ColorOfChange Sucks
A firsthand account of movement harm, extraction, and reclaiming myself.
Editor’s Note
The title of this piece is intentional. “Sucks” is not an accusation, a legal claim, or a callout for spectacle — it’s a plain-language summary of my lived experience inside a powerful movement institution. For years, I believed that professionalism required silence and that naming harm would undermine “the work.” I no longer believe that. This isn’t a takedown or a rumor mill; it’s a firsthand record of institutional harm, power, and extraction, written clearly and without apology. Movements don’t become stronger by refusing to examine themselves, and accountability doesn’t begin with comfort.
I joined a national racial justice organization in April 2012 because I believed in the work.
I believed that if Black people were going to survive what was clearly coming — more austerity, more voter suppression, more extraction dressed up as “engagement” — we needed strong institutions. Real strategy. Political courage. And actual respect for the people doing the work, not just the work itself.
I was hired as a Campaign Manager. I was young (ish), hungry, politically clear, and deeply committed. Over the next three years, I climbed the ladder to Campaign Director for Economic Justice & Civic Engagement. Look at the big brain on Brad, right?
On paper? Growth.
On LinkedIn? Success.
Inside the building? Something else entirely.
At first, it was electric. Ideas moved fast. The work felt urgent and visible and important. I was trusted with major campaigns, complex political questions, and public-facing strategy.
But here’s the thing I learned early and the hard way: Trust is not the same as power.
My ideas traveled faster than my name. My political instincts were praised in private and re-presented in public without attribution. I was encouraged to bring my “full self”—my analysis, my creativity, my clarity—and then quietly disciplined when that self became too visible.
This wasn’t chaos.
It was control.
It showed up as constant correction.
As moving goalposts.
As praise immediately followed by diminishment.
As being told I was “brilliant” but somehow always “not ready.”
I was given enormous responsibility without real authority or protection. Needed urgently. Never fully trusted.
The harm wasn’t loud.
It was psychological.
Emotional.
Spiritual.
Financial.
It lived in the gap between what I was asked to give and what I was allowed to claim.
I worked under a leader with absolute, unaccountable power. Decisions were opaque. Feedback was inconsistent. Approval was conditional and often withheld. Dissent — even thoughtful, strategic dissent — was framed as personal failure or disloyalty.
So I learned to second-guess myself.
To pre-edit my ideas.
To carry entire campaigns while being made to feel interchangeable.
I watched my labor generate visibility, funding, and institutional credibility — while I absorbed the cost.
I worked long hours for pay that didn’t match my role, my output, or my impact. Advancement meant more responsibility without more safety. I was encouraged to sacrifice my time, my health, my sense of self, all in the name of “the work.”
And when the work harmed me, there was no language for that harm inside the institution. Only silence.
By the time I left in late 2015, I wasn’t just tired.
I was hollowed out.
My self-esteem was in the basement. I questioned my instincts. I wondered if I was difficult. If I was asking for too much. If I had somehow misunderstood my own worth.
This is how institutional abuse works.
It doesn’t break you all at once.
It erodes you slowly.
Professionally.
Politely.
I left believing the work was good — and that I was the problem.
What I didn’t lose, even then, was my political clarity. I knew something was wrong. I knew this wasn’t what justice work was supposed to feel like. I knew movements couldn’t survive if they treated people as expendable infrastructure instead of human beings.
Believing that about myself took longer.
And I’m telling this now because for a long time, I thought silence was maturity.
I told myself naming harm would distract from the work. That it would make me look bitter. That it would cost me relationships, opportunities, proximity.
What I eventually understood is that silence wasn’t maturity.
It was self-erasure.
Movements don’t benefit from unspoken harm. They replicate it. Institutions don’t become accountable by accident. They change when people tell the truth — clearly, carefully, and without apology.
I’m not telling this story to settle scores.
I’m telling it because I survived it.
Leaving didn’t feel like freedom at first. It felt like grief. Like stepping out of a loud room and realizing your ears are still ringing. Like silence that’s too quiet to trust.
Institutional harm doesn’t just live in memory. It lives in the body. In the flinch at feedback. In the reflexive apology. In the over-preparing, under-claiming, bracing for punishment that never comes.
Rebuilding wasn’t linear. It was a series of refusals.
I refused to work in rooms where clarity was treated as a threat.
I refused urgency as an excuse for disrespect.
I refused the idea that brilliance requires self-erasure.
Those refusals cost me speed. Proximity. The illusion of safety that comes with being “inside.”
They gave me something better: myself.
Institutional harm trains you to doubt your perception, to outsource judgment upward, to believe discomfort is always a personal flaw instead of a signal.
Rebuilding meant relearning how to listen to my body.
If a room made me feel small, I paid attention.
If a leader spoke justice and practiced domination, I noticed.
If something felt extractive — even when praised as “impactful” — I named it.
Slowly, my instincts stopped whispering.
They spoke clearly again.
One of the quietest lies movement spaces tell — especially to Black women — is that ambition is dangerous. That wanting authority will be used against you. That visibility invites discipline. That leadership requires self-abandonment.
Rebuilding meant reclaiming ambition without apology.
Not grind-yourself-into-dust ambition.
But stewardship. Vision. Care.
I began choosing work aligned with both my politics and my nervous system. Work that trusted me with power instead of dangling it. Work where accountability flowed in all directions.
That choice changed everything.
What healed me wasn’t leaving movement work.
It was returning to it on my own terms.
Building slowly. Intentionally. With people who understood that culture is infrastructure. That relationships matter more than optics. That urgency without care is just another form of violence.
Here’s what I know now: the opposite of institutional harm is not perfection.
It’s consent.
Clarity.
Shared power.
Work that leaves you tired but intact.
Healthy leadership doesn’t cost you your sense of self.
You don’t lose your instincts.
You don’t shrink to survive.
You don’t confuse burnout with commitment.
Movements are not strengthened by broken people.
They are strengthened by people who can last.
I don’t romanticize movement leadership anymore.
I recognize it.
And when it’s real, my body knows. I love that for me.