World’-Travelling, and Loving Perception,” in Feminist
Social Thought: A Reader, ed. Diana Tietjens Meyers (New York:
Routledge, 1997), 150.
28. “In the Presence of Spirit(s): A Meditation on the Politics of Solidarity
and Transformation,” in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions
for Transformation, ed. Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating (New
York: Routledge, 2002), 532.
30. Alice Walker, Sharon Salzberg, and Melvin McLeod, “The Power of
Loving Kindness,” Shambhala Sun (January 1997), accessed February
24, 2009, http://www.shambhalasun.com.
31. Healing the Soul of America: Reclaiming Our Voices as Spiritual
Citizens (New York: Touchstone, 2000), 142.
32. Ibid.,53.
33. Ibid., 30.
34. Ibid., 170.
35. Ibid., 198.
2000), 2; 140.
37. Ibid., 197, n. 61. See chapter 1.
No t e s 217
38. Lugones borrows “arrogant perception” from Marilyn Frye’s “In and
Out of Harm’s Way: Arrogance and Love,” in The Politics of Reality:
Essays in Feminist Theory (Berkeley: Crossing P, 1983).
39. Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (Boston: Shambhala,
1988), 28.
40. Ibid.
41. Lorde, Sister Outsider, 56.
42. Gloria Steinem also connects self-love with social change in Revolution
from Within: A Book of Self-esteem (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992).
43. Struggles with shame and self-esteem are common themes in LGBTQ
writing. See, for example, Dorothy Allison, Skin: Talking About Sex,
Class & Literature (Ithaca: Firebrand, 1994); Ana Castillo, “La Macha:
Toward a Beautiful Whole Self,” in Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our
Mothers Warned Us About, ed. Carla Trujillo (Berkeley: Third Woman,
1991), 24–48; Eli Clare, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and
Liberation (Cambridge, MA: South End, 1999); Phillip Brian Harper,
“The Evidence of Felt Intuition: Minority Experience, Everyday
Life, and Critical Speculative Knowledge,” in Black Queer Studies:
A Critical Anthology, ed. E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson
(Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2005), 106–123; Loraine Hutchins and
Lani Kaahumanu, eds., Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out
(Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 1991); Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and
Riki Wilchins, Gender Queer: Voices from beyond the Sexual Binary
(Los Angeles: Alyson, 2002); Minnie Bruce Pratt, Rebellion: Essays
1980–1991 (Ithaca: Firebrand, 1991); Juanita Ramos, comp. and ed.,
Compañeras: Latina Lesbians (An Anthology) (New York: Latina
Lesbian History Project, 1987); Eveline Shen, “In Search of a More
Complete Definition of Activism,” in The Very Inside: An Anthology
of Writing by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women,
ed. Sharon Lim-Hing (Toronto: Sister Vision, 1994), 380–383;
Makeda Silvera, ed., Piece of my Heart: A Lesbian of Color Anthology
(Toronto: Sister Vision, 1991); and Ann Yuri Uyeda, “All At Once, All
Together: One Asian American Lesbian’s Account of the 1989 Asian
Pacific Lesbian Network Retreat,” The Very Inside, 109–121. In her
psychoanalytic analysis of human emotional development, Nussbaum
writes, “in a world made for the normal, any child who is in any way
non-normal is at risk for shame hypertrophy, particularly if the culture
is intolerant of difference, as most cultures, especially child cultures,
are.” Upheavals, Loc. 2954. Nussbaum sees shame as “a threat to all
possibility of morality and community, and indeed to a creative inner
life.” Ibid., Loc. 3224.
44. Queer feminist theorist Judith Butler references the emotional power of
loving self-assertion when she writes, “What moves me politically, and
that for which I want to make room, is the moment in which a subject—
a person, a collective—asserts a right or entitlement to a livable life when
no such prior authorization exists, when no clearly enabling convention
218 No t e s
is in place.” Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004), 224. This

expresses well what I find beautiful in intersectional activism.
45. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction,
Trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1990 [1978]).
46. Gandhi, Mahatma [Mohandas], Selected Political Writings, ed. Dennis
Dalton (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), 52.
48. “Persistent Pacifism,” 536.
49. Sociologists Douglas Schrock, Daphne Holden, and Lori Reid describe
the process through which social movements encourage the develop-
ment of self-esteem and the transformation of feelings of shame into
anger at injustice as “emotional mobilization.” They focus on how
this emotion work happens through support groups and the actions of
social movement organizations, specifically in middle-class transgender
activism. Emotional mobilization produces what they term “emotional
resonance,” which they define as “the emotional harmony and/or
tension between collective action frames . . . and the emotional lives of
potential recruits.” Douglas Schrock, Daphne Holden, and Lori Reid.
“Creating Emotional Resonance: Interpersonal Emotion Work and
Motivational Framing in a Transgender Community,” Social Problems
51, no. 4 (February 2004): 62. The narratives in my study point to
the unstructured process by which emotional resonance often occurs
in a society in which discourses of freedom, civil rights, and therapy
have become pervasive, thanks largely to social movements. Both law
professor Mary Ann Glendon and sociologist Frank Furedi, in their
critiques of “the American rights dialect” and therapeutic discourse,
respectively, view the popular forms of these discourses as individual-
izing and counter to notions of social responsibility. In these activist
life narratives, we see how these discourses can also promote social
involvement and political action. Mary Ann Glendon, Rights Talk: The
Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: Free P, 1970); Frank
Furedi, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain
Age (London: Routledge, 2004).
50. For more on coming out narratives see Judith Roof’s Come as You Are:
Sexuality and Narrative (New York: Columbia UP, 1996); Kenneth
Plummer’s Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds
(New York: Routledge, 1994); Bonnie Zimmerman’s “The Politics of
Transliteration: Lesbian Personal Narratives,” Signs 9, no. 4 (Summer
1984): 663–682; Kath Weston’s Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays,
Kinship (New York: Columbia UP, 1997); and Esther Saxey’s Homoplot:
The Coming-Out Story and Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Identity (New
York: Peter Lang, 2008). The narrators in my study did not tell the
“standard” coming out story, with its demonization of homophobic
individuals and structures, glorification of queer suffering, and fixa-
tion on identity. Instead, when asked about coming out, most of the
narrators focused more on how their understandings of their sexual
No t e s 219
identities developed, often not constructing any coherent narrative of

sexuality.
51. See Arlie Russell Hothschild, “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and
Social Structure,” American Journal of Sociology 85, no. 3 (November
1979): 551–575.
52. As literary studies scholar Cheryl Clarke points out, “Lorde was
among a community of pioneers who broke the silence by writing
about lesbian sexuality and the erotic.” “After Mecca”: Women Poets
and the Black Arts Movement (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP,
2005), 142.
53. Nussbaum writes that shame can get in the way of “unconditional
love.” Upheavals, Loc. 2065.
54. The Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, DC,“MCCDC
| For the GLBT Community,” Welcome to MCCDC. n.d., accessed
June 4, 2009, http://www.mccdc.com/smallpopup/glbt_letter.htm.
55. Pseudonym.
56. Julia’s story resonates with Verta Taylor’s observations of how feminist
activism shifts feelings of anger into feelings of pride. “Emotions and
Identity in Women’s Self-help Movements,” in Self, Identity, and Social
Movements (Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 2000), 271–299.
57. For antiracist feminist writer June Jordan, being black and feminist
necessitates developing self-love: “I must undertake to love myself and
respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-
respect.” “Where Is the Love?,” in Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo
Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Feminists of Color, ed. Gloria
Anzaldúa (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1990), 174. For her, the ability
to accept people who are different comes with self-love and self-deter-
mination: “If I am a Black feminist serious in undertaking self-love, it
seems to me that I should gain and gain and gain in strength so that I
may without fear be willing and able to love and respect, for example,
women who are not feminists, not professionals, not as old or as young
as I am, women who have neither job nor income, women who are
not Black.” Ibid., 175. Anzaldúa makes a similar connection between
self-acceptance and accepting others: “We can no longer withdraw. To
rage and look upon you with contempt is to rage and be contemptuous
of ourselves. We can no longer blame you, nor disown the white parts,
the male parts, the pathological parts, the queer parts, the vulnerable
parts. Here we are weaponless with open arms, with only our magic.”
Borderlands/La Frontera, 88.
58. Loving in the War Years, expanded ed. (Cambridge, MA: South End,
2000), 126; original emphasis.
59. Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? (New York: Vintage, 1992), xiv.
60. Pseudonym.
61. Upheavals, Loc. 4364.
62. The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
(Boston: Shambhala, 2002), 4; Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108
220 No t e s
Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion (Boston:

Shambhala, 2008), 3.
63. Ibid.
64. “Now Let Us Shift,” 540.
65. Nussbaum reminds us that compassion without social action is not
enough: “People can all-too-easily feel that they have done something
morally good because they have had an experience of compassion –
without having to take any of the steps to change the world that
might involve them in real difficulty and sacrifice.” Upheavals, Loc.
5773.
66. Selected Political Writings, 50.
67. Pseudonym.
68. See philosopher Charles Taylor on connections between “selfhood
and morality.” Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992), 3.
69. The Peace Way Foundation, “Ethnic Groups,” Burma Issues, n.d.,
accessed June 12, 2009, http://www.burmaissues.org/En/ethnic
groups1.html.
70. Human Rights Watch, “Burma: World’s Highest Number of Child
Soldiers,” Human Rights Watch, October 15, 2002, accessed June 12,
2009, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2002/10/15/burma-worlds
-highest-number-child-soldiers.
71. Genocide Intervention Network, “Eastern Burma,” July 9, 2009,
Genocide Intervention Network, Inc., accessed August 18, 2009,
http://www.genocideintervention.net/educate/crisis/burma.
72. Pseudonym.
73. An Archive of Feelings, 179.
74. Pseudonym.
75. Walker, Salzberg, and McLeod, “The Power of Loving Kindness.”
76. “Re: Quotes for Your Approval—Love,” E-mail to author, June 25,
2009.
77. An Ethics of Dissensus: Postmodernity, Feminism, and the Politics of
Radical Democracy (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2001), 6.
78. Much of the difficulty of organizing comes from the effects of deep
wounds that have both the capacity to bring people together and the
ability to produce a narrow focus on one’s own victimization. Moraga
writes, “I think what is hardest for any oppressed people to understand
is that the sources of oppression form not only our radicalism, but also
our pain.” Oppression, the basis for many political struggles, can have
both expansive and narrowing effects. The pain of oppression can make
people harm themselves and others and resist the expansive connections
of love. Moraga writes of the double bind of oppression: “Oppression
does not make for hearts as big as all outdoors. Oppression makes us big
and small. Expressive and silent. Deep and dead.” Loving, 125; original
italics. Oppression can make us expressive of our anger and silent about
our pain, and vice versa. It can lead us to form expansive communities
No t e s 221
and connections and lead us to focus narrowly on our own injuries and
personal experience. Oppression can produce incredible generosity of
spirit, and it can result in desensitization in order to survive.
79. Shambhala, 46.
80. For more on managing emotions, see Hothschild, “Emotion Work.”
81. Shiva also posits that the professionalization of activism may contrib-
ute to what she sees as a shortage of personal caring and friendships
among activists: “I feel that work needs to be paid. But at the same
time I think for some people who do this work, it is not coming from
any major emotional connection to what they’re doing. It is an intel-
lectual or a cerebral connection. It’s not that they therefore don’t do
good work. It’s just that it goes that far and not that much further.”
Many older activists feel that the institutional structures that activists
have created to ensure their work has an ongoing impact have changed
the dynamics of social change work. Some, like Shiva, suggest that, by
making activism a paid profession, people may choose to be involved
who might not feel the passion that drives those who work to create the
professional structures from scratch.
82. Shambhala, 65.
83. Moraga, Loving, 126; original emphasis.
85. Ibid., 147.
86. See chapter 3.
3 Faith: Connecting Activist

Beliefs and Methods
1. Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My Back:
Writings by Radical Women of Color, 1981 (Berkeley: Third Woman,
2002), xviii.
2. Ibid. Moraga quotes an unpublished paper by antiracist feminist writer
Barbara Smith on the belief in humanity that undergirds the civil rights
and women’s movements and black feminism: “The Civil Rights move-
ment was based upon the concept of love and deep spirituality. It was a
movement with a transcendent vision. A movement whose very goal was
to change the impossible, what people thought could not be changed . . . The
women’s movement has some of these same qualities, a belief in the
human. Actually Black feminism is a kind of divine coalescing of
the two because as Black women we have an identity and therefore a
politics that requires faith in the humanness of Blackness and female-
ness.” The civil rights movement, Smith argues, involved “the constant
demonstration that we are really the human ones,” a project shared
by black lesbian feminism: “We will show you what it means to be
human, what it means to really care about humanity.” Loving in the
War Years, expanded ed. (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2000), 122;
original emphasis.
222 No t e s
3. “Faith, n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. 1989, accessed January
15, 2009, http://dictionary.oed.com.
4. “Performing Gender, Enacting Community: Women, Whiteness, and
Belief in Contemporary Public Demonstrations” (PhD diss., U of
California, Santa Barbara, 2007), 26–27.
5. “Political Religion: Secularity and the Study of Religion in Global
Civil Society,” in Religion, Spirituality and the Social Sciences, ed. Basia
Spalek and Alia Imtoual (Bristol, UK: Policy P, 2008), 10.
6. Ibid., 14–15.
7. Born to Belonging: Writings on Spirit and Justice (New Brunswick, NJ:
Rutgers UP, 2002), 2.
8. I am not interested in evaluating the merit of these beliefs but in
explaining their role in social change and how they affect activist
practice. Sociologists Rodney Stark and Roger Finke critique “the
once-dominant social scientific view that religion is false.” They
point out that the view that “no rational actor, in a modern situation,
could accept false beliefs lacking scientific verification . . . was itself
a belief lacking scientific verification.” Acts of Faith: Explaining the
Human Side of Religion (Berkeley: U of California P, 2000), 55. They
argue that social scientists must “be able sufficiently to suspend their
unbelief so as to gain some sense of the phenomenology of faith and
worship” (Ibid., 21). This holds true for studying political beliefs as
well as religious and spiritual faiths. In terms of methodology, May
views “behaviours and the meanings attributed to them by actors”
as “the basic units of the study of religions” and, like Stark and
Finke, encourages social scientists to engage personally with differ-
ent religious views. “Political Religion,” 17; original emphasis. While
Stark and Fink argue that scholars of religion must try to understand
religious beliefs as part of their project to revalue the study of large
religious institutions and dominant faiths, May’s interest is in how
religious beliefs can work to fight the “evils of globalization”: “When
asserting the dignity of the human, the inviolability of nature and
the common good, the religions—at their best—are bringing to bear
on these problems historically rooted and communally tested value
orientations.” Ibid., 19.
9. Jim Bobbitt (talk given at Shambhala Training, Level 2, Washington,
DC, October 17, 2008).
10. Thanks to Jim Bobbit for offering this example.
11. Pseudonym.
12. Ki in Daily Life (Haga-gun, Tochigi, Japan: Ki No Kenkyukai, H.Q.:
2001), 89.
13. Ibid., 75.
14. See chapter 1, n. 13. Both tactics and strategies often have a specific
goal in mind, whereas technologies reflect broader principles and
enable one to choose among strategies and tactics. The terms are not
completely distinct and can overlap in usage.
No t e s 223
15. How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflections on Service (New York: Knopf,
2003), 158.
16. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th anniv. ed., trans. Myra Bergman Ramos
(New York: Continuum, 2000), 90. Antiracist feminist sociologist
Patricia Hill Collins includes dialogue as an element of black feminist
epistemology. See Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness,
and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge,
2000), chapter 11.
17. Pedagogy, 91.
18. Lorraine M. Gutiérrez and Edith A. Lewis describe a similar strategy of
empowerment in their guide for social workers who want to empower
their clients to make changes in their own lives and communities in
Empowering Women of Color (New York: Columbia UP, 1999).
19. The power of “empowerment” is what Starhawk calls “power-from-
within.” Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics, 15th anniv.
ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1997), 3–4. For a critique of the ubiquitous
term “empowerment,” see Janet Townsend, Emma Zapata, Joanna
Rowlands, Pilar Alberi, and Marta Mercado, Women and Power:
Fighting Patriarchies and Poverty (London: Zed Books, 1999).
20. “Empower verb,” The Oxford Dictionary of English (revised edition),
ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford UP, 2005),
Oxford Reference Online, accessed March 5, 2008, http://www.oxford
reference.com.
21. Collins connects individual empowerment with social change: “As each
individual African-American woman changes her ideas and actions, so
does the overall shape of power itself change.” Black Feminist, 275.
22. Colette specifically mentions authors Lorde, Bambara, hooks, Collins,
and the Combahee River Collective, as well as anthologies such as
Sonia Shah, ed., Dragon Ladies: Asian American Feminists Breathe
Fire (Boston: South End, 1997) and Barbara Smith, ed., Home Girls:
A Black Feminist Anthology (New York: Kitchen Table, 1983).
23. “Social Movements and Oppositional Consciousness,” in Oppositional
Consciousness: The Subjective Roots of Social Protest, ed. Jane Mansbridge
and Aldon Morris (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001), 27.
24. Celine Parreñas Shimizu discusses how Asian/American women nego-
tiate the bind of hypersexual representation. See my discussion of her
book, The Hypersexuality of Race, in chapter 1.
25. “Now Let Us Shift . . . the Path of Conocimiento . . . Inner Work, Public
Acts,” in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation,
ed. Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating (New York: Routledge,
2002), 571.
26. For Anzaldúa, agency and empowerment are connected with spiritual
faith because believing that oneself and the universe are connected
means that one’s actions affect others. Empowerment, in this view, is
not the same as having the power to determine what happens. Rather,
it is rooted in a sense of connection with the divine, the universe,
224 No t e s
intuitive knowledge, or with one’s “work” (in Audre Lorde’s sense) or

purpose.
27. Freire writes, “Those who authentically commit themselves to the peo-
ple must re-examine themselves constantly.” Pedagogy, 60.
28. This Bridge Called My Back, xxii. The idea of “true self” gestures
toward the epistemology of the erotic, rather than seeking an uncom-
plicated internal essence. See chapter 1, n. 40.
29. This insistence on the need for personal and collective healing as part
of social change is evident in much of the work by multiracial feminists.
See chapter 1.
30. “Remembering This Bridge, Remembering Ourselves: Yearning,
Memory, and Desire,” in This Bridge We Call Home, 299.
31. Sociologist James M. Jasper writes of the role of emotions in social
movement decline:
We become addicted to protest activities, commit huge amounts
of time to them, and become exhausted; we have unrealistic
expectations of social change and are easily disappointed. [Albert
O.] Hirschman’s description of these dynamics depends (mostly
implicitly) on emotions such as excitement, disappointment, and
frustration [(1992)].
Because of the emotional and energetic demands of social movement
work, sustaining a commitment to activism requires taking care of one-
self and finding meaning in the work besides the hope for concrete
results.
“The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions in and
around Social Movements,” Sociological Forum 13 (1998): 419.
32. The Black Woman: An Anthology, 1970 (New York: Washington Square,
2005), 133.
33. This Bridge Called My Back, vi, viii.
34. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: Crossing P, 1984),
174.
35. The Black Woman, 132.
36. Pedagogy, 79.
1993),5.
38. Alice Walker and Pema Chödrön, “Good Medicine for This World,”
Shambhala Sun (January 1999), accessed February 24, 2009, http://
shambhalasun.com.
40. “Remembering This Bridge,” 99; original emphasis.
41. Lorde died of cancer in 1992 at the age of 58. Alexis De Veaux, Warrior
Poet: A Biography of AudreLorde (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004),
365. Bambara died of cancer in 1995 at the age of 56. Maureen Schirak,
“Toni Cade Bambara,” ed. Lauren Curtright, Voices from the Gaps
(August 11, 2004, Regents of the U of Minnesota), accessed August
18, 2009, http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/bambaraToni.php.
No t e s 225
42. How Can I Help?, 227; original emphasis.

44. hooks’ focus on encouraging appreciation, dignity, and kindness
among black people can be extended to people from other marginal-
ized groups and from dominant groups as well, from the perspective
that oppression harms the oppressor and that exploiting others dis-
honors oneself. Holding oppressors accountable for the harm that they
cause is an act of respect for their agency and dignity.
45. Walker and Chödrön, “Good Medicine.”
46. How Can I Help?, 66.
47. Pseudonym.
49. “About Re-evaluation Counseling,” Re-evaluation Counseling, 2007,
The International Re-evaluation Counseling Communities, accessed
August 18, 2009, http://www.rc.org/.
50. “Bridge, Drawbridge, Sandbar or Island: Lesbians of Color Hacienda
Alianzas,” in Bridges of Power: Women’s Multicultural Alliances, ed. Lisa
Albrecht and Rose Brewer (Philadelphia: New Society, 1990), 228.
51. Freire writes, “It is necessary to trust in the oppressed and in their
ability to reason. Whoever lacks this trust will fail to initiate (or will
abandon) dialogue, reflection, and communication, and will fall into
using slogans, communiqués, monologues, and instructions.” He also
connects trust with self-examination. Pedagogy, 66.
52. Trusting those with whom we disagree is often difficult, because, as
James M. Jasper notes, “We tend to trust those we agree with and
agree with those we trust.” Trust also carries risks: “Generalized trust
in the political system, furthermore, affects political behavior, usually
dampening protest because of an assumption that the government will
fix things without public pressure.” “The Emotions of Protest,” 402.
The trust I advocate is not a way to avoid political work but a call to do
political work that supports individual and community self-develop-
ment, trusting that if individuals and communities can get their basic
human needs met and reflect on their values and principles, they will
do good work that will benefit themselves and their communities.
53. Pedagogy, 54. See introduction, n. 12.
54. I use “compassion” in the Buddhist sense of an active practice of
using one’s own experiences to understand others’ feelings. American
Buddhist nun and author Pema Chödrön writes, “In cultivating com-
passion we draw from the wholeness of our experience–our suffer-
ing, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this
way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the
wounded. It’s a relationship between equals . . . Compassion becomes
real when we recognize our shared humanity.” The Places That Scare
You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times (Boston: Shambhala,
2002), 50. hooks writes of the importance of compassion for fighting
oppression: “Compassion and forgiveness make reconciliation possible.
226 No t e s
Compassion combines the capacity to empathize with another’s dis-

tress and the will and desire to ease that distress . . . Rather than seeing
giving care as diminishing us, we will experience the kind of caregiving
that enriches the giver.” Sisters of the Yam, 168. She adds, “Since we
know that we are wounded, since we know in our hearts that racism
and sexism hurt, that many of us are walking around surrounded by
a wall to keep anymore pain from coming in, then this knowledge
should create awareness, and this awareness should deepen our com-
passion.” Ibid.,170.
55. See Alberto Melucci, “Getting Involved: Identity and Mobilization in
Social Movements,” International Social Movement Research 1 (1988):
329–348; William A. Gamson, Talking Politics (New York: Cambridge
UP, 1992); Joshua Gamson, “The Organizational Shaping of Collective
Identity: The Case of Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals in New York,”
Sociological Forum 11, no. 2 (1996): 231–261; Verta Taylor and Nancy
E. Whittier, “Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities:
Lesbian Feminist Mobilization,” in Frontiers in Social Movement
Theory, ed. Aldon D. Morris and Carole McClurg Mueller (New Haven:
Yale UP, 1992), 104–129; and Debra Friedman and Doug McAdam,
“Collective Identity and Activism: Networks, Choices, and the Life of a
Social Movement,” in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, 156–173.
56. See Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black
Insurgency (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982) and William Gamson and
David S. Meyer, “Framing Political Opportunity,” in Comparative
Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing
Structures, and Cultural Framings, ed. Doug McAdam, John D.
McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996),
275–290.
58. The first Black Gay and Lesbian Pride festival was held in Washington,
DC, in May 1991, continuing a tradition of a Memorial Day weekend
Black lesbian and gay party that began in 1975 at the Club House.
DC’s celebration inspired the creation of Black Pride events through-
out the world. DC Black Pride, “History,” DC Black Pride: Liberty—
Unity—Strength, 2008, DC Black Pride Inc., accessed August 6, 2009,
http://www.dcblackpride.org/dcp_history.htm.
59. “Bridgebuilding” refers to the work of building understanding and con-
nections across differences such as race, class, gender, sexuality, disabil-
ity, and nation. See Anzaldúa and Moraga, This Bridge Called My Back.
60. Born to Belonging, 227.
61. See Sharon Lim-Hing, ed., The Very Inside: An Anthology of Writing
by Asian and Pacific Islander Lesbian and Bisexual Women (Toronto:
Sister Vision, 1994) and Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian
American Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1996).
62. Papaya explains that “same gender-loving” is used as a more descrip-
tive, rather than political, term: “Many people think that lesbian is a
No t e s 227
word that denotes a movement—they think of it as a political thing

much more than the simple act of loving.”
63. Donna’s denial of feeling angry in the above passage, though, raises the
stereotype of the angry black woman, an image that affects how black
women can enter the political arena. She describes throughout her life,
and in particular during her involvement with the Political Congress
of Black Women, being taught behavior considered “appropriate” for a
black woman: “You didn’t want to come out as an angry black woman.
You wanted to make sure your point got across, but it was very accept-
able to be highly intelligent and come out with that point, rather than
to just come out fighting and look angry and come off looking like
an angry Black woman with no basis. So you had to be appropriate at
all times, and that was even down to your attire.” Donna’s search for
responses other than anger responds to this imperative to “be appro-
priate” and respond in a manner that would be seen as intelligent rather
than angry. Womanist theologian Diana L. Hayes refers to the repre-
sentational challenges that black women face when she writes, “To be
a Black woman in today’s world is . . . , on the one hand, to be treated
as someone who has performed miracles simply by continuing to per-
sist in living life as she and she alone sees fit. On the other hand, it is
to be narrowly watched, critiqued and judged for every action, every
step, almost every breath taken.” Hagar’s Daughters: Womanist Ways of
Being in the World (New York: Paulist P, 1995), 54.
64. Donna attributes much of HRC’s success in bridging gaps between
white and black LGBT communities and between black civil rights and
LGBT communities to Birch’s connections and the spirit with which
she approached the work: “The way I look at her is she was definitely a
civil rights woman, with the connections of all of them, with all of the
groups, that was able to break through intersections and be okay with
it. That’s what it takes sometimes, to feel confident and know that you
come with love, you come with care, and you want to do this, you want
to do it right.” As Donna sees it, Birch’s confidence, which comes from
having clear intentions and working from a place of love, enables her
to work across differences and connect African American civil rights
leaders, white LGBT activists, and black LGBT people.
65. “Beginner’s Mind” refers to an attitude of openness to learning—
“an empty mind and a ready mind,” as opposed to an expert, who
thinks s/he knows a lot already. As Buddhist teacher Shunryu Suzuki
wrote in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “In the beginner’s mind there
are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few” (New York:
Weatherhill, 1970), 21.
66. Pseudonym.
67. Freire writes of how the oppressed often adopt the prescribed behavior
of the oppressor. He says that the oppressed “must perceive the reality
of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as
a limiting situation which they can transform.” Pedagogy, 49.
228 No t e s
68. Different Avenues, “About Different Avenues,” n.d., accessed February

23, 2009, http://www.differentavenues.org/about.html.
69. Here Ruby continues the work of LGBTQ direct action, particularly
groups such as Queer Nation and the Lesbian Avengers who have
insisted on their rights to be openly queer and fabulous in public.
LGBTQ direct action, in turn, follows the feminist “zap” actions of
the 1970s, which were an outgrowth of direct action in antiwar and
civil rights struggles.
70. The National Lesbian Conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia,
in 1991. See Tanya Sharon, Farar Elliott, and Cecile Latham, “The
National Lesbian Conference for, by, and about lesbians,” Off Our
Backs 21:6 (June 30, 1991): 1+.
71. Here Keating alludes to Maria Lugones’s “World Traveling and
Loving Perception.” “Forging El Mundo Zurdo: Changing Ourselves,
Changing the World,” in This Bridge We Call Home, 523.
73. Anzaldúa and Keating, This Bridge We Call Home, 4.
75. Stone completed her PhD in 2006.
76. Popular education focuses on dialogue, self-reflection, and group
discussion to raise awareness of social problems and empower people
to work for social change. Mark K. Smith, “Popular Education,” The
Encyclopaedia of Informal Education, 1996, Infed, accessed August 8,
2009, http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-poped.htm.
77. See chapter 1.
2000), 183. These abilities to decode and adapt are characteristics of
Anzaldúa’s new mestiza, whose work is also loving: “She is willing to
share, to make herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and think-
ing. She surrenders all notions of safety, of the familiar. Deconstruct,
construct. She becomes a nahual, able to transform herself into a tree,
a coyote, into another person. She learns to transform the small ‘I’
into the total Self.” Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San
Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1987), 82–83.
79. Methodology, 181–182.
80. Antiracist feminist activist and founder of the musical group Sweet
Honey in the Rock Bernice Johnson Reagon says that working in coali-
tion is not a place for comfort: “Most of the time you feel threatened
to the core and if you don’t, you’re not really doing no coalescing.”
“Coalition Politics: Turning the Century,” in Home Girls: A Black
Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith (New York: Kitchen Table,
1983), 356.
81. How Can I Help?, 166–167.
82. Donna is Christian and grew up attending Methodist and African
Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches in Tennessee, her father being
No t e s 229
a Methodist minister. Her use of the phrase “Come to Jesus meeting”

reflects her history of involvement in Christian churches.
4 Joy: Activist Pleasures

1. Alice Walker, Sharon Salzberg, and Melvin McLeod, “The Power of
Loving Kindness,” Shambhala Sun (January 1997), accessed February
24, 2009, http://www.shambhalasun.com.
2. In my research, I found that people from poor or working-class back-
grounds as well as people from more privileged backgrounds find plea-
sure in “helping” and connecting with others through direct service
work. This pleasure calls for a different analysis from the critique of
“helping” as a privileged position. Here I seek to revalue the pleasure
found in helping, regardless of the degree of privilege of those help-
ing. I find it very promising that many people enjoy helping others.
Embracing the impulse to help greatly expands the potential space and
possibilities for progressive activism.
3. How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflections on Service (New York: Knopf,
2003), 142; ellipses in original.
4. “Joy, n.” Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., 1989; online version
June 2011, accessed July 22, 2011, http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.vccs
.edu:2048/view/Entry/101795.
5. The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
(Boston: Shambhala, 2002), 4.
6. Thanks to Jim Bobbit for this explanation of joy in the context of
Shambhala Buddhism.
1993), 173.
8. Taking a different approach, philosopher Martha Nussbaum posits “an
original joy in sorting out the world,” a psychoanalytic approach to
explaining the pleasure found in understanding. Considering the attrac-
tion of “painful literary experiences,” Nussbaum argues that people
take pleasure in “the understanding of self and world that they offer,”
even when “the understanding itself is painful in content.” Upheavals
of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2001, Kindle ed.), Loc. 2797 and 3580.
9. See Lee Edelman on the intrinsic value of pleasure regardless of its
effects. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham, NC:
Duke UP, 2004).
10. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism (Boston: Shambhala, 2002):
113–114.
12. “The Use of Joyfulness as a Community Organizing Strategy,” Peace
and Change 30, no. 4 (October 2005): 458–459.
230 No t e s
13. “Audre Lorde,” Interview with Claudia Tate, in Conversations with

Audre Lorde, ed. Joan Wylie Hall (UP of Mississippi, 2004), 94.
14. Joy, Inspiration, and Hope, trans. Douglas Whitcher (College Station,
TX: Texas A&M UP, 1991), 160.
15. Pseudonym.
16. I appreciate Donna’s choice of words here for the way it invokes beauty
as a force, connected with truth or deep understanding, that moves
people. Mystics, as writer on religion and mysticism Anne Bancroft
calls them, or spiritual warriors, to use Trungpa’s term, have long dis-
cussed the role of beauty in conveying truth. Simone Weil writes of
the bodily response we have to beauty: “Beauty captivates the flesh
in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul. When
the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some
human being, the transference of love is made possible, as any rate in
an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is univer-
sal beauty, for which we yearn.” In Anne Bancroft, ed., Weavers of
Wisdom: Women Mystics of the Twentieth Century (London: Arkana,
1989), 101. Beauty involves emotions and the body and can lead to
love, which is a powerful experience of connection. Literary critic Elaine
Scarry’s argument that beauty can lead to a radical decentering of the
self, a kind of self-shattering that connects with philosopher Roland
Barthes’s notion of jouissance provides another way of understanding
how beauty can disrupt the ego in promising ways that encourage con-
nection. The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill
and Wang, 1973). Scarry writes that beauty “permits us to be adjacent
while also permitting us to experience extreme pleasure, thereby cre-
ating the sense that it is our own adjacency that is pleasure-bearing.”
On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1999), 114.
Scarry views the experience of beauty as something that produces feel-
ings of pleasure in being decentered from our own consciousness. The
connection of beauty and desire is another way that beauty can move
us, disrupt the ego, and connect humans through powerful feelings
that are simultaneously psychic and physical.
17. I discuss the second reward—satisfaction in the work—below.
18. Sandee did not mention talking to this man’s wife, who would pre-
sumably be providing most of the physical labor of caring for these
additional children. While I am not familiar with the gender dynamics
of these Burmese migrant communities, I read the man taking respon-
sibility to mean that he would work to provide financial support, shel-
ter, food, and clothing for his “adopted” children along with his own.
What is important for this project is that Sandee describes this as an
impulse of caring, “doing the right thing,” and acting with compas-
sion in the midst of devastation. By telling the story in this way, Sandee
chooses to focus on the love and hope she finds in field.
19. This joy also follows painful experiences of exclusion and feelings of dif-
ference. In her preface to this Bridge Called My Back, Cherríe Moraga
No t e s 231
describes the joy of discovering a community that would later be

named US third world feminism: “the pain and shock of difference,
the joy of commonness, the exhilaration of meeting through incred-
ible odds against it.” Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, eds., This
Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York:
Kitchen Table: Women of Color P, 1983), xiv. After feeling denigrated
and excluded for being different from those around her, Moraga exults
in connecting with a black woman, Barbara Smith, and being recog-
nized as same, as “sisters,” despite the many differences between them.
20. I originally had planned to discuss the role of sex in social justice move-
ments in more detail, believing in the importance of this personal history
for understanding social movements. I encountered a number of diffi-
culties, however. Many of the interviewees did not talk in detail about
sexual relationships when I gave them an opening, and I found myself
unwilling to push them on the subject. In writing, I feel reluctant to
disclose certain details, some of which were gained outside of recorded
interviews. I worry that it would violate the trust of my research partici-
pants or that the information might be used against them. Feminist and
queer studies scholar Ann Cvetkovich articulates some of these dilem-
mas of oral history and researching that she calls “the affective complex-
ity of activism.” An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian
Public Cultures (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2003), 204.
21. Lorde writes of the role of human connection in developing one’s erotic
power, “In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized.
The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need.” Sister Outsider, 58.
22. I use “feminist movement,” without a leading article, following hooks.
Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (Cambridge, MA: South End,
1984).
23. Pseudonym.
24. Sisters of the Yam, 80–81.
25. Joy, 4.
26. Kast describes inspiration as saying, “Something has hold of me that
I can only describe. When I pick it up, I receive the power to act and
give shape.” Ibid., 110. Inspiration is something that comes from the
unconscious and is accompanied by joy and a sense of empowerment—
the ability to make a vision take shape. “To be inspired,” Kast writes,
“extending ourselves out into the world as far as we soar up to the
heights, is to live creatively.” Ibid., 108. The emotional high is accom-
panied by the breadth of moving into the world—inspiration is creative
in the sense of being generative, making things happen.
27. Historian John D’Emilio’s Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities and
historian Lillian Faderman’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers con-
nect gay and lesbian bars with the development of gay and lesbian
communities and identities. In his study of DC’s gay communities
between 1940 and 1955, Queer studies scholar Bret Beemyn argues
that, because “many Black lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals did not
232 No t e s
frequent bars with a primarily gay clientele or socialize just with other
gays. And since many African Americans already had a ‘collective con-
sciousness’ and were politically active as Blacks, the centrality assigned
to all-gay bars in the formation of personal identities and ‘a sense of
community’ is applicable to only a segment of white lesbians, gay men,
and bisexuals in the mid-twentieth century.” “A Queer Capital: Race,
Class, Gender, and the Changing Social Landscape of Washington’s
Gay Communities, 1940–1955,” in Creating a Place for Ourselves:
Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Community Histories, ed. Brett Beemyn
(New York: Routledge, 1997), 188.
Gay and lesbian clubs and parties are certainly not the only, or
even the primary, influence on the identities of LGBTQ individuals.
Nonetheless, by gathering people in spaces where they can have fun
and enjoy being together, such social events connect LGBTQ people to
each other and encourage formations of collective identity.
28. Joy, 156.
29. The Rainbow History Project, “ENLACE,” n.d., accessed December
5, 2008, http://www.rainbowhistory.org/enlace.htm.
30. While she attributes the importance of bailes to Chicano culture, Leti also
notes that the music played reflected the largely Central American and
Puerto Rican population: “When we had parties, we didn’t play Mexican
polkas, we played salsa. So it was kind of like, ‘When in Rome.’”
31. In her study of lesbian AIDS activists, Cvetkovich argues that the
social aspects of ACT UP were “the foundation of the group’s power.”
An Archive of Feelings, 185.
32. Here again, I appreciate the language of beauty as connected with
truth and as something that moves people emotionally and so can
move people to social action.
33. Anthropologist Don Kulick describes some common transgender body
modification practices in Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among
Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998).
34. Pseudonym.
35. Joy, 45.
36. Ibid., 155.
37. Ibid., 154.
38. Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating, eds., This Bridge We Call
Home: Radical Visions for Transformation (New York: Routledge,
2002), 5.
39. Sister Outsider, 56–57. Because of this connection with the erotic, cre-
ativity and self-exploration are important tactics for resisting oppres-
sion: “The way you get people to testify against themselves is not
to have police tactics and oppressive techniques. What you do is to
build it in so people learn to distrust everything in themselves that
has not been sanctioned, to reject what is most creative in themselves
to begin with, so you don’t even need to stamp it out.” Ibid., 102.
Homophobia, racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression rely on
No t e s 233
individuals’ suppressing their own desires and creativity. Anzaldúa fur-

ther develops the understanding of creative work as spiritual work, as
one way to move from individual experience to broader understanding
and relationality: “Through creative engagements, you embed your
experiences in a larger frame of reference, connecting your personal
struggles with those of other beings on the planet, with the strug-
gles of the Earth itself.” She emphasizes the partiality of individual
knowledge and experience. Creative acts help you move beyond per-
sonal experience to “understand the greater reality that lies behind
your personal perceptions.” Anzaldúa, “now let us shift . . . the path
of conocimiento . . . inner work, public acts,” in This Bridge We Call
Home, 542. Creative acts connect creator and audience in a process
of communication and desire—the desire to share, express, connect,
understand. Creative acts also engage multiple senses and emotions in
experiential processes of expression and reception. They refuse separa-
tion of intellect, emotion, and spirit, engaging all of these in creator
and audience. Creativity is not only about connecting with others, but
also connecting with all the parts of oneself, seeking awareness of your
bodymind and refusing the Cartesian split of intellect and existence.
40. Hutchins here recalls a comment she made to the Washington Post
about a 1982 concert organized by DC women in solidarity with the
people of El Salvador. Reporter Joe Brown quotes Loraine as saying,
“A concert touches your heart more than a demonstration.” “Stirring
Voices for Peace, ” Washington Post, March 27, 1982, C2.
41. Ron Everman and Andrew Jamison, Music and Social Movements:
Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1998), 173.
42. For more on the culture of women’s music specifically, see Bonnie
Morris, Eden Built by Eves: The Culture of Women’s Music Festivals
(Alyson, 1999) and Dee Mosbacher, dir., Radical Harmonies (Woman
Vision, 2002).
43. As an example, Eric describes how the Radical Faeries, along with
other queer earth-based spiritual groups, used music, voice, dance, and
pagan ritual to encourage a spirit of inclusion and cooperation during
the interfaith service held in conjunction with the Millennium March
on Washington in April 2000. A speaker from the San Francisco–based
group Q Spirit began by speaking about people who felt marginalized
or excluded from the March’s planning. Then a woman started drum-
ming, and people came out drumming and weaving ribbons around
a maypole, chanting, “Come and Be One, Become One, Be One, Be,
Come and Be One, Become One, Be One, Be.” Eric describes this
performance as “put[ting] the sexuality and the spirituality together.
Because we had the pole down front and we went up and then we
went up and then we went up and then, boom! Down. So that it
made a visible kind of Ah! All that lovely stuff that happens in orgasm
for whatever gender you are.” And as a group of Straight supporters
234 No t e s
sang “Be Kind to One Another,” “We wove the Maypole as a symbol
of people coming together and cooperating.” By using these elements
of sound, movement, and repetition, the Faeries’ performance could
reach people at a level deeper than that of the intellect—the level of the
erotic—drawing them into the spirit of togetherness and the injunc-
tion to “Become One.”
44. This kind of work—developing the capacity for joy and creativity, is
one of the cultural approaches to trauma called for by Ann Cvetkovich.
She argues that we need to transform medical approaches to trauma
into cultural ones. An Archive of Feelings, 281–283.
45. Pseudonym.
46. “Direct action” is a term commonly used to refer to activism that aims
to confront people or institutions viewed as responsible for or contrib-
uting to a social problem. It is usually confrontational and participa-
tory, as opposed to passively standing at a rally listening to speakers.
Direct action involves physical presence whenever possible to hold peo-
ple directly accountable for their decisions or to confront people with
social issues they might otherwise ignore. Activist Cheryl Cort defines
“direct action” as “immediate ” and “concerted: focused action on a
topic” that “conveys a readily understood message” and “demands atten-
tion.” “What Is Direct Action?,” handout from workshop on direct
action, November 19, 1997, accessed December 7, 2008, http://www
.rainbowhistory.org/avengersguide.pdf; original emphasis.
47. TC contrasts their model with the more common kind of chorus, in
which the musical director is “all-powerful” and the repertoire is from
a mostly Western male canon.
48. Lesbian and Gay Chorus of Washington, DC, “Lesbian & Gay Chorus
of Washington DC,” n.d., accessed October 22, 2008, http://www
.lgcw.org/about_lgcw.html.
49. For more on the politics of the Lesbian and Gay Chorus, see Jill Strachan,
“The Voice Empowered: Harmonic Convergence of Music and Politics
in the GLBT Choral Movement,” in Chorus and Community, ed. Karen
Ahlquist (Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 2006), 248–262.
50. Joy, 45–46.
51. Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women’s Rights Movement,
1945 to the 1960s (New York: Oxford UP, 1987), 96.
52. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social
Movements (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997), 218.
53. Ibid., 136.
54. Pseudonym.
55. Ibid., 82.
56. Ibid., 376.
57. March organizers estimated attendance at 1.15 million. Cameron W.
Barr and Elizabeth Williamson reported in the Washington Post, “Police
would not issue an official estimate, but some veteran commanders said
No t e s 235
the crowd was at least the biggest since the 1995 Million Man March,
which independent researchers put at 870,000 people. D.C. Police
Chief Charles H. Ramsey would say only that he thought the march
had met and perhaps exceeded its organizers’ expectations. Their
march permit was for as many as 750,000.” “Women’s Rally Draws
Vast Crowd: Marchers Champion Reproductive Rights, Opposition to
Bush,” Washington Post, April 26, 2004, A1.
58. For a thorough analysis of the March for Women’s Lives, see Currans,
“Performing Gender.” Cvetkovich’s description of “the affective
urgency of direct action” can also apply to Karen’s description of her
experience in street protests, which were “a way of ‘acting out’ not just
verbally but physically, a performance of dissent that provides a forum
for emotional expression as well as resistance to cultural injunctions to
remain quiet and reserved.” An Archive of Feelings, 188.
60. TC’s use of the term “Western” refers to the influence of dominant
methods of leadership and organizational models, rather than to the geo-
graphic origins of the group’s participants. What I find useful about this
quote is how he recognizes a different approach to leadership and deci-
sion making that, he implies, led him to think differently about his own
participation and to see more possibilities for how groups can function.
61. Sociologist Belinda Robnett notes a similar effect from the structure of
participatory democracy that characterized the early days of the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): “It allowed individuals to
develop their own identities and gave organizational power to those who
would not normally have such access, including those with little school-
ing and women.” “External Political Change, Collective Identities, and
Participation in Social Movement Organizations,” in Social Movements:
Identity, Culture, and the State, ed. David S. Meyer, Nancy Whittier, and
Belinda Robnett (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002), 270.
62. Darby’s willingness to work with people with whom she disagrees at
the Co-op seems to be motivated in part by the respect and apprecia-
tion she feels for the work that they produce.
63. The Art of Moral Protest, 136.
64. On identity as moral, see Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making
of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992).
65. In Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest, 217.
66. Ibid., 218–219.
Conclusion
1. Transforming Feminist Practice: Non-violence, Social Justice and the
Possibilities of a Spiritualized Feminism (San Francisco: Aunt Lute,
2003), 10.
2. Cutting through Spiritual Materialism (Boston: Shambhala, 2002), 60.
236 No t e s
3. Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My

Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Berkeley: Third Woman,
2002 [1981]), xxxix.
4. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute,
1987), 87.
5. Trungpa, Cutting, 114.
6. Yoko Yoshikawa, “The Heat Is on Miss Saigon Coalition: Organizing
across Race and Sexuality,” in The State of Asian America, ed. Karin
Aguilar-San Juan (Boston: South End, 1994), 293.
7. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: Crossing P, 1984).
8. Cutting, 99.
9. Transforming, 15.
10. Cutting, 6.
Appendix I: Methodology
1. Sociologist Aldon Morris writes of the usefulness of activist histories,
“The availability of knowledge and resources provided by protest tra-
ditions can drastically reduce the time it takes to mobilize. For these
reasons, protest traditions decrease the mobilization, organizational,
and cultural costs associated with the rise of new collective action.”
“Reflections on Social Movement Theory: Criticisms and Proposals,”
Contemporary Sociology 29, no. 3 (May 2000): 451–452.
2. “Making Coalitions Work: Solidarity across Difference within US
Feminism,” Feminist Studies 36, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 73.
3. Queer studies scholar Cathy J. Cohen advances a similar argument
in “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential
of Queer Politics?” Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, ed. E.
Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson (Durham, NC: Duke UP,
2005), 21–51. Literary critic and philosopher Martha Nussbaum pro-
vides an analysis similar to what I had hoped to find. She notes, “We
should not deny that each form of prejudice is both internally mul-
tiple and distinct from other forms. And yet we find a thread running
through many forms: the intolerance of humanity in oneself. This
refusal, connected with shame, envy, disgust, and violent repudiation,
turns up not only in misogyny but in other prejudices to the extent
that they share the logic of misogyny.” Upheavals of Thought: The
Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001, Kindle
ed.), Loc. 5075. Nussbaum connects this disgust and discrimina-
tion with a project: “a central challenge for a society that wants to
teach a broad and appropriate compassion is to combat the mecha-
nisms underlying these hypertrophic versions of shame and disgust,
producing people who can live with their humanity—not easily, for it
is not likely that that ever would be easy—but in some way or other.”
Ibid., Loc. 5078. She neatly goes from an analysis of the underlying
emotional dynamics of oppression to what I see as the need for inner
No t e s 237
work—the reason that spirituality should be central to any social jus-

tice agenda.
4. I coded the interviews using NVivo qualitative data software.
5. Also, activists who were willing to spend four–seven hours of their lives
telling me their stories are people committed to building understand-
ing across differences of identity, background, and privilege. They,
like the multiracial feminist writers I study, are bridgebuilders. Gloria
Anzaldúa views sexual minorities as natural bridgebuilders: “Being the
supreme crossers of cultures, homosexuals have strong bonds with the
queer white, Black, Asian, Native American, Latino, and with the queer
in Italy, Australia and the rest of the planet. We come from all colors,
all classes, all races, all time periods. Our role is to link people with
each other—the blacks with Jew with Indians with Asians with whites
with extraterrestrials. It is to transfer ideas and information from one
culture to another.” Borderlands/La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt
Lute, 1987), 84–85.
6. In Cole and Luna, “Making Coalitions Work,” 77.
7. Ibid., 86.
8. “The Race for Theory,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 68.
9. I have long forgotten the name of the colleague who wrote about auto-
biography as a form of theorizing in my undergraduate feminist theory
class at Georgetown University. But I clearly remember the conversa-
tion between her and the professor, Leona Fisher, which stuck with me
as I planned this project.
10. Cole and Luna, “Making Coalitions Work,” 94.
11. “Multiple Jeopardy, Multiple Consciousness: The Context of a Black
Feminist Ideology,” Signs 14, no. 1 (Autumn 1988): 72.
12. “The Race for Theory,” 68.
13. Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the
StoryCorps Project (New York: Penguin, 2007), 1.
14. “Understanding” in The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in
Contemporary Society, ed. Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Accardo, Gabrielle
Balazs, Stéphane Beaud, François Bonvin, and Emmanuel Bourdieu,
trans. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1999),
614; original emphasis.
15. The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social
Movements (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997), 379.
16. See Ruth Behar and Deborah A. Gordon, eds., Women Writing
Culture (Berkeley: U of California P, 1995); Michael Burawoy, Alice
Burton, Ann Arnett Ferguson, Kathryn J. Fox, Joshua Gamson,
Nadine Gartrell, Leslie Hurst, Charles Hurzman, Leslie Salzinger,
Josepha Schiffman, and Shiori Vi, Ethnography Unbound: Power and
Resistance in the Modern Metropolis (Berkeley: U of California P,
1991); James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture:
The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: U of California
P, 1986); Mary Margaret Fonow and Judith A. Cook, eds., Beyond
238 No t e s
Methodology: Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research (Bloomington:

Indiana UP, 1991); Sherna Berger Gluck and Daphne Patai, eds.,
Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (New York:
Routledge, 1991); Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Michelle L. Yaiser,
eds., Feminist Perspectives on Social Research (New York: Oxford UP,
2004); Gesa E. Kirsch, Ethical Dilemmas in Feminist Research: The
Politics of Location, Interpretation, and Publication (Albany: State
U of New York P, 1999); Shulamit Reinharz, Feminist Methods in
Social Research (New York: Oxford UP, 1992); Linda Tuhiwai Smith,
Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London:
Zed Books, 1999); and Diane L. Wolf, ed., Feminist Dilemmas in
Fieldwork (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996).
17. Charles Tilly, Stories, Identities, and Political Change (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 26.
18. I do not necessarily mean “my” in the sense of individual possession.
When I do my best work, I believe the universe is working through
me—that work does not belong to me, though its form is shaped by my
experience. If I did not do the work, someone else would. The mistakes
certainly are mine, products of my ego and personality. Jane Caputi
recalls Gloria Anzaldúa saying of her books, “if I had not written them
someone else would have.” “Shifting the Shapes of Things to Come:
The Presence of the Future in the Philosophy of Gloria Anzaldúa,” in
EntreMundos/AmongWorlds: New Perspectives on Gloria Anzaldúa, ed.
AnaLouise Keating (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 185.
19. The Art and Science of Portraiture (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997),
xvi; original emphasis.
20. Ibid., 9.
21. Ibid., 15.
22. Ibid., 85.
23. Often referred to as “Ki-aikido.”
24. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 30th anniv. ed., trans. Myra
Bergman Zamos (New York: Continuum, 2000).
25. For more on ki testing, see Koichi Tohei, Ki in Daily Life (Haga-gun,
Tochigi, Japan: Ki No Kenkyukai, H.Q.: 2001).
26. Both Japanese and Tibetan use a single word to mean both “mind” and
“heart.”
27. Some made small revisions or clarifications to quotes that revealed their
desire not to criticize others in telling their own stories. This reflects a
political sensibility as well as a genuine kindness. I believe that they do
not want to be seen as criticizing other activists because they do value
their work, even though they have a different perspective on certain
issues.
28. The reason to explore the flaws and failure of earlier activists and move-
ments is to better see and understand our own, rather than to distance
ourselves or dismiss their work. Still, such criticism is most effective if
it results from self-evaluation or from critics who work to understand
No t e s 239
the perspective of those they critique, so that they can evaluate from
within that framework, rather than applying an external framework.
29. Antiracist feminist activist and musician Bernice Johnson Reagon com-
ments on the importance of principles, “The thing that must survive
you is not just the record of your practice, but the principles that are
the basis of your practice.” “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century,”
in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith (New
York: Kitchen Table, 1983), 366.
30. Thanks to my Fall 2003 Women’s Studies students at UCSB who, when
I asked them to list “basic human needs,” included beauty, education,
and love along with food clothing, shelter, and healthcare.
31. This approach is what Barbara Epstein calls “prefigurative politics.”
Political Protest and Cultural Revolution: Nonviolent Direct Action in
the 1970s and 1980s (Berkeley: U of California P, 1993).
1993), 171–172.
Appendix II: Narrator Biographical

Summaries
1. Women in the Life Association, “About Us,” Women in the Life
Association, 2008, accessed August 12, 2009, http://www.women
inthelife.com/aboutus.html.
2. The American Boyz, “The American Boyz to Hold Fourth Annual
True Spirit Conference,” November 8, 1999, The American Boyz,
Inc., accessed August 14, 2009, http://my.execpc.com/~dmmunson
/tsc2k/GeneralInfo.htm.
3. Loraine Hutchins, “About Loraine Hutchins,” n.d., accessed August
14, 2009, http://www.lorainehutchins.com/about.html.
Bi bl iogr a ph y
Interviews
Alexander-Reid, Sheila. Personal interview. January 9 and March 6, 2005.
Corado, Ruby. Personal interview. October 6, October 18, and October 25,
2004.
Bui, Irena. Personal interview. March 7, 28, and April 11, 2005.
Duong, Truong Chinh. Personal interview. December 5 and 18, 2004;
January 2, 2005.
Eldritch, Eric. Personal interview. October 19, November 16, and December
1, 2004.
Gómez, Letitia. Personal interview. December 8, 2004; January 5 and
February 21, 2005.
Gray, Sean. Personal interview. February 7 and 22, 2005.
Hickey, Darby. Personal interview. October 8, October 21, November 23,
and December 6, 2005.
Hutchins, Loraine. Personal interview. October 28 and November 30, 2004;
January 11, 2005.
“Luisa, Maria.” Personal interview. February 18, March 2, and April 27,
2005.
“MacRae, Karen.” Personal interview. October 12, November 3, and
December 5, 2004.
Mann, V. Papaya. Personal interview. March 30 and April 5 and 7, 2005.
Meadows, Monique. Personal interview. February 22 and 24 and March 5
and 26, 2005.
Meléndez Rivera, Lisbeth. Personal interview. December 31, 2004; February
7 and March 9, 2005.
“Mendoza, Julia.” Personal interview. January 27 and February 25, 2005.
Mitra, Avelynn. Personal interview. November 22 and December 3, 2004.
Payne, Donna. Personal interview. December 21 and 22, 2004; January 12,
2005.
Pyne, Sandee. Personal interview. February 1 and 19 and April 26, 2005.
“Reed, Sarah.” Personal interview. March 7 and 8, 2005.
“Stone, Colette.” Personal interview. September 15, October 6 and 20, 2004.
Subbaraman, Sivagami. Personal interview. March 19 and 23, 2005.
Wayman, Carol. Personal interview. September 17, November 4, and
December 21, 2004.
242 Bi bl io gr a p h y
Weiner-Mahfuz, Lisa. Personal interview. December 31, 2004; January 4

and February 1, 2005.
Wojahn, Patrick. Personal interview. February 2 and 15, 2005.
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I n de x
abortion, 71, 142 sources of, 12

academia, 22, 156, 191n33, 193n57, and spirituality, 223–4n26
216n26 and structural determinacy,
and spirituality, 191n35, 222n8 208–9n80
see also criticism, reparative; and trust, 97–8
methodology see also empowerment
acceptance, 36, 94–5 AIDS, 32, 67, 76–7, 132–3, 134
desire for, 109 aikido, 11, 166–7, 170,
and empowerment, 88–9 189n28, 189–90n31
finding, 60, 116, 127 Alexander, M. Jacqui, 23, 30, 42–3,
and joy, 120, 141 92, 93–4
of self and others, 31–4, 54, 87, Alexander-Reid, Sheila, 132–3
99–101 biographical summary, 171
and spirituality, 6–9 alliances, 4, 52, 54, 112–13
of things as they are, 25 see also bridgebuilding
accountability, 78, 105–6, 107, 116, Alston, Wanda, 75, 127
135, 151, 170 ancestors, 12 , 27–9, 32 ,
activism 34–5, 143
cultural, see creativity Anderson, Kim, 45
and friendship, 81 anger, 12, 63, 80, 94,
intersectional, 3–5 103, 211n2
LGBTQ, 130–6, 139–40 and black women, 227n63
see also demonstrations; marches at exclusion, 86, 115
activist identity, 76 and intelligence, 10, 190n32
activist orientation, 213n4, 215n20 kinds (Deming), 214n14
activists, admiration for, 70–1, and love, 11, 49, 51–2, 211n2
76–7, 158–9, 169–70 as motivation, 95–6, 206n57
adapting, 108–13 as regenerative, 215n17
affects, see emotions responses to, 195n71
African Americans, see black LGBT and self-care, 33, 93
spaces; feminism, black; under and shame, 218n49
author and narrator names and social movements, 10–11,
agency, 103 29–30, 50–1, 114, 170,
and accountability, 225n44 218n49, 219n56
and black feminism, 160 transformation, 65, 70
and empowerment, 92, 106–7 anthologies, 3
264 I n de x
Anzaldúa, Gloria, 3, 23 beauty, 12, 25, 122–3, 132, 138,

on acceptance, 219n57 142–3, 230n16
on conflicts, 30–1, 111 beliefs, 30, 101
on creativity, 232–3n39 and action, 8, 40–1, 56, 67, 71,
on empowerment, 35, 91, 77–8, 101, 111, 148, 155
223–4n26 basic goodness, 83–8
homosexuals as bridgebuilders, Buddhism, 6, 166
237n5 changing, 71–2, 128
on imagination, 136 and conflicts, 38, 61, 95
on love, 199n4 and empowerment, 35, 55–6,
mestiza consciousness, 4, 31–2, 90–2, 93, 105
54, 228n78 expressing, 142
on nonduality, 29–31, 205–6n52 and healing, 45–6
on pain, 36, 70 and joy, 124–5
on reconciliation, 206–7n63 and magic, 47
spirituality, 6, 7, 21, 154, and peacemaking, 43–4
188–9n28, 192n38 and reflection, 92, 96–7
on trust, 97–8 and social movements, 102, 221n2
on victimhood, 35 and social structures, 7
art, see creativity see also faith
Asian Americans, 2, 37–8, 58 Birch, Elizabeth, 103, 227n64
Asian and Pacific Islander bisexuality, 62–3, 128, 143
Partnership for Health Black Lesbian Support Group
(APIPH), 134 (BLSG), 126–8
Asian and Pacific Islander Queer black LGBT spaces, 139–40
Sisters (APIQS), 89–90, Black Lesbian Support Group
98–100, 101–2 (BLSG), 126–8
Hindu temple, 116–17 Black Pride, 100, 116, 132, 140,
KhushDC, 116–17 226n58
see under author and narrator Women in the Life, 132–3
names blame, 35, 89, 150
Asian and Pacific Islander Partnership bodhichitta, 70, 120–3
for Health (APIPH), 134 body image, 61–2
Asian and Pacific Islander Queer bodymind, 13, 27, 203–4n38
Sisters (APIQS), 89–90, bridgebuilding, 24, 53–4, 100, 109,
98–100, 101–2 111, 153, 226n59
autonomy, 18, 83, 84–5, 136, 156, and intersectionality, 3, 4, 237n5
191–2n37 Buddhism, 15, 28, 30, 42, 70,
as self-determination, 104–5 190n32
awareness, 42 beginner’s mind, 103
see also mindfulness belief in goodness, 85
bodhichitta, 70, 120–3
Bambara, Toni Cade, 23, 92, 94, and feminism, 23
154, 223n22 hopelessness, 95
bars and parties, see joy, fun and joy, 119–21
Barvosa, Edwina, 4, 193n57 and knowledge, 5–6
I n de x 265
larger and smaller selves, 209n94 community building

and love, 25 creative work (filmmaking), 139
meditation, 95–6 finding community, 126–8
and politics, 46 and fun, 130
Shambhala, 33, 54, 70, 153, gratitude (Sistahs Steppin’), 28
189–90n31 identity (APIQS), 99–100
socially engaged, 210n99 networking (LLEGO), 148–9
see also compassion community development, 69
Bui, Irena, 57–8, 134–5 community-based organizations,
biographical summary, 171 107–8
Burma, 44, 73–4 compassion
Bush, George W., 78, 138, 145–6 basis in sadness, 120
in conflicts, 95–6, 110–12, 156
cancer, 132–3 and joy, 155–6
celebration, 28 as motivation, 70–5
charity, 67 need for, 125
child abuse, 36, 45, 66 as practice, 40–1, 42,
Chödrön, Pema, 70, 120, 225n54 225–6n54
chorus (Lesbian and Gay Chorus of and social action, 30, 53,
Washington), 140–1 220n65
civil rights, see rights and transformation, 170
Civil Rights movement, 1, 38–9, conferences, 59, 108, 111–12, 126,
53, 221n2, 235n61 129, 149
clubs, see joy, fun lesbian, 71, 110, 114–15, 130–1
coalitions, 228n80 (Reagon) confidence, 57, 61, 88, 90, 98,
building, 82, 113–14, 131–2 108, 111
example of, 135 conflict, 32, 38–44, 79, 110–12,
finding common ground, 16–17 114–16, 143–5
learning through, 144–5 connectedness, see interconnection
need for, 102 conscience, 77
Coffeehouse, the (Washington, see also morality
DC), 140 consciousness, 154–5
college experiences see also oppositional
Carol Wayman, 57 consciousness
Colette Stone, 72 conversations, 114–16
Donna Payne, 104, 109, 122 Corado, Ruby, biographical
Julia Mendoza, 64 summary, 172
Maria Luisa, 128–9 beliefs, 55–6, 90
Sean Gray, 59, 65–6 caring for others, 74–5, 123
coming out, 56–61 developing self-acceptance,
narratives, 138, 218n50 133–4
commitment, 113 on needs, 66, 108, 109, 133–4
commonality, 127 raising awareness, 55–6
see also sameness visibility, 149–50
community, desire for, 68, creativity, 105–6, 136–41, 145–8,
69, 77–8 232–3n39
266 I n de x
criticism, 161–2, 170, 238–9n28 working across, 42–3, 52, 53–4,

and love, 17, 21–3, 25, 29, 33–4, 75, 87, 92, 94–6, 100, 108,
37, 47 110–11, 155
paranoid, 211n115; Different Avenues (Washington,
see also criticism, reparative DC), 106–7
reparative, 25–6, 44–7, 202n21, differential consciousness, 23–4,
203n29, 203n35 112, 201–2n14
within communities, 114–15 and love, 4, 24, 53–4
cultural change, 117 and multiple identities, 4–5, 24
cynicism, 26 and US third world feminism, 24
dignity, 56, 67, 74, 156, 169–70
dancing, see joy, fun Dillard, Cynthia B., 28–9
Dass, Ram direct action, 139, 228n69,
on changing minds, 87 234n46, 235n58
on differences, 100 disability, 27, 65, 68–9, 146–7
on freedom, 39 disappointment, 78, 79
on helping, 119 dissent, 78
on listening, 111–12, 114 dualism, critiques of, 30–1,
on living according to one’s 205–6n52
values, 38 see also conflict
on meditation, 95–6 Duong, Truong Chinh “TC,” 68,
on self-development, 94 96–7, 113–14, 140–1, 144–5
on understanding, 95 biographical summary, 172
DC Radio Co-op, 145
democracy, 7–8, 44, 101, 140–1, ego, 4–5, 25, 155–6
145–6, 235n61 Eldritch, Eric, 46–7, 138,
demonstrations, 142–3, 145–6 233–4n43
DC marches, 126, 132, 142–3, biographical summary, 172
233–4n43 emotional mobilization, 218n49
direct action, 139, 228n69, emotional resonance, 218n49
234n46, 235n58 emotions, 9–10
farmworkers, 70–1 definition, 193n54
SistahsSteppin’ (Oakland, CA, affect, 10
2004), 28, 204n45 and beliefs, 56, 72
desire, 61, 143–4 discomfort with, 193n57
dialogue, 87, 99–100, 103, expression, 211n119
110–11 in feminism, 191–2n37
difference, 4 and information, 10–11
acceptance of, 31, 42, 98, 103–4 and intelligence, 58 ,
experiences of, 24, 27–8, 65, 193– 4n57, 207–8n66 ,
68–9, 81 214n6 , 216n26
and joy, 121, 132, 135–6, 138 and interconnection, 13
learning about, 112, 114, and knowledge, 194n66
143–4, 145 and language, 198n102
and sameness, 29, 205–6n52, LGBTQ, need for
230–1n19 documentation, 11, 215n19
I n de x 267
and morality, 215n19 and connection, 42–3, 56,

as motivation, 206n57 69–70, 94, 231n21
in oral history, 195n69 and creativity, 34, 136,
positive and negative, 11–12 232–3n39
and power, 10–11 and empowerment, 34, 39–40
and the self, 195n72 and joy, 136, 152
in social movements, 10, 50–2, and understanding, 19, 27, 155,
224n31 216n26
and spirituality, 10–11, 13 and work, 37
structures of feeling, 9–11 ethics, 8, 55–6, 215n21
and values, 211n2 experience, 6, 202n17
empowerment, 18
definition, 83, 88–90, 223n19–20 faith, 18
and being right, 39–40 communities, 81, 96–7, 116–17
and the body, 91 connection with action, 84,
connection with group, 89, 92, 87–8, 96–7, 103, 111
107, 142–3 definition, 83–4
and constituents, 117 and empowerment, 88–91
encouraging, 106–7, 108–9, 147 God, 5, 86, 97
and faith, 88–91 in goodness, 85, 98
and inspiration, 231n26 in humanness, 85, 221n2
and politics, 39, 87–8 optimism, 77–8
and self-examination, 34–5 political, 83–7
and social change, 223n21 and relationships, 113–17
in social work, 223n18 and science, 84
and spirituality, 92–6, 223–4n26 as support, 86
and transformation, 36, 117 US context, 5, 84, 188n27
and trust, 169 see also beliefs; trust
see also leadership; rights; silences, family, 63–4, 72–3, 77, 112,
breaking 126–8, 130–1
ENLACE (Washington, DC), 131, fear, 9, 40, 45–6, 50–1, 86,
148–9 110–11, 208n77
epistemology, 13–16, 196–7n85, fearlessness, 54, 81
197n89 feelings, see emotions
connected knowing, 15 feminism
and emotions, 15 definitions, 31
and experiences of difference, antiracist, see feminism, black;
4, 155 feminism, multiracial;
and intuition, 14–16, 155 feminism, US third world;
and meditation, 15 intersectionality
and reason, 14–16 black, 117, 221n2, 223n16
see also objectivity, nonpublic and Buddhism, 23
equality, 55–6 and gratitude, 28–9
see also parity interstitial, see intersectionality
erotic power and kindness, 41–2
and activism, 5 language of, 112
268 I n de x
feminism—Continued Gorman, Paul

and love, 52, 219n57 on changing minds, 87
multiracial, 2–5, 21–2, 72–3 on differences, 100
and paranoia, 46 on freedom, 39
as a practice, 209–10n98 on helping, 119
and research, 28–9, 160–1 on listening, 111–12, 114
and self-care, 93–4 on living according to one’s
and spirituality, 22, 23, 198–9n3 values, 38
US third world, 2, 24–5, 202n18 on meditation, 95–6
see under author and narrator on self-development, 94
names on understanding, 95
Fernandes, Leela, 1, 6, 8, 9, gratitude, 27–9, 46, 67, 169–70,
153–4, 156 204n42, 204n45
film, 139 Gray, Sean, 58–9, 65–6
food, 113–14 biographical summary, 173
freedom, 7, 12–13, 25, 39, 44, grief, 12
127, 140
Freire, Paulo, 98 habits, 27
on faith and empowerment, 87 hara, 207–8n66
on reflection, 92–3 healing, 9, 29, 168–9
revolutionary love, 211n3 healthcare, 122–3
on self-examination, 224n27 heart, 207–8n66
on trust, 225n51 see also mind
friendships, 125–8 helping, 94, 119, 229n2
fun, 130–6 Hernández-Ávila, Inés, 12–13,
funding, 80 52–3
Hickey, Darby, 70, 76, 90–1,
Gandhi, Mohandas, 38–9, 53, 106–7, 145, 159
55, 71 biographical summary, 174
gender roles, 68 histories, activist, 161, 236n1
global feminism, 129 histories, queer, 11, 33–4
Gómez, Letitia “Leti,” biographical HIV/AIDS, 32, 67, 76–7,
summary, 173 132–3, 134
AIDS, 134 honesty, 33–4, 206–7n63
caring, 70–1 hooks, bell, 27
differences, 110, 143–4 on forgiveness and compassion,
disappointment, 79 120, 170
ENLACE, 134 on joy, 120, 129–30
farmworkers, 70–1 on love, 49, 53, 55, 82
Latina Lesbian retreat, 130–1 on positive thinking, 46
listening, 111, 114–15 on representation, 9
LLEGO, 79, 111, 114–15, on self-care, 82, 93–4
143–4, 148–9 hope, 44, 46, 50–1
National Lesbian Conference, 110 hopelessness, 95
pride, 148–9 Horwitz, Claudia, 8–9
visibility, 148–9 hostility, 50–1
I n de x 269
human rights, see rights and creativity, 232–3n39

Human Rights Campaign (HRC), and emotions, 13
100, 102–3, 115–16, 227n64 and empowerment, 91
humanity, 29–34, 40–1, inner and outer, 6, 91, 208n74
45, 236n3 interdependence, 21–2, 28,
and accepting difference, 98 207n65
accountability as respect and knowledge, 155
for, 170 and love, 6, 54
faith in, 85, 96–7, 98, 221n2 and oppression, 236n3
goodness, 4, 67, 85, 98 and separation, 210n100
limitations, 100, 105 in social movements, 129, 137,
qualities, 119 142–3, 150
seeing, 38, 52, 54, 57, 74, interdependence, 21–2, 28, 205n49,
76, 120 207n65
and social movements, 56, intersectionality, 2–5, 75, 80–1,
70, 221n2 107, 154–5, 159
humanness, see humanity see also feminism, multiracial;
humor, 121, 134, 145–6, 154 feminism, US third world
Hutchins, Loraine, 62–3, 96 , intuition, 14–16
128 , 137
biographical summary, 174 joy, 18–19, 121, 155–6
hypersexuality, 37–8, 89–90 definition, 120
in connection, 124–30
identities, multiple, 2–5, 66, fun, 130–6
67, 69, 127 in helping, 119
see also differential consciousness inspiration, 129–30, 231n26
identity, 8, 56, 58–9, 109, 151–2 in learning, 108–13, 143–5
collective, 99–100 and LGBTQ communities, 121
ideologies, 156 and music, 136–7, 139–40,
injury, 33–4, 40 233n40
see also painful experiences and pain, 12, 120, 209n83,
injustice frames, 29–30 230–1n19
inner voice, 3–4, 55, 91, 155 in people, 124–5
see also spirituality in relationships, 124–8
inspiration, 38, 76–7, 121, satisfaction, 19, 141–51
129–30, 138 and social events, 231–2n27,
see also joy 232n30–1
institution building, 107, 113, 129, and social movements, 121,
148–9 128–9, 142–3, 170
intelligence, 207–8n66 and trauma, 51, 234n44
and emotions, 58, 193–4n57, in understanding, 121–3,
207–8n66, 214n6, 216n26 229n8
intentions, 98, 103–4, 141, 170 US context, 198n103
interconnection in work, 141–51
across differences, 75, 150–1 see also beauty; bodhichitta;
belief in, 67, 86–7 creativity
270 I n de x
Keating, AnaLouise, 27, 110, love, 17–18, 81–2, 155

192n38, 197n89, 205–6n52, agape, 53
208–9n80 and anger, 11, 49, 51–2, 211n2
Khush DC, 116–17 and black feminism, 219n57
kindness, 28, 33, 38–44, 46, 125, and criticism, 17, 21–3, 25–6, 29,
225n44 33–4, 37, 47
King, Martin Luther, Jr., and freedom, 25
1, 38–9, 53 group affinity, 50
and healing, 55
language, 112 identification, 52–3, 65, 73, 125–8
Lara, Irene, 32 mestiza consciousness, 4, 31–2,
Latina/os, 70–1, 130–1, 148–50 54, 228n78
ENLACE, 134 and morality, 51
farmworkers, 70–1 and multiracial feminism, 52
Latina Lesbian retreat, 130–1 and oppositional consciousness,
LLEGO, 79, 111, 114–15, 24–5
143–4, 148–9 for others, 65–70, 71, 72–5, 76, 81
transgender, see Corado, Ruby and politics, 52–4, 55, 216n26
see under author and narrator as power, 82
names and reason, 216n26;
leadership, 101–2, 103, 105–8, see also emotions and
144–5 intelligence
learning, 108–13, 143–5 revolutionary, 49, 53–4,
Lesbian and Gay Chorus of 211–12n3, 216n26
Washington, 140–1 self-, 54–64, 217–18n44, 219n57
listening, 87, 110–12, 161–2 and social change, 11, 46, 75,
LLEGO, 79, 110, 111–12, 114–15, 199n4
143–4, 148–9 and spirituality, 25, 54
Lorde, Audre, 6, 21, 36–7, 39, 47, and transformation, 16
59–60 universal, 25
on anger, 10, 215n17 and violence, 6
on creative acts, 136 see also compassion; motivation;
on emotions, 10–11, 194n66 passion
on empowerment, 39, 92 loving criticism, see criticism
on epistemology, 196–7n85 Lugones, Maria, 52
on joy, 121, 136, 196n74 Luisa, Maria (pseudonym), 75,
on love, 41, 196n74 95–6, 101, 103
on power, 7, 34, 194n66 biographical summary, 175
on practicing kindness, 33, 41–2 on adapting, 112
on relationships and connections with larger
commitment, 144 movements, 128–9
on sameness and difference, on cultural work and creativity, 137
29–30, 205–6n52 on finding possibilities, 113, 117
on self-examination, 33–4 on relationships and
see also erotic power commitment, 113
loss, 11, 33–4, 125, 194–5n68 on trust, 98
I n de x 271
MacRae, Karen (pseudonym), 68–9, and religion, 222n8

77, 138–9, 142–3, 146–7 and sex, 231n20
biographical summary, 175 and spirit, 28–9
magic, 46–7 Metropolitan Community Church
Mann, V. Papaya, biographical (MCC), 60–1
summary, 175 mind, 13
on the arts, 139–40 connection with heart, 238n26
on choice, 61 mindfulness, 42
on conflicts, 38, 110–11 Mitra, Avelynn, 89–90, 98–100,
on conscience, 77 101–2
on listening, 110–11 biographical summary, 177
on love, 55 Moraga, Cherríe, 6–7
motivation, 67 and community, 230–1n19
as a public figure, 79–80 on faith, 83
on same-gender loving, 226–7n62 on internalized oppression, 64,
spirituality, 32, 86–7 206–7n63
marches (Washington, DC), 126, on love, 51–2, 64
132, 142–3, 233–4n43 on oppression, 64, 220–1n78
marriage, 77 on spirituality and social
Martínez, Renée M., 43–4 movements, 187n24, 198–9n3
Meadows, Monique, 39–41 morality, 51, 55, 151–2, 215n19,
biographical summary, 176 215n21
on community, 127–8 motivation, 49–50
on empowerment, 34–5, 91 caring, 65–75
on human goodness, 67–8, 85 desire to contribute, 76–8
on representations, 91 emotions, 206n57
on self-acceptance, 31, 61–2 erotic power, 19
on spirituality, 34–5, 93 love, 17–18, 75, 79, 155
media, 62, 79–80, 90–1, 139, methodology, 215n20
145, 162 self-love, 54–5
meditation, 95–6 social movement theory, 212–13n4
Meléndez Rivera, Lisbeth, 77, music, 136–7, 139–40, 233n40
98, 113 see also Radical Faeries
biographical summary, 176 mutuality, see interconnection
Mendoza, Julia (pseudonym),
63–4, 134–5 narrative, 3, 5, 125, 137, 160–1,
biographical summary, 177 164
mestiza consciousness, 4, 31–2, 54, coming out, 138, 218n50
228n78 native Americans, 45, 105–6, 122,
metaphysical religion, American, 5, 124, 144, 147–8
188n27 see under author and narrator
metaphysics, 5 names
methodology, 160–4, 167–8 needs
and gratitude, 28–9 activism that responds to, 74–5,
life stories, 49, 160–2, 213–14n5 107, 147–8
portraiture, 164–5 basic, 74, 108, 169
272 I n de x
needs—Continued Payne, Donna, 102–4

meeting, 47, 63 biographical summary, 178
self-defined, 151 on accepting others, 100
spiritual, 6 on civil rights, 102–3,
networking, see community 227n64
building on coalitions and alliances,
nonduality, 30–1, 205–6n52 102–3
coming out, 59–61
objectivity, 14–15, 198n94 on conflicts, 115–16
oppositional consciousness, Healthcare Taskforce (Hillary
definition, 23–4, 89, 200–1n12 Clinton, 1993–4), 122–3
see also differential consciousness on intentions, 227n64
oppositionality, 30–1, 39, 43 on leadership, 227n64
oppression, 26, 185n12, 236–7n3 on learning about differences, 109
and agency, 35, 45, 81, 88–90, on representation, 227n63
160–1, 208–9n80, 227n67 peacemaking, 30–1, 38,
effects of, 7, 64, 74–5, 93–4, 43–4, 97
100, 220–1n78, 227n67 pleasure, see joy
internalized, 31–3, 41–2, politics, electoral, 134–5
206–7n63, 209n96 popular education, 228n76
resistance to, 27, 29–30, 129–30 portraiture, 164–5
and transformation, 8, 12–13, positive thinking, 45–7
40, 42–3, 70, 98, 117, 154, possibilities, 42–3
170, 227n67 poverty, 69, 72–3, 87–8, 150–1
Orientalism, 189–90n31 power, 31, 34–8, 208n77
overdetermination, 42, 210n100 magic, 46–7
practice, 41–2, 94, 154, 155
painful experiences, 209n83 presence, 115–16
acceptance of, 33–4 pride, 148–50
in activism, 78–81, 93, 114 Pride, Black, 100, 116, 132, 140,
and change, 27–8, 36, 70, 226n58
111–12, 170, 220–1n78 principles, 153,
of difference, 68, 115, 169–70, 239n29
230–1n19 and differential consciousness,
and joy, 120, 122, 230–1n19 23–4
letting go of, 12, 44 and possibilities, 40, 44
and self-care, 94 and reflection, 18, 41, 92, 95
and wanting to help, 65–6, and self-evaluation, 16,
71–2, 75 155–6, 167
parity, 77 and social movements, 1
see also equality and trust, 98
parties, see joy, fun privilege, 115, 124, 184n10
passion, 7, 52, 81 accepting, 31–2, 206–7n63
and politics, 52, 215–16n25 awareness of, 42, 73–4, 99, 101,
see also love 148, 150–1
I n de x 273
and blame, 35 safety, 45–6, 61, 124, 228n78

and helping, 229n2 as a need, 1, 74, 99, 108
transforming, 19–20 same-gender loving, 226–7n62
public exposure, 79–80, 147, 149–50 sameness, 29, 155, 205–6n52
purpose, 28, 37 Sandoval, Chela, 16
Pyne, Sandee, 30, 36, 42, 43–4, and experience, 202n17
73–4, 125 on love, 53–4, 199n4
biographical summary, 178 see also feminism, US third
world; oppositional
race, 40–1 consciousness
mestiza consciousness, 4, 31–2, satisfaction, 19, 141–51
54, 228n78 science, 13–14, 196n79
Radical Faeries (Washington, DC), Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 23
138, 233–4n43 reparative criticism, 25–6, 44–7,
reason, 14–16 202n21, 203n29, 203n35
science, 13–14, 196n79 Segrest, Mab, 6, 8, 23, 84–5, 87,
see also epistemology 101, 207n65
Reed, Sarah (pseudonym), 71–2, self, 41, 54, 92, 100, 204n40,
105–6, 122, 124, 147–8 224n28
biographical summary, 179 -care, 32, 92–7, 204n45, 224n31
Re-evaluation Co-counseling -determination, 104–5
(RC), 96 -esteem, 54–64, 217–18n44,
reflection, 45, 92–7, 103, 111 219n57; see also shame
relationships, 113–17, 142–3 -examination, 8–9, 33, 37–8,
religion, see spirituality 224n27
representation and narrative, 4–5
activists, 49 -sacrifice, 94
Asian/American women, 37–8 -understanding, 29, 33, 54–5,
effects of, 91 82, 97
respect, 6, 145, 155, 170 separation, see difference
desire for, 49, 133–4 September 11, 2001, attacks,
of differences, 98 58–9, 97
and freedom, 39 sex, 61, 63, 89–90, 125–6, 128
in peacemaking, 43–4 desire, 61, 143–4
as practice, 40–2 and methodology, 231n20
self-, 54–64 and politics, 55
treating others with, 99, 104–7, sex work, 56, 74, 106–7
117, 153 sexual freedom, 7
responsibility, 35, 77, 78, 80 Shambhala, see Buddhism,
right, being, 39–40 Shambhala
rights shame, 33–4, 51, 54–5, 61–2,
belief in, 90, 103, 149 217n43, 236n3
discourse of, 55–6, 218n49 and social movements, 218n49
education, 106–7 Shaner, David E., 188–9n28,
Russia, 76–7 203–4n38
274 I n de x
Shimizu, Celine Parreñas, 37–8 and power, 6, 31, 34–5

shows, see joy, fun and practice, 92–6, 154
silences, breaking, 89–90 scientific understanding, 13
social events, see joy and social movements, 1–2, 6–9,
social movements 44, 153–4, 187n24, 198–9n3
decentralization, 1 US context, 5
emotions in, 10, 50–2, 224n31 see also interconnection; love
interconnection, 129, 137, Starhawk, 6, 8
142–3, 150 Stone, Colette (pseudonym),
and joy, 121, 128–9, 142–3, 170 biographical summary, 179
professionalization, 221n81 beliefs and principles, 41, 85, 86
recruitment, see motivation disappointment, 80
rights discourse, 55–6, 218n49 empowerment, 88–9
and sex, 231n20 hopelessness, 94–5
and spirituality, 1–2, 6–9, 44, on listening and family, 112
153–4, 187n24, 198–9n3 oppositional consciousness, 88–9
theory, 50–2, 212–13n4 on relationships, 125–6
see also empowerment self-care, 93–4
socialism, 39 supporting community leaders, 107
speed, 153 valuing women and girls of
spirit, 7, 9, 114, 161 color, 72–3
definition, 5, 188–9n28 workshops with homeless
spiritual materialism, 156, 192n49 women, 150–1
spirituality stress, 46, 83, 87
definition, 5, 9, 153–4, structures, social, political, and
187–8n26, 189n30, 192n38, economic, 42, 76, 88–9, 90
192n39 Subbaraman, Sivagami “Shiva,” 36,
in academic discourse, 191n35, 45–6, 66, 75, 81, 86
222n8 biographical summary, 179
and acceptance, 32 on the Hindu temple, 116–17
and beliefs, 56, 67 suffering, see painful experiences
criticism and love, 17, 21–3, 25, support, 71–2, 106–7
29, 33–4, 37, 47 support groups, 55, 57–8, 106–7,
discomfort with, 2, 6 108–9, 126, 127–8, 133–4
and empowerment, 92–6, survival, 27, 28, 29, 34, 45, 161
223–4n26 choosing tactics, 4
and fear, 9 and differential consciousness,
and feminism, 22, 23, 198–9n3 25, 54, 112
and healing, 34–5 and empowerment, 39
internal sense, 3 and joy, 129–30
listening, 87, 110–12, 161–2 and love, 54
and materialism, 156, 192n49 need for more than, 7, 82
and methodology, 28–9, 222n8 street, 106–7
and multiple identities, 5 suspicion, 135–6
and oppression, 6–8 see also criticism, paranoid
and politics, 2, 6–9, 192n49 Sweet Honey in the Rock, 137
I n de x 275
tactics, 4, 24, 83, 87, 112, 201n13, in goodness, 156

222n14 and meditation, 96
technology, 4, 53 in oneself, 8, 47, 54–5, 141
theater, 140 as practice, 168–9
theory, 160–1, 167 truth, 24
therapy, 32, 92–6 and beauty, 230n16
discourse of, 218n49 and emotions, 15
Thich Nhat Hanh, 23, 35, 44, 198, and faith, 56, 83–4
209n92 finding, 27, 39–40, 155
on interconnection, 204n47, in Sedgwick, 26
207n65, 208n74 sharing, 96–7
on nonattachment, 209n92 and spirituality, 8–9, 15, 55,
thoughts, 42 191n35, 196–7n85
Tohei, Koichi, 13, 85, 86, 166–7,
189–90n31, 209n92 ubuntu, 85
transgender men, 58–9 understanding
see also Gray, Sean and activism, 56, 68, 74–5, 86,
transgender people, violence 90, 109, 123, 128
against, 55, 65–6, 76, 108, and appreciation, 161
133–4, 150 and beauty, 230n16
transgender women, 57–8, 109, 123 and bridgebuilding, 111
advocacy, 66, 123 and change, 35
community building, and connection, 34, 126, 130
133–4, 149 and ego, 156
drag shows, 133, 134 emotional v. intellectual, 95, 137,
HIV/AIDS education, 134 207–8n66
needs, 66, 74–5, 108, 133–4 and erotic power, 10–11, 27
rights, 55–6, 90, 109, 149 of humanity, 29, 40, 100
support groups, 57–8, 108, 109, and joy, 121–3, 144, 229n8
133–4 listening, 110–11, 112
transitioning, 133–4, 149–50 and love, 17, 155
visibility, 90, 109, 149–50 and mindfulness, 42
trauma, 51, 234n44 oppression, 26, 35, 98
Trungpa, Chögyam and responsibility, 184n10
on faith, 85 self-, 29, 33, 54–5, 82, 97
on humor and seriousness, 121 spiritual, 7–8
on joy, 155–6
on the Lord of Speech, 156 values, 1, 22, 153
on love, 25 different, 97–8
on materialism, 153, 189–90n31, and emotions, 51
192n49 and self-evaluation, 18, 39–40,
on self-examination, 33, 54 86, 167, 169, 225n52
on warriorship, 33, 54, 79, 81 shared, 16
trust, 97–105, 225n51, 225n52 sustaining, 38, 92
building, 113–16 victimhood, 35–6, 65, 104, 160–1,
and conflicts, 86 208–9n80, 220–1n78
276 I n de x
violence, 75 empowering, 62, 72, 90–1

and advocacy, 56, 76 finding, 31, 35, 64
and Asian/Americans, 36, 37, 45, in research, 162, 165
66, 81
and black women, 34–5 Walker, Alice, 53, 76, 93, 95, 119
against children, 36, 45, 66 Washington, DC, 131, 158
and dualism, 17, 21, 30, 32 Wayman, Carol, 56–7, 69, 71, 139,
healing from, 12, 29, 71–2, 207n65 145–6
impacts of, 6–7 biographical summary, 180
and Latina/os, 112, 135, 148 we, use of, 22
and lesbian/gay/bisexual people, Weiner-Mahfuz, Lisa, 27–8,
81, 135, 148 65, 79, 113
and native Americans, 45, 71–2, biographical summary, 180
105–6, 147–8 Williamson, Marianne, 25, 35, 53,
and religion, 2, 6, 61, 190n32 208n77
and science, 196n79 Wojahn, Patrick, 76–7
and thinking, 83 biographical summary, 181
and transgender people, 55, 65–6, Women in the Life (Washington,
76, 108, 133–4, 150 DC), 132–3
against women, 34–5, 37, 45, women of color,
71–2, 105–6, 147–8, 150–1 see intersectionality; feminism,
visibility, 24, 79, 99, 114, 131, US third world
148–50, 192n38 work, 12, 36–7, 71–2, 125, 128–9,
voice, 72, 78, 97, 148 135, 141–51
and the arts, 140–1 World Conference on Women,
being heard, 110, 114 Fourth (Beijing), 129
breaking silences, 89–90 writing, 146–7

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Social Change and

Solidarity Politics for Millennials

Social Change and Intersectional Activism: The Spirit of Social

Series Editors’ Introduction ix

T he Politics of Intersectionality series builds on the longstanding

Both Crenshaw and Collins gave the name “intersectionality”

best feminist work, and committed to rigorous standards of quality

themselves, particularly for senior professors who train graduate stu-

In Social Change and Intersectional Activism, the second book of

I thank, first of all, my research participants for sharing their life

Herbst Lewis, Jess O’Keefe, Sandra Dawson, Kathy Glass, Alison

and Chican@ Studies departments have been wonderfully helpful,

For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by

Haven’t we always borne jugs of water, children, poverty? Why not

As deeply as I wanted safety or freedom, I wanted desire, hope, and

In Stride toward Freedom, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.,

change.5 Some writers have shown what an important role spiritual-

spirit is so central to its development.16 Intersectionality or multira-

These experiences of conflict between different identities can unravel

knowledge, because everyone has the capacity for looking within

Indeed, there are many examples of people using religiosity, religious

the psyche and cause spiritual damage.39 Because the violence of

for political contestation and makes the teaching of ways to access

It is a spiritual process, as well as a political one, to help create a culture

As we develop spiritual and reflective practices within the context of

against thought, but thought as felt and feeling as thought: prac-

Lesbian and gay history demands a radical archive of emotion in order

The oral histories I collected contribute to the archives of LGBTQ

Focusing on positive feelings does not mean denying or rejecting

When problems arise, proceed from a position of strength. Affirm that

part of a larger structure that is emerging—a spiritual force for social

has no bounds and . . . is not owned by any individual but shared

This is the connection that aikido master Koichi Tohei refers to

antiracist feminist critiques to improve how people do science.86

1. Intimacy is objective, but personal rather than public.

Integrity, on the other hand, emphasizes

1. Objectivity as public verifiability

What I find most useful for my purpose here is Kasulis’s description

Collins calls “connected knowing.”92 He writes, “Knower and known

From Judaism, Christianity and Islam to Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism

Note the synchronicity of Macy’s description with Pert’s description

Reason is an important contribution—one that helps us focus on

The foreword and the introductory section to this 2002 anthology

Love, Faith, and Joy

four primary ways in which love manifests as motivation for activ-

pleasure produce energy that sustains activists through conflicts and

Twenty-one years ago we struggled with the recognition of difference

part of our global material interdependence is central to what historian

Background: Intellectual and

to different structures and exercises of power and seeks to equalize

disability, and nation “between and among” groups structured oppo-

Love as a Critical Position

paranoia as a methodology of queer and feminist theory and other

Honor Our Roots

the very purposes of our research.” Dillard describes a “need to pray

Accept Our Shared Humanity

form of resistance to oppression and generates energy that motivates

Anzaldúa calls for foundational changes in consciousness in order to

Acceptance of oneself and others happens also through the dif-

We will begin to see each other as we dare to begin to see ourselves;

Accept Our Power

Blocked, immobilized, we can’t move forward, can’t move back-

Many activists resist the position of victim, focusing instead on