From The Forge
Cesar Chavez’s sexual assaults were horrific. Sexism in organizing persists and requires the attention of leaders. I’ll present stories and analysis of this sexism from nearly 200 organizers we spoke with at The Women’s Organizing Network.
The Women’s Organizing Network supported women and nonbinary organizers in New York City, particularly BIPOC, to advance their leadership, to integrate an intersectional gender analysis into their community organizing work, and to press for organizational change toward those two goals. I co-founded and led The Women’s Organizing Network together with a multiracial team of women and nonbinary organizers, from 2015 to 2023.
We did this work primarily through a leadership cohort program and open workshops. We closed our doors two and a half years ago, and I want to take this opportunity to share our learnings. This article summarizes the original one to ones that formed our vision and the collective analysis that emerged from our work. I write this article primarily for organizational leaders with the power to shift culture, norms and policies in their organizations, and for women, nonbinary and other organizers who may find support in hearing their experiences reflected here.
The Cesar Chavez revelations are shocking in that such severe and pervasive assaults on women by a revered leader took place without seeing the light of day for so long. It may also be shocking that such a powerful leader as Dolores Huerta never spoke up about years of emotional abuse, sexual assault, and even two children that she had as a result of those assaults. But sexual assault, sexual harassment, misogyny, sexism, and unconscious bias have been an integral part of most of our movements over time, and the fear Huerta had of damaging the movement is quite common.
Misogynist attitudes ran rampant in the 1960s within New Left organizations like Students for a Democratic Society, and prominent civil rights organizations were known to relegate brilliant, highly capable women to secretarial roles. Women leaders like Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer, who often led from behind, doing deep grassroots leadership development work, did not achieve the recognition that Dr. Martin Luther King and other men did. As recently as 2018, Ed Chambers, who led the Industrial Areas Foundation from 1972 to 2009 and developed the core organizing philosophy for congregation based organizing there, found it appropriate to include a story in his book, Roots for Radicals, where he told a member to stop her housework strike because “actions are for the opposition, not your husband.”
Our movements have never fully reckoned with this past and thus it continues to weaken our organizations. Many have certainly made important attempts though.
As the Founding Director of The Women’s Organizing Network, Dahlia Goldenberg merged a decade of experience with a global network of grassroots women’s organizations and her experience as a local community organizer. When she shifted into local community organizing, she discovered a lack of focus on women’s leadership or gender analysis, as well as sexism playing out toward women organizers. This realization led her to seek out others to jointly develop The Women’s Organizing Network.
More content from this blog
- Crimes Against Humanity, by Ahmet İnsel – 23 October 2023
- How Thailand and India continue to fail Myanmar refugees, by Makepeace Sitlhou – 16 August 2024
- Fear and Loathing Greet Myanmar’s Unfree Election, by Ben Dunant – 9 January 2026
- Slovakia’s Toxic Bargain: How Red-Brown Politics Exploit Masculinity, by Karmína – 1 May 2025
- Sudan’s World War, by Joshua Craze – 17 April 2025
Except where noted otherwise, original writing and translations produced by the Left Renewal Blog Collective are published under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Republished and translated material remains subject to the licence and terms of its original publication.