How Movements Protect the Powerful and Discipline the Vulnerable

When the news broke detailing César Chávez’s abuse of women in the movement they helped build, it landed with a force that was both shocking and clarifying. I felt rage. I felt sorrow. But I also felt a sense of familiarity. Because while the details of his violence were newly reported, the pattern they revealed was not. The exploitation, the silence, and the instinct to protect the powerful in movement work is an old damn story.

In this moment, we need to expand our analysis beyond individual behavior and look at the systems and values that ensure this kind of abuse will happen again and again.

At the center of our work, beneath the language of justice, solidarity, and liberation, is an unspoken question: Who will be sacrificed so that we can move forward? Too often, the answer is the same. Women. Black people. People with disabilities. Those with the least power to refuse.

We are willing to fight oppression externally while unknowingly accommodating it internally. We build narratives of progress that depend on silence, on minimization, on the disciplining of those who tell inconvenient truths. And in doing so, we protect the powerful and make sacrificing each other the norm—even when we are building movements that are supposed to protect one another.

This is not a contradiction that lives solely at the margins. This is not a case of bad apples. It is a structural problem that exists in every room we enter because we generally aren’t honest and clear-eyed about power and identity. In this moment, we need to expand our analysis beyond individual behavior and look at the systems and values that ensure this kind of abuse will happen again and again.

Power Doesn’t Just Corrupt, It Insulates

Our gut reaction to this kind of behavior is to repeat the idiom “power corrupts.” It implies that we should expect that people with power will behave badly. This acceptance lets us off the hook and doesn’t address a major problem with power: Power insulates. As people gain authority, decision-making rights, and proximity to resources, their access to unfiltered information about the impact of their actions narrows. This insulation is not always intentional; it is built through layers of deference, organizational design, and social conditioning that prioritize stability over disruption. Over time, insulation distorts perception. It becomes harder to accurately assess hurt or harm, easier to interpret critique as a threat, and more likely that decisions are made without a full understanding of their consequences.

In movement spaces, insulation shows up when leaders are surrounded by affirmation but lack meaningful channels for dissent. It is reinforced when those closest to power feel responsible for protecting it, rather than challenging it. Even our empathy for the difficulty of these jobs can lend itself to stifling necessary feedback. In these conditions, even leaders with strong values can become disconnected from the realities experienced by those with less power, not because they do not care, but because they cannot fully see.

In the case of César Chávez, this insulation appears to have allowed abusive behavior to continue unchecked, as those around him who knew what was happening either did not interrupt it or were unable to hold him accountable in meaningful ways.

Accountability Is Required for Solidarity

We often rely on the idea that shared identity will produce more just outcomes. But identity alone does not determine how power is used. Gaining power introduces new psychological, relational, and structural pressures that most of us are not trained to navigate. Without tools to understand how power changes our sense of threat, our decision-making, and our relationships, we default to familiar patterns. We protect what we have and justify decisions that maintain our position.

In our movements, this shows up when leaders from marginalized communities are both expected to represent collective values and are shielded from critique in the name of solidarity. It is incredibly hard to balance the need for solidarity and the kind of critique that will make us better for each other over time. Accountability systems for those in power can be uncomfortable because of the inherent loss of control and protection. But when we let that feeling drive decisions, we lose clarity and can cause harm.

Identity alone does not determine how power is used. Gaining power introduces new psychological, relational, and structural pressures that most of us are not trained to navigate.

The Chávez case underscores how shared political identity did not prevent harm, nor did it ensure that those harmed were protected or believed within the movement.

A Common Enemy Is Not Enough

Many of our movements are held together by opposition rather than by a clear, shared vision of how we want to operate internally. This creates what Brené Brown calls “common enemy intimacy,” where connection is built through shared outrage rather than shared commitments. While this can be effective for mobilization, it does not provide the foundation needed for governance, accountability, or sustained collaboration.

In practice, this shows up when movements are highly coordinated in external strategy but fragmented internally. It becomes difficult to address harm without feeling like we are weakening the collective, because our sense of cohesion depends on presenting a united front. As a result, internal conflicts are often suppressed, delayed, or handled informally, which allows patterns of harm to continue without resolution and to blow up when the collective has had enough.

In the Chávez example, the prioritization of the movement’s external fight appears to have contributed to a culture where internal harm was not addressed in ways that protected those impacted. The investigative report highlights how verbally abusive Chávez could be. Which is all to say, he used his emotions as incentive, punishment, and method to keep control.

Spiritual Problem Versus Policy Problem

We often simply misunderstand the nature of the problems we are facing. Some challenges are structural and require policy, systems, and clear decision-making processes. Others are relational and require shifts in values, culture, and how we see each other. When we confuse the two, we either attempt to solve structural issues with appeals to unity and healing, or we attempt to regulate deeply human dynamics through policy alone.

In our movements, this shows up when we call for grace without building accountability mechanisms, or when we implement policies that exist on paper but are not practiced in reality. Without aligning our structures and our values, we create environments where harm can persist despite our stated commitments to justice.

The Chávez case illustrates what happens when movements lack both the structural accountability to interrupt harm and the collective will to prioritize people over legacy.

What We Need to Do

What Chávez did is disgusting and an incredible abuse of power. But if all we do is take him off murals, cover his statues, and change the names of the cities and days that honor him, we will have missed a huge opportunity. If we are serious about building movements that can sustain liberation, we must confront the ways we protect power at the expense of people and create systems that swallow the early indicators of abuse.

We must design systems where accountability flows in all directions. We must give people more to pull on than their own social capital to hold senior leaders accountable. Systems should allow leaders to remain connected to the impact of their decisions, and where no one is treated as untouchable. We must never make a position or legend so sacred that their bad actions stay hidden for so long.

We cannot build movements from a constant line of martyrs. We deserve to have movements with healthy boundaries, distributed power, and productive conflict. These movements can and should be a practice ground for how we can build across difference and power.