When Lean-Agile methodologies are brought up in progressive spaces, they’re often met with a suspicious side-eye. After all, as Audre Lorde said, ‘the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’. Why on earth would we choose a methodology so beloved by big business, and how would we use it to deconstruct the harmful systems they impose on us?

I understand this line of thinking. Lean-Agile principles are foundational in the tech sector and getting take-up in other for-profit industries. Many of the well-known books that promote Lean-Agile (The Lean Start-up, and The Age of Agile, for example) include case…

(And why 350.org doesn’t have one)

A short while ago, a fellow former Digital Director posted this on Facebook:

“Just for funsies: Do you think digital should report to comms? to field? digital people inside of comms and field but not in a digital department? Have you ever put these ideas into practice? What worked and what didn’t?”

The comments exploded — as did the minds of many people who grapple with this same question every day. Opinions ranged from ‘digital should report to comms’, ‘digital should report to field’, ‘everything should report to digital’, and ‘there should be no such thing as digital’. …

I write emails for a living. More specifically, I write emails asking people to take action in solidarity with workers around the world, to stand up against corporate abuses of power, and to donate to support progressive movements. This is mostly a dream. But sometimes it can get fraught.

Every day I experience how language can bring people together and build power. But language can also be divisive, dangerous, and exclusionary. A turn of phrase that I use every day as a woman in London may make no sense at all to a reader in America. Worse, I might unthinkingly…