Waging Nonviolence · 4 hours ago

Movements Cannot Shy Away From Conflict • Waging Nonviolence | Waging Nonviolence

In social movements, the distance between having a strategy and having a *good* strategy is often filled with something quietly corrosive: the habit of avoiding conflict to keep the peace, protect relationships, and preserve a sense of forward motion that may be going nowhere. Yotam Marom, a longtime organizer and facilitator, writes with unflinching honesty about this pattern - and about himself: "I avoided conflict for selfish reasons, too: to shield myself from having to actually justify the thoughts and feelings driving me, to protect my ego, to protect my place in the group." What redeems the essay is not the diagnosis but the scene at its center - a New York City tenant organization, gathered around a whiteboard, slowly finding the courage to let go of work they loved for the sake of work that might actually win. When Kit, a Korean organizer who understands the pivot could cost her her job, speaks up anyway, something shifts in the room: "Honestly, I feel relieved. I know it's going to hurt some of our folks. I know I might not have a job anymore. But winning is more important." Marom's argument is that truth-telling is not just a tactical asset but a form of transformation - that the same honesty movements ask of the world must first be practiced, imperfectly and at real cost, among themselves.