Inclusive Activism: From Performative Ritual to Shared Care

Introduction

Inclusive activism is not a branding exercise. It is a confrontation with an uncomfortable truth: many movements that speak the language of liberation quietly reproduce the hierarchies they claim to dismantle.

You have seen it. The same faces dominate the microphone. The same bodies are expected to show up at every rally. The same ideological vocabulary becomes a gatekeeping device. Meanwhile, parents, disabled comrades, precarious workers and political newcomers orbit the edges, unsure whether they belong. Some leave. Some are pushed out. Some never enter.

The tragedy is not merely moral. It is strategic. When activism becomes a performance of purity rather than a practice of shared power, it shrinks its own base. It mistakes visibility for victory and noise for transformation. It enshrines protest as spectacle while neglecting the infrastructures of care that make sustained struggle possible.

If your idea of a real activist requires a specific body, schedule, language or aesthetic, you have already limited the revolution.

The thesis is simple but demanding: to build movements capable of systemic change, you must redesign your spaces around inclusive participation, genuine shared care and evolving accountability. Rituals alone are not enough. But when listening, care and feedback loops are embedded into structure, inclusion ceases to be performative and becomes a lived form of collective power.

The Hidden Elitism of Activist Culture

Every movement carries a culture. Culture determines who feels at home and who feels scrutinized. It shapes who speaks, who apologizes and who absorbs harm in silence.

Too often activist culture rewards performance over practice.

When Spectacle Becomes the Standard

Placards, rallies and fiery speeches are not inherently exclusionary. Historically, mass mobilizations have cracked open regimes. The civil rights sit ins in the United States, the People Power uprising in the Philippines, the encampments of Occupy Wall Street all relied on public presence to rupture political routine.

But when a tactic becomes a ritual divorced from strategy, it calcifies. The global anti Iraq war marches of February 15, 2003 drew millions into the streets across 600 cities. It was one of the largest coordinated protests in history. The war proceeded anyway. Scale did not translate into leverage.

If activism is equated only with physical presence at demonstrations, then anyone who cannot attend becomes suspect. The single parent. The caregiver. The disabled activist. The worker on a night shift. Their absence is misread as apathy.

The ritual becomes a loyalty test.

Movements that fixate on public spectacle risk confusing participation with visibility. They begin to treat activism as a Cool Kids Club rather than a distributed practice of social transformation. Those who master the aesthetics of radicalism are elevated, even when their interpersonal conduct contradicts their politics.

Ideological Purity as Social Control

Another form of exclusion hides behind language. The uniform recitation of theory, the templated denunciations, the reflex to label dissent as reactionary. When nuance is punished, members learn to self censor.

This is not accidental. Black and white thinking simplifies coordination. It creates an illusion of unity. But it also reproduces the same othering logic deployed by authoritarian states. If you are not fully aligned, you are against us.

History offers cautionary tales. Many revolutionary movements have fractured not because of external repression alone, but because internal purges hollowed out trust. When critique is equated with betrayal, innovation dies. Creativity retreats underground.

The question you must ask is unsettling: are your spaces safer for those who agree with leadership than for those who raise uncomfortable truths?

Without confronting elitism, classism, sexism and ableism inside activist culture, any call for systemic change rings hollow. Yet naming the problem is only the first step. You must also redesign the conditions that produce it.

Care Work as Strategic Infrastructure

If spectacle is the visible tip of activism, care work is its submerged foundation.

Care work includes childcare, emotional labor, translation, transportation support, accessibility planning, conflict mediation and all the quiet acts that sustain human beings. It is often feminized, racialized and undervalued. Yet without it, movements burn bright and fade fast.

From Support Function to Core Strategy

Treating care as an afterthought guarantees exclusion. Treating care as core strategy transforms participation.

Consider the Quebec casseroles during the 2012 student strikes. Nightly pot and pan protests allowed entire neighborhoods to participate from their balconies and doorsteps. Parents with children, elders, those wary of police confrontation could join through sound. The tactic decentralized presence. It widened the circle.

The lesson is not that pots and pans are universally superior. It is that design matters. When a tactic acknowledges varied capacities, it multiplies engagement.

Similarly, when meetings provide childcare, remote access, quiet rooms, translation and transportation stipends, they signal that different lives are expected, not tolerated.

Care becomes infrastructure rather than charity.

Measuring Sovereignty Through Care

Movements often measure success in crowd size or media hits. A more revealing metric is degrees of sovereignty gained.

Does your group control resources that make members less dependent on hostile institutions? Do you share skills across class lines? Are you building mutual aid networks that can respond to crises without waiting for the state?

Occupy Wall Street did not pass legislation, but it shifted public discourse around inequality. More importantly, in its encampments it experimented with kitchens, libraries and general assemblies that prefigured alternative governance. Those experiments were imperfect, yet they demonstrated that care and deliberation could coexist with confrontation.

When you budget for childcare before you print a banner, you make a strategic declaration: the reproduction of life is as political as the disruption of traffic.

This shift undermines elitism at its root. It tells members that their bodies and responsibilities are not obstacles to activism but integral to it.

However, care without accountability can become symbolic. To prevent this, you need practices that bind listening to action.

Ritual, Reflection and the Danger of Stagnation

Ritual is powerful. Protest itself is a collective ritual that reorients emotion and belief. Yet rituals decay when they become predictable.

A listening circle can quickly become another box to tick. Participants speak, others nod and nothing changes. Superficial participation obscures real disengagement.

How do you prevent that?

The Pulse Round as Opening, Not Ending

A simple practice can anchor transformation: begin each gathering with a brief pulse round. Each person names how they are arriving and what they need from the space. A talking object circulates. No interruptions. A scribe records needs on a visible care ledger.

This does three things.

First, it slows the room. Activists are often in a permanent state of urgency. Naming bodily and emotional states grounds the group.

Second, it democratizes voice. Even the quietest member speaks.

Third, it generates data. Needs are no longer abstract.

But if the ledger remains symbolic, trust erodes.

Closing the Loop

To transform ritual into infrastructure, you must close the loop.

Before any meeting ends, revisit the ledger. Identify which needs can be met within forty eight hours. Two volunteers claim responsibility. At the next gathering, they report back publicly: what was done, what obstacles arose, what remains unmet.

This feedback loop converts empathy into delivery.

Over time, patterns emerge. Perhaps childcare requests consistently outnumber available volunteers. Perhaps language accessibility is repeatedly flagged. These patterns reveal structural weaknesses.

At this stage, introduce a rotating listener in residence. For a fixed term, one member tracks whose voices are least heard, which needs remain red on the dashboard and where tensions simmer. At the end of the term, they present a synthesis. Not a personal critique, but a map of collective blind spots.

This practice resists stagnation. It assumes that no ritual is sacred. Every six months, the group votes to renew, modify or retire the practice. You sabotage stagnation before it sabotages you.

Ritual plus reflection equals evolution. Without reflection, ritual becomes theatre.

Beyond Tokenism: Designing for Intersectional Power

Intersectionality is often reduced to representation. A diverse photo. A panel with varied identities. These gestures matter symbolically, but symbolism without power redistribution is cosmetic.

True intersectional organizing asks: who sets the agenda? Who controls resources? Whose risks are normalized?

Inverting the Speaker Hierarchy

One structural intervention is the care caucus. Once a quarter, those whose needs remained unmet the longest set the agenda. They determine discussion priorities. Others listen.

This inversion disrupts habitual dominance. It forces the group to confront where its proclaimed values fail in practice.

Movements that survived repression often relied on such inversions. The Khudai Khidmatgar in the North West Frontier Province combined disciplined nonviolence with deep community structures rooted in local culture. Their strength did not lie solely in protest but in village level solidarity that respected local voices.

When marginalized members see their concerns shape strategy, not merely be acknowledged, trust grows.

Expanding the Definition of Contribution

Another redesign involves expanding what counts as activism.

Writing, art, translation, caregiving, research, online amplification, skill sharing through hobby groups, even hosting political conversations at home all contribute to cultural shift. Not everyone will stand at the barricade. Nor should they.

The idea that contribution requires formal membership or constant attendance narrows the field unnecessarily. A movement that aspires to systemic change cannot afford to exclude those who are politically sympathetic but wary of traditional protest formats.

This does not mean diluting principles. It means diversifying delivery.

In the Philippines and elsewhere, state propaganda has stigmatized protest. Some citizens reject rallies not because they oppose justice, but because they associate marches with disorder or manipulation. Rather than dismiss them as reactionary, ask how else your message might reach them. Through neighborhood forums? Cultural events? Digital storytelling? Cooperative enterprises?

Innovation widens the door.

Accountability Without Humiliation

Finally, intersectional power requires a culture where mistakes can be named without annihilation.

Public call outs may generate short term moral clarity, but they often produce defensiveness rather than growth. If members fear that one misstep will brand them irredeemable, they will avoid vulnerability.

Create processes for restorative dialogue. Encourage self awareness as much as ideological alignment. Remember that the inability to admit error is a fatal flaw across political colors.

The state thrives on othering. Do not replicate its logic internally.

When inclusion becomes structural rather than performative, your movement shifts from a brittle coalition to a resilient organism. It breathes, adapts and learns.

Putting Theory Into Practice

To redesign your group around inclusive activism and shared care, begin with concrete, time bound steps:

• Install a Care Ledger Dashboard: At every meeting, record named needs publicly. Use a simple color code such as red for unmet, amber for in progress and green for completed. Review it at the end of each gathering and assign responsibility for at least one red item.

• Launch a Rotating Listener in Residence: Each month, appoint a different member to track patterns of voice and silence. Their role is to synthesize themes, especially from historically marginalized members, and recommend adjustments.

• Budget for Care First: Before allocating funds to publicity or materials, set aside resources for childcare, accessibility tools, transport stipends and remote participation platforms. Make this visible in financial reports.

• Hold a Quarterly Care Caucus: Invite those whose needs remained unmet the longest to set the agenda. Use this session to redesign structures, not merely vent frustrations.

• Set an Expiration Date on Rituals: Every six months, evaluate whether your listening practices are deepening participation or becoming rote. Renew, modify or retire them through collective vote.

These steps are modest. They do not require massive funding or ideological overhaul. But they signal seriousness. They bind listening to action.

Conclusion

Movements fail not only because the enemy is strong, but because internal culture quietly corrodes collective will.

When activism becomes a performance of purity, it alienates potential allies. When care work is sidelined, burnout accelerates. When rituals lack feedback loops, inclusion becomes theatre.

Yet the solution is within reach. By treating care as infrastructure, by expanding what counts as contribution and by embedding accountability into recurring practices, you convert shared values into shared power.

Inclusive activism is not softer activism. It is more strategic activism. It recognizes that sustainable change requires diverse bodies, minds and rhythms. It understands that sovereignty grows not just in the streets, but in kitchens, childcare corners and quiet listening circles where trust is forged.

The real activist is not defined by aesthetic, attendance or jargon. The real activist participates in building conditions where others can act.

If your movement aspires to dismantle oppressive systems, it must refuse to mirror them internally. The question is no longer whether inclusion is morally desirable. The question is whether you are willing to redesign your practices so that shared care becomes the engine of your strategy.

What would happen if, six months from now, the most marginalized member of your group described your space as the safest political home they have ever known?