“Unrig the Game”: Learning from Women of Color in Leadership and Social Movements

In times of rising authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, progressive movements in the United States are regrouping and re-strategizing.

“When we think about the moment we’re in now, historically, we should not be surprised,” Vanessa Priya Daniel, an organizer with 25 years of experience in social movements and philanthropy, told me in a recent interview.

Reflecting on the widespread political changes since 2020, she said, “There is no way that after the largest uprising and protest movement in the history of [the United States] there was not going to be this backlash.”

That backlash, in part, has led political scientists to now consider the United States on the fast track to what is known as competitive authoritarianism. In such regimes, a leader is elected democratically and then erodes checks and balances, particularly through attacks on freedom of the press and assembly.

Of course, the United States is by no means the only country facing these issues. According to the latest Democracy Report from the University of Gothenburg’s V-Dem Institute, there are more autocracies than democracies globally for the first time in over 20 years. Nearly three out of four people in the world now live in autocracies.

“You can look around the globe and see that the path to fascism is usually paved with the eroded rights of three groups: LGBTQ people, women, and oppressed racial and ethnic groups,” Daniel said. “Fascism is essentially the very worst of [the United States of] America on steroids. It’s that three-headed monster of patriarchy, White supremacy, and extractive capitalism.”

“I want our movements to win…And I want us to thrive.”

However, this is not the first time—and likely won’t be the last time—that these forces threaten to roll back hard-won rights in the United States.

As Daniel told me, “Women of color who have been fighting some version of that monster for hundreds of years for our very survival have something to teach America about how to fight.”

In her new book Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning, Daniel brings into the public square some hard truths and calls for radical shifts in how women of color leaders are seen and supported in social movements.

“I want our movements to win,” she said. “And I want us to thrive.”

Saying the Quiet Things Out Loud

Daniel had been considering the book since 2015. As founder and then-executive director of the Groundswell Fund, along with years of experience as a labor organizer, there were several things she wanted to bring into the open. And she wanted to do so while anchoring it in her personal experience, in the collective wisdom of dozens of movement leaders, and in the climate at the time—particularly the resurgence of right-wing nationalism under Trump 1.0.

Now, several months into Trump 2.0, Daniel’s original intentions are even more timely.

“When we talk about winning in the context of progressive movements, we’re talking about liberation for people,” she said. “It is a competition against forces that are trying to literally kill us.”

But what ultimately drove her was the need to talk about the many things that go unsaid in social movements and philanthropy and that serve to weaken progress. Drawing from her experience as a queer woman of color and interviews with 47 movement leaders in the United States, Daniel’s book tackles three core questions:

1. What makes women of color Most Valuable Players (MVPs) of social change?
2. Why and how are they being benched?
3. What can we do about it?

Women of Color: The MVPs of Social Change

Daniel highlighted two main qualities of any MVP: how many points they put on the board for their team, and outstanding skills and abilities.

“So many of the points that progressives count on our side of the scoreboard would not exist if women of color had not put them there,” she said. “The essence of what so many women of color leaders do in movements is that we make a way out of no way. We make the impossible possible.”

In her book, she details three main superpowers that women of color MVPs bring to leadership.

The first superpower is 360 vision. Daniel explained this as an organizing praxis through which women of color use their heightened critical awareness and experience of social structures to strategically and simultaneously tackle the “interlocking forces of oppression that hurt all of us.”

The second is boldness, and the drive to push beyond incremental change. It’s about “demanding the fullness of what our communities need to thrive and what our planet needs to be livable.”

“The essence of what so many women of color leaders do in movements is that we make a way out of no way. We make the impossible possible.”

The third is generosity, and the conviction to fight in a way that lifts others, leaves no one behind, and embodies the value of interdependence.

“That kind of solidarity is exactly what jams the gears that fascism relies on to advance,” Daniel said. These superpowers are “what women of color use in our movements to part the waters of injustice so that everyone can walk to freedom.”

While these qualities are not innate in every leader who is a woman of color (as Daniel wrote in her book, “Because…Nikki Haley…”), they are also not absent from every leader who is not a woman of color. However, she noted, they are disproportionately present among women of color “because of what we’ve had to navigate to survive.”

Why and How Are Women of Color Being Benched?

Over the past 25 years in the United States, women of color have risen to top leadership positions in record numbers. They have led the charge on several movement wins, from labor and LGBTQ+ rights to environmental action and reproductive justice.

Yet despite being the MVPs of social change, women of color are consistently benched—kept on the sidelines and off the field.

In her book, Daniel set out the five most common ways this happens:

1. She is invited onto a glass cliff to lead an organization in crisis.
2. She is assumed to be incompetent, which leads to excessive overwork and weathering of her mind, body, and spirit.
3. She is expected to mother and “mammy”—and if she doesn’t, she is often labeled as cold, unfeeling, or aggressive.
4. She is given little to no margin of error.
5. When she is attacked, she is left alone and unprotected, and gaslit when she attempts to defend herself.

Daniel saw clearly that this different treatment is not only coming from the right wing, but also “from within our own movements, and a lot of times from within our own organizations.”

This has serious and wide-reaching consequences. Since 2021, Daniel has witnessed an exodus of women of color leaving leadership roles in the middle of their careers—and not coming back. To no longer have their decades of hard-earned wisdom, skills, experience, and relationships is an incalculable loss for their organizations and movements.

Holding Up a Mirror to Internal Movement Dynamics

Over the past 25 years, Daniel has observed what she considers a significant overcorrection in movements. She doesn’t shy away from naming some hard truths, challenging unhealthy dynamics, and calling out the dysfunction.

“The conflation of all rigor with exploitation, of all discomfort with being harmed, of all positional power with abuse is making us sloppy and unstrategic,” she said. “We need to be done with that.”

This overcorrection has led to unrealistic expectations of workplaces to heal all trauma, romanticization of flat structures, and normalization of inefficiency and lack of direction.

“Our power as movements doesn’t come from money,” she said, “it comes from people.”

As part of the aforementioned backlash since 2020, movement organizations have also seen a significant increase in false accusations of discrimination and “White supremacy culture.” As Daniel detailed in her book, people wield such accusations for several reasons, including to avoid accountability, gain the upper hand in decision-making, ease their pain at any cost, aggrandize themselves, seek vengeance or extort money, or block any challenges.

“It is true that we must all be careful not to reify the harmful behaviors of white supremacist culture,” she wrote in the book. “It is also true that not every code-switch or use of deadlines, grammar, or other tools is problematic, abusive, or white supremacist.”

Daniel underscored that conflating excellence, rigor, timeliness, hierarchy, and urgency with White supremacy is disrespectful to long histories of Black and Brown excellence and movement wins.

On the latter trait, she wrote, “Some of the most gradual, nonurgent people on the planet are white supremacists resisting equity.”

All of these overcorrections prevent many movements from being grounded and strategic. Women leaders of color are disproportionately shouldering the burden, and the external work is suffering.

As a formal labor organizer, Daniel reiterates her steadfast support for workers and the need for emotional regulation, healing justice in organizations, and clarity of boundaries and expectations. But not without limits.

Leaders have a responsibility to assess people’s capacity to work in movements. If someone can’t do this work because of fragility, Daniel said, “we need to get them away from the controls. It’s destroying a lot of our organizations.”

How Nonprofit Leaders and Funders Can Support Women of Color MVPs

Although there is no shortage of challenges, there is also common-sense clarity about what needs to be done. For Daniel, it boils down to two things: Notice, recognize, and value the superpowers of women of color MVPs; and intervene in what gets in their way.

Of the many tangible steps Daniel has identified, seven stand out:

1. When there is a new woman of color taking the helm of an organization, lean in and invest in her transition. Don’t back away and take a “wait and see” approach.
2. When a woman of color MVP decides to conclude her leadership role (for whatever reason), respect her decision and support her in that process. The most successful leadership transitions happen before the outgoing leader is completely exhausted. Don’t push her to the brink and continue moving the goalposts; it might push her out of the movement entirely.
3. Within organizations, set clear expectations and norms around principled critique, name inappropriate and abusive behaviors, and discipline or fire toxic staff members. Creating a culture of belonging does not mean zero accountability.
4. Back her in changing internal cultures of burnout and unrealistic expectations of overwork, particularly for women of color leaders. Support her to set and hold healthy boundaries for herself and the organization, including taking breaks and looking after her health and wellbeing. Provide paid sabbaticals and ensure her work will be covered while she is away.
5. If a woman of color MVP is facing unreasonable criticism or bad press, ensure due process and look at the evidence and data. If that was not your experience with her, stand up for her and say it publicly. Use your voice to prevent her getting pushed off the glass cliff.
6. Within philanthropy, transition from a stance of timidity, obeying in advance, and cowardice to a stance of backbone and courage. Get creative about how you can share your resources and move money to the frontlines.
7. At minimum, funders provide flexible, multiyear, core funding for people of color and community organizers, grassroots organizations, and movements. Ask what they need and be in their corner. General support for entities that are accountable to communities’ priorities is a way to diversify your investment and celebrate the wins of the entire organization.

A Path Forward: Building the Core Strength of Movements

In addition to backing women of color MVPs specifically, what needs to happen more broadly is to systematically build what Daniel calls the “core strength” of movements, particularly through clarifying values, political education, long arc vision, and grassroots organizing.

“Our power as movements doesn’t come from money,” she said, “it comes from people. It’s directly proportional to our ability to organize ordinary people at scale for long enough to win systems change and the power to govern.”

However, movements have to reckon with the consequences of the deliberate and systematic erosion of grassroots organizing infrastructure, such as labor unions.

In Daniel’s eyes, there is simply no substitute for rebuilding that infrastructure—and that means backing the women of color MVPs who are building true organizing capacity. Their intergenerational work—and how they go about doing it—not only uplifts their own communities but also has positive ripple effects for other movements and for society at large. That’s what it means to unrig the game for the benefit of all.