Embracing Conflict in Movements and in Our Personal Lives

My first organizing job closed last summer. To the outside world, Trump-era policies for nonprofits are to blame. As a person who’s been in movements for decades, I know there is no single reason why any organization closes. But all of these causes are made worse by an inability to deal with discord and disagreement. This culture of avoidance is not unique; rather it is woven into our campaigns, institutions, and quite frankly, our personal lives. As more community-based organizations crumble from the rot of conflict avoidance, it’s a reckoning of how far we must work to embrace conflict in order to make our movements stronger.

Conflict aversion is a fester in any relationship. The necessity of conflict management is echoed by neuroscientists, physicists, and even movement leaders. Without these skills, our movements (and our personal lives) risk stagnation. If we ever want to hold our oppressors accountable, we need to do the same with our leaders, colleagues, and comrades. Most of us don’t know how. Instead, we hold our tongues and jump from campaign to campaign with little thought on how engaging in intra-community conflict can help us build power.

I am no different. Though I now see conflict as a necessity, I have not always had this vantage point. I fawned, fought, and fumbled my way to avoid feeling potentially misunderstood—or worse, dismissed in conflict. I’ve learned to leverage the positive outcomes of conflict by leading with my goals, building accountability structures, and regularly reviewing my progress. This praxis has revealed the positive impacts of leaning into conflict, and has had ripple effects from the individual to the communal level. Effectively addressing conflict allows us to generate new ideas, move through difficult experiences, and build resilience for the future. 

At the end of 2025, I facilitated a workshop on engaging in conflict at The People’s Place in Waterbury, Connecticut. Borrowing its title from my current favorite slang, Crash Out Diaries: Conflict as a Tool for Community Growth opened with the question, “How have you been taught to handle conflict in childhood and adulthood?” The first answer was avoidance. So was the second. Avoiding interpersonal conflict is the most American thing we can do. But if we want to build more power, we have a responsibility to embrace conflict—and each other—in the process.

Lead with mutual goals to generate new ideas

Centering my goals and values, rather than my ego, has increased my ability to move through conflict towards a productive solution. There was a time when I could only go as far as demanding that my hurt feelings were acknowledged. If they were—my anger dissolved, my reasons for engaging in conflict forgotten, and all was well until I was hurt again. It took me years to recognize that those patterns kept me in a loop, masking the root of the issues and my ability to grow with my colleagues. I made a conscious decision to interrupt that loop.

In action, this looks like reflecting on my mutual goals with the parties involved, identifying my core values, and being open to behavior change as a result of discussion. 

Though my goals typically change with each situation, a consistent goal I have is to keep my focus on winning a better world rather than being “right.” When my goal is to be right, I lose all ability to see what’s needed in order to win. This black-or-white thinking creates an isolated echo chamber that cannot build power. In contrast, when my goal is to win as a collective, I become more malleable and open to change. This allows me to see beyond the binary of black-or-white-thinking. Reflecting on my goals in this way allows me to see more perspectives and, therefore, leave my echo chamber to take action. 

Another goal I reflect on when engaging in conflict is my expectation of myself to be a good steward in our movements. I take leadership, and the leadership development of others, very seriously. (Perhaps it’s because I’m both a Libra and a middle child.) I have an expectation that I show up with the courage to do what is right for my community, even when it means looking at the uncomfortable, messy parts of our movements and relationships. My goal is to be a good steward, which means I have committed myself to showing up as the leader I aspire to be. Despite how temporarily good it may feel to blame, ignore, or avoid a problem, I have to make an effort to move towards a resolution. Leadership is a deliberate journey, not simply a destination. This process allows me to treat it as such.

Leading with mutual goals requires curiosity, honesty, and intention. With pen and paper, I sit beside my ego and write my goals before approaching difficult conversation(s). This shift pushes me towards what artist and organizer Kristianna Smith calls Productive Conflict: “All conflict in which we can hold our humanity and the humanity of others in the conflict. The goal is to change conditions for the better.” 

When we take the risk of addressing conflict with each other, it can allow us to generate new ideas and identify new opportunities for growth. Those opportunities are missed when our approach is one-dimensional, like being satisfied with acknowledged hurt, rather than addressing the root. Taken together, conflict avoidance is a bad strategy. Addressing conflict with each other now prepares us for the eventuality of conflict in the future. 

Build accountability to build our collective capacity

Building accountability structures for myself has made addressing conflict easier, especially knowing that there are people I can turn to for support. In a culture where silence is rewarded, this counters everything I have been taught about resolving conflict. It’s considered “cringe” to ask for help, let alone to call upon others for ongoing support related to your job or campaign. In reality, an accountability structure not only helps you as an individual, but it helps the entire group move through the conflict together. As James Baldwin discussed with Nikki Giovanni in 1972, “your suffering does not isolate you… your suffering is your bridge.” 

In practice, this looks like turning to trusted colleagues involved in the situation, bridging divides across departments or organizations, and phoning a friend to keep me grounded. I usually start with calling a friend, building the confidence to address the issue by seeking an outside party. With a partner in hand, I work my way up to connect with the involved parties and begin the work of calling a meeting with all necessary leadership and trusted neutral colleagues. This messy, complex, and arduous process builds the capacity to handle difficult experiences in the future as an individual and as a collective. 

Our likelihood to succeed in a goal increases when we have others involved. I first learned of accountability structures like this through peacemaking circles grounded in the Tlingit culture. My first peace-making circle was in 2014. At the time, I worked with young people impacted by the criminal justice system across Western Massachusetts. 

I learned the basic tenets of peace-making circles: the process of developing accountability circles, effective outreach practices for impacted parties, and even tactics to facilitate a discussion centered around behavior change. Over the next four years, I facilitated and sat in many circles with young people, their partners, and parents. To this day, I still meet the men I’ve worked with who mention the impact of those peace-making circles more than a decade later. 

Throughout my career, I have seen similar models replicated and refined, primarily in the transformative justice space. Even in the realm of productivity, experts like James Clear have cited the importance of accountability buddies or social contracts in behavior change. Accountability structures like these increase our collective capacity to handle complex situations together. 

Difficult experiences are unavoidable in our movements. Addressing conflict head on allows our people to develop the skills to deal with difficult moments as a collective. Black Youth Project 100 (BYP 100) exemplified this in the early 2010s as the organization dealt with a sexual harassment accusation about one of its visible leaders. 

Though the accusation took place before BYP 100 had even formed, leadership of the organization took responsibility because of the impact it had on their work. Organizers at the helm of BYP 100 managed the conflict through a transformative justice process that involved many parties in the community. The organization even formed its own National Healing and Safety Council as a result of the accusation to mitigate the eventuality of future harm. 

As Charlene Carruthers explains in her manifesto, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, what could have been a threatening issue for the organization was thwarted through collective conflict resolution. It is a testament to the necessity of addressing conflict with an accountability structure that builds the collective capacity to handle future difficult situations. 

Regular reflection builds resilience 

Intentional, regular review of my goals and progress maintains my conflict management skills and helps to build resilience for the future. This can involve accountability buddies or circles, mentors, or coaches to keep you on track. For me, this looks like weaving reflections on difficult relationships into my weekly planning. It requires a level of perspicacity to be truthful about where my relationships are and where I want them to be.

Without this regular reflection, it’s easier for me to move through the world ungrounded. If I cannot connect my daily actions to my larger goals, it’s easier for me to fall out of good habits. If my actions are not reflected as outcomes of my goals, it’s easier for me to return to conflict avoidant patterns. This requires me to be intentional about my progress on a daily basis.

Tracking organizational progress on conflict management requires setting organizational goals outside the immediate conflict, and creating space to reflect on whether they are being met. This can look like tracking how often your group collaborates with others, or committing to the development of internal systems to deal with future conflict when it arrives, much like BYP100. The most important thing that matters is that a plan exists, and that your team has regular reflection of what is working and what is not.

Our relationships are the core of everything that we do in movements. The more we take the risk of addressing our conflict with each other, the more resilient we become in the future. To be resilient is to be able “to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” Resilience by definition is made from conflict. We become resilient by turning towards each other in tough times, not against.

There is no single action that will bring us towards liberation. It is a series of many actions, big and small, to generate complex solutions for complex situations. Regardless of what steps we take towards our future, managing conflict is a skill that will serve us in that journey. We must be willing to take the risk of engaging in conflict for the purpose of becoming stronger. 

Every movement, group, and organization will have a beginning and an end. It is our relationships with each other that will remain long after the doors are shuttered and the meetings have ended. Continuing to charge into combat with our oppressors without the ability to handle conflict between ourselves is wasteful. 

We can either allow our unspoken conflict to rot until we become nothing more than a decaying mass, or we can turn it into compost to fertilize our movements for the future.

Featured image by Kimmie Dearest

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to Convergence’s Bookshop. Purchases made through our bookshop support our movement media work.