An excerpt from For the Long Haul argues that sustained collective work requires deliberate, care-based relations. Two recurring relational patterns—paranoid suspicion and instrumentalizing people—undermine movement capacity and must be addressed if collective change is to persist.
Two common relational patterns harm movements: a paranoid stance that prioritizes fault-finding and a tendency to treat people instrumentally as means to an end.
Paranoid reading closes off curiosity, vulnerability, and other modes of relating that sustain long-term collaboration.
Instrumental organizing reduces people to roles or resources, narrowing participation and undermining shared decision-making.
Working together in sustained ways calls on us to be deliberate about how we relate with one another in movements and communities in struggle. Bringing care into how we relate with one another can be surprisingly difficult. There are two relational patterns, in particular, that pose persistent problems in movements.
The upshot of this is that there can't be any surprises at all when we're paranoid, because we close off our capacity to be curious, open, and vulnerable." This stance, they clarify, is warranted at times. The trouble comes when this relational pattern becomes a default. Smith and Montgomery suggest that "a paranoid stance tends towards constant vigilance, so that there can be no bad surprises.
How to Stay in the Fight for a Better World (Between the Lines). The first is a tendency toward suspicion, rivalry, and dismissal. Whenever this topic comes up in discussions among activists, it quickly evokes head nods and horror stories about takedowns on social media, organizational territorialism, activist social status hierarchies, sectarian posturing, and radical self-righteousness.
Students find that spending time with people from different backgrounds can be a powerful first step toward building alliances that create a more loving and just world.
Can we create spaces where everyone’s voice matters? Equipped with patience, courage, and curiosity, students meet for the first time and discover what’s possible when we listen to one another’s perspectives.
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Can we work together to build a better country if we don’t share the same religious values? Graduate students show us how to use curiosity and patience to find a path forward.
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