How do you know when it’s time to stop doing your wide-world-change activism in one organization and move on to another? I have been active and taken leadership in a women’s organization during the last eight years. I try to use my privilege as a white middle-class woman in the United States in helpful ways. We are now backing [supporting] People of the Global Majority and working-class and poor folks in other partner organizations. We are also doing work to end racism in our own organization. We now have more women of color in key leadership positions.


I have had a good impact. However, I am now being more and more marginalized politically. I share my ideas—and they are dismissed. We are working on ending racism, but the group won’t look at women’s liberation and ending classism (or other oppressions). I am assigned hard work that keeps current projects going but am not invited to be on committees that decide the organization’s future direction.


I have been counseling on all of this for a couple of years. Still, it’s not clear what I should do. One of my Co-Counselors suggested I write to this e-mail discussion list and ask for your views about when it’s time to move on from one’s wide-world-change activism in a particular group.