Movement superstructures decide which formations access resources, replicating donor relationships
As sociopolitical awareness and mobilization has peaked and sustained over the last decade, the national movement landscape has responded. Local, statewide and national movement formations have emerged in this short time and worked to coordinate efforts to mobilize and organize the masses towards revolutionary action. But, putting all the pieces together hasn’t been easy. Amongst the wins, growing collectivism and learnings, tensions between local and national efforts persist.
National movement superstructures (NMSs) can be described as formations that overreach local organizing to coordinate national strategy moves, pool and move resources, and even engage organizing internationally. A superstructure is literally a structure built on top of something — and few would disagree that national orgs tend to be built upon local, grassroots work. One advantage of NMSs is the ability to garner support from a broad range of funders, including but not limited to government institutions, foundations, nonprofit organizations, private companies and community members. But, the windfall of resources brought on by heightened awareness around social issues has not come without complexities and consequences.
Organizations like Black Lives Matter Global Network, 2016 Women’s March, Until Freedom and more recently BYP100 have come under fire due to accounts of these national structures garnering resources while withholding or siphoning financial support for local formations who move work “on-the-ground”, among other concerns. While the sources of this funding have been in question, rightfully so, additional concerns have been raised around the power dynamic this creates between national and local — clouted and invisible — mixy and modest — and eventually funded and under-resourced — organizers and organizations. If NMSs are granted a vast majority of resources intended to support movement work, they will naturally be granted the ability to decide which and whose local work will be funded — while smaller, local organizations toil over the same small grants and donations from tapped pockets. I hope this doesn’t feel like a reach — and I know based on my work with other organizers that the impacts of this are felt.
Organizing can be a messy calling. Which is to say that access to resources is inextricably tied to one’s access to people — after all, despite their reach, many movement superstructures are really run by just a handful of (mostly) veteran organizers — few people with much power. This is not to say that these folks are not brilliant in their own right, have not proven themselves to be tried and true, but it is to identify the potentially unintended concentration of resources, and the implications of propagating these dynamics further. It is to remind us that we are human and in that too trusting of our own ability to make decisions as a stand-in for others. I’d think it would not be necessary to explain the dangers of power too concentrated to a bunch of Black radical community organizers, but I’ve found myself doing just that far too often over the last few years — so here it goes again.
Movement superstructures decide which formations access resources, replicating donor relationships. When local formations are fearful of critiquing members of NMSs because they’re concerned with no longer having access to resources, we aren’t practicing collectivism or democratic principles, we are replicating oppressive systems. When national formations collect millions in donations for “movement” work but the public is not inside of decisions on how to use those funds, we aren’t practicing collectivism or democratic principles. When Establishment foundations drive strategy (for example, recurring emphasis on electoral organizing) we are not practicing collectivism, because a few in the community are dictating the use of funds that are meant for the many. I say this not lightly, but why are we convinced that we are the exception? The story of Black Radical Tradition is scattered with stories that mirror contemporary tensions between local and national organizing structures.
Without real, meaningful and sturdy mutually-beneficial relationships to grassroots organizers, how can NMSs avoid falling into donor relationships with local organizations? Who are NMSs accountable to in real life? How can NMSs avoid hoarding power? Are there opportunities for participatory budgeting or regranting amongst movement ecosystems to democratize these resources?
In my opinion movement superstructures are direly needed to be able to formulate a dignified response to the enemies we face, but without answers to the questions above they may do more harm (to local organizing’s stability) than good in the long run.
*this piece was originally written in 2021 and later published
