Circles of Community, Strategies of Inclusion

Chapter Six analyzes the efforts of activists to create community by bringing together people with different agendas and backgrounds and the resultant tensions and conflicts that come about in the process. I look closely at activists’ work to connect environmental and animal rights activism with concerns about social justice, especially with regard to people of color. Activist gatherings are imagined as free and open spaces of inclusivity and equality and yet they set up their own patterns of conformity and expectation. This chapter looks closely at how putting the “Earth first” comes in conflict with “anti-oppression” work and vice-versa, as activists try hard, drawing on empathy and compassion, to decolonize their communities and dismantle patriarchy and transphobia within their movements.