Asha stands in the cold drizzle of a central London square, her gloved hands gripping a cardboard sign that reads, “AUSTERITY KILLS, HOUSING IS A RIGHT.” The ink is starting to run, blurring the letters into dark streaks. Around her, chants rise and fall, a rhythmic wave of protest against the latest round of council cuts. For many here, the fight is about a budget line, a closed library, or a threatened community centre. For Asha, it’s about everything, all at once; her journey to this protest is a path she has walked her entire life, one defined by the complex connections that intersectional theory seeks to explain.
She thinks about the eviction notice tucked away in her coat pocket, a crisp, formal threat against the backdrop of her chaotic life. The social housing she grew up in is being “redeveloped,” a neat euphemism for social cleansing. As a Black woman, she knows the statistics on housing discrimination are not abstract numbers; they are the stories of her aunties, her cousins, and now, her own. The fight for a home is inseparable from the fight against racism, a reality that isn’t always named in the broader housing movement.
Her body aches, not just from the cold, but from a deeper, more persistent pain. A degenerative joint condition means that standing for hours like this will cost her days of recovery, a price she pays without question but not without consequence. Navigating the world with a disability has taught her that “accessibility” is often an afterthought, a box to be ticked rather than a principle to be lived. She remembers the struggle to even get here, navigating a tube station with a broken lift, a small, everyday battle that highlights how easily disabled people are excluded from public life, including protests meant to be for everyone.
The Real-Life Complexity of Oppression
She is also here as a queer woman, one whose chosen family provides the support that the state so often denies. Her flat is more than a home; it’s a sanctuary for friends who have faced family rejection and street harassment. The threat of losing it isn’t just about losing a roof over her head; it’s about dismantling a vital hub of queer solidarity and safety. When she hears politicians talk about “family values,” she knows they don’t mean her family, and that the fight for her home is also a fight for her community’s existence and dignity.
This is the reality of her struggle, a dense knot of interconnected threads. Her fight against austerity is a fight against ableism. Her fight for housing is a fight against racism. Her fight for community safety is a fight for queer liberation. To treat these as separate issues is to deny her reality, to ask her to fragment herself and choose which part of her identity is most deserving of justice today. It’s an impossible choice.
Asha looks at her blurred sign, a metaphor for how easily the specifics can be washed away in a single-issue campaign. She knows that for this movement to be truly powerful, it must be able to hold all of these truths at once. It must see her not as a collection of separate identities, but as a whole person living at the sharp intersection of multiple systems of power. This isn’t just an academic exercise; it’s the very foundation of effective solidarity.
She is not alone in this experience. Countless others in this crowd and across the country live at similar intersections, their lives shaped by the compounding weight of different oppressions. A trans man of colour facing transphobia in the job market and racial profiling by the police. A working-class migrant mother fighting exploitative landlords and navigating a hostile immigration system. Their stories are the living evidence of why we need a more sophisticated analysis.
An analysis that sees the connections is not a distraction; it is a clarification. It shows us where the architecture of power is strongest and, therefore, where our solidarity must be most intentional. It prevents us from accidentally reinforcing one form of oppression while fighting another. It’s the difference between a movement that tinkers at the edges and one that has the power to pull the whole rotten structure down.
The rain begins to fall harder, but Asha plants her feet more firmly on the wet pavement. She isn’t just here to protest a cut; she is here to demand a new way of seeing the world. A way that acknowledges the full, complex, and interconnected reality of people’s lives. She is here to advocate for a movement that is capable of fighting for her whole self, not just the parts that are convenient.
What if our movements were designed from the start with Asha’s reality in mind? What if we saw her not as an edge case, but as central to our strategy? This shift in perspective is the core of what intersectionality offers us. It’s not an academic abstraction or a divisive identity game; it’s a vital strategic tool for building a movement that is both just and effective.
This is the challenge and the promise. Can we build movements that are big enough, smart enough, and compassionate enough to hold the complexity of Asha’s story? Can we learn to see the connections she lives every day and turn that understanding into a unified force for change? Intersectionality isn’t just theory — it’s the map we need for liberation.
Our journey through this guide is a commitment to answering “yes” to these questions. It is about equipping ourselves with the tools to build movements that are worthy of the people, like Asha, who pour their hearts and bodies into the fight. It is about ensuring that when we say “power to the people,” we mean all the people, in all their intersecting realities.
What Is Intersectionality (Really)? A Brief but Radical Primer
To wield a tool effectively, we must first understand what it is and where it came from. The term “intersectionality” was coined in 1989 by the pioneering American legal scholar and critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw. It’s crucial to remember that her original work was focused on a very specific problem: legal exclusion. Crenshaw developed the concept to address a failure in anti-discrimination law that couldn’t protect Black women who were being excluded from jobs because they were discriminated against as both Black and women, not just one or the other.
Crenshaw used the analogy of a traffic intersection. Discrimination, she explained, can be like traffic flowing from different directions. If an accident happens in the intersection, it can be caused by cars travelling from any one of the four directions, or sometimes, from all of them at once. Similarly, a Black woman’s injury might be a result of sexism or racism, but it is often the combined force of both that causes the harm. Her framework gave a name to this phenomenon, making visible the specific vulnerability that existed at this crossroad of identities.
While Crenshaw gave it its modern name, the core idea has deep roots in Black feminist thought. Thinkers and activists like the Combahee River Collective, a group of Black lesbian feminists active in the 1970s, articulated this reality in their foundational 1977 statement. They wrote about the “synthesis of oppressions” and the impossibility of separating the struggles against racism, sexism, and heterosexism because they experienced them simultaneously. They understood that their liberation required the destruction of all systems of power, which they saw as fundamentally linked.
This brings us to a crucial point often lost in mainstream discussions. Intersectionality is not simply about identity. It is not a mathematical equation of adding up different marginalised statuses to see who is “most oppressed.” To reduce it to a simple “identity politics” checklist is to strip it of its radical power. Intersectionality is not about adding up identities — it’s about understanding how power targets people in layered, compounded ways. It’s a tool for analysing systems, not just for categorising individuals.
Understanding Interlocking Systems
The real focus is on the interlocking systems of power: white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, and others. Think of these systems not as separate walls, but as bricks reinforcing the same wall, each one making the entire structure stronger and harder to dismantle. For example, capitalism relies on the racist and sexist idea that some people’s labour is worth less than others, allowing for exploitation. The modern police force has its roots in both slave patrols and colonial militias, embedding racism into its very structure. These systems work together.
Unfortunately, this radical analytical tool has been significantly watered down as it has become more mainstream. In corporate and non-profit settings, “intersectionality” is often misused as a buzzword for diversity and inclusion. It gets morphed into a branding exercise, where having a diverse-looking panel is mistaken for having an intersectional analysis. This superficial engagement, often termed “performative allyship,” does little to challenge the underlying structures of power.
This misuse isn’t just annoying; it’s dangerous. It turns a tool of liberation into a tool of recuperation, allowing institutions to appear progressive while changing nothing fundamental about how they operate. It creates the illusion of progress while maintaining the status quo. Our task as activists is to reclaim the term’s radical meaning and use it as it was intended: as a sharp instrument for dissecting and dismantling power.
When we use it correctly, intersectionality allows us to see things we would otherwise miss. It explains why climate justice movements must be anti-racist, because communities of colour are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. It clarifies why the fight for trans rights must be anti-capitalist, because access to gender-affirming healthcare is often restricted by cost and privatisation. It shows why disability justice must be decolonial, challenging the very idea of a “normal” body, a concept often imposed through colonial violence.
This analytical depth is what makes intersectionality so vital for our work. It pushes us beyond simplistic explanations and forces us to grapple with the complexity of the world as it is. It demands that we look at the root causes of injustice, not just the surface-level symptoms. It requires us to build a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of how power functions.
Think of it as switching from a standard photograph to a thermal imaging camera. The standard photo shows you the surface of a building, but the thermal camera reveals the hidden heat sources, the wiring in the walls, and the structural weaknesses. Intersectionality is our thermal camera. It allows us to see the hidden flows of power and identify the points of stress where the system is most vulnerable to challenge.
So, when we talk about intersectional theory in the UK, we are talking about a powerful legacy of Black feminist thought that provides us with an essential analytical tool. It is not about creating a hierarchy of victimhood or a list of identities. It is about understanding the complex, interlocking nature of oppression and using that understanding to build a more effective and just movement for liberation for all.
Our commitment must be to this deeper, more radical understanding. We must resist the co-option of the term and insist on its utility as a framework for systemic analysis. This is the first and most fundamental step in applying it to our activism.
Why Activists Must Embrace Intersectional Analysis
Embracing a truly intersectional analysis is not an optional extra or an act of political correctness for our movements; it is a fundamental necessity for our success and our integrity. Without it, we are destined to fail, not just in achieving our goals but also in living up to our values. The most pressing reason is that without an intersectional lens, we risk replicating the very dynamics of oppression we are trying to dismantle, turning our movements into unsafe and exclusive spaces.
We have all seen it happen. A feminist group that claims to fight for “all women” but consistently ignores the specific issues facing women of colour or trans women. A racial justice organisation that fails to address the sexism and homophobia within its ranks. A climate movement led primarily by the middle class that proposes solutions that would harm working-class communities. These failures are not just oversights; they are failures of analysis that cause real harm and alienate the very people we need to be in solidarity with.
True, meaningful solidarity is impossible without seeing the full picture of another’s struggle. Non-tokenistic solidarity isn’t about pity or charity; it’s about recognising a shared interest in dismantling a common enemy. An intersectional analysis is what allows us to see those shared interests. It shows a white, cisgender, working-class man that his struggle against corporate exploitation is connected to a Black, queer woman’s struggle against state violence, because both are rooted in a system that prioritises profit over people.
Furthermore, intersectionality strengthens our resistance by showing us where to focus our energy. The framework teaches us that those who stand at the intersections of multiple forms of oppression have a unique and powerful perspective. They have a clearer view of how systems of power interlock and function. By centring the experiences and marginalised leadership of those most impacted, our movements gain a strategic advantage. They become smarter, more resilient, and better able to identify the weak points in the structures we oppose.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
This approach helps us avoid the common traps that weaken our activism. A rigid single-issue approach is a strategic dead end, narrowing our vision and shrinking our potential base of support. Two other pitfalls are particularly common: tokenism and “add-and-stir” feminism.
Tokenism is the superficial inclusion of individuals from marginalised groups to give the appearance of diversity without granting them any real power. A practical example is a climate campaign inviting a single person of colour to speak at their rally for five minutes, celebrating this “diversity” on social media, but then ignoring that speaker’s input on strategy and failing to address how pollution disproportionately impacts their community. It’s using a person’s identity as a prop while dismissing their expertise.
“Add-and-stir” feminism (or any other “add-and-stir” activism) is another common failure. This is when a mainstream campaign, after being criticised for being exclusionary, simply adds a mention of a marginalised group to their press release without fundamentally changing their analysis or demands. For instance, a campaign focused on breaking the glass ceiling might add “and for women of colour” to their slogan, while their demands remain focused on corporate board representation—an issue that does little to address the primary struggles of most working-class women of colour, such as low wages or racist immigration policies.
This is a lesson many movements in the UK have had to learn the hard way. For years, mainstream feminist activism in the UK struggled to engage and mobilise working-class women and women of colour. Campaigns often focused on issues that felt distant and irrelevant to women struggling with state violence, precarious work, and cuts to public services. The analysis was incomplete, and as a result, the movement was fragmented.
Learning from Sisters Uncut
This is where a group like Sisters Uncut provides a vital mini-case study. Formed in response to austerity cuts to domestic violence services, their analysis was intersectional from day one. They understood that gender-based violence couldn’t be separated from issues of race, class, disability, and state violence. They saw that cuts to services disproportionately harmed Black and minority ethnic women, migrant women, and disabled women, who already faced the greatest barriers to support.
Their direct actions reflected this analysis. They didn’t just lobby politicians; they occupied government buildings and blockaded bridges. They explicitly linked the lack of funding for refuges to the billions spent on policing and prisons. They challenged the idea that the police, an institution often perpetrator of violence against marginalised communities, could be the solution to domestic violence. Their messaging was clear: the state that fails to protect women is the same state that criminalises their sons and deports their neighbours.
This unapologetically intersectional approach is what made Sisters Uncut so powerful and resonant. They built a movement that spoke directly to the lived realities of the most marginalised women, the very women mainstream feminism had often left behind. They demonstrated that when you centre the experiences of those at the intersections, you don’t alienate the mainstream; you build a more robust, more radical, and more effective movement for everyone.
Their success illustrates a key principle: intersectionality is not about division. It is about precision. It allows us to build a sharper, more accurate critique of power, which in turn allows us to build a more effective strategy for liberation. It is the tool that helps us move from shallow inclusion to deep, transformative solidarity.
Ultimately, embracing an intersectional analysis is an act of political maturity. It is a commitment to doing the hard work of understanding the complexity of oppression. It is a promise that our movements will be spaces of genuine liberation, not just for some, but for all. Anything less is a betrayal of our ideals.
Applying Intersectionality to Campaign Work: A Practical Toolkit
Understanding the “why” of intersectionality is one thing; applying it to the messy reality of campaign work is another. It requires moving from abstract principles to concrete practices. This section offers a practical activism toolkit in the UK with tangible methods to embed an intersectional analysis into your organising, ensuring your work is inclusive, effective, and just by design.
The Coalition Mapping Exercise
The first tool is a Coalition Mapping Exercise. Before launching a campaign, gather your core team and a blank wall or whiteboard. Start by placing your central issue (e.g., “The Housing Crisis”) in the middle. Then, brainstorm all the different communities affected by this issue. Go beyond the obvious. For the housing crisis, you might list: low-income families, single mothers, students, asylum seekers, disabled people, queer youth facing homelessness, ex-prisoners, and people living in buildings with unsafe cladding.
Next to each group, list the specific ways they are impacted and the other systems of power at play. For asylum seekers, this would include the hostile environment and prohibitions on work. For disabled people, it’s about a lack of accessible housing stock and discrimination from landlords. This visual map immediately reveals the intersecting systems and, crucially, shows you which groups you need to be in dialogue with. It becomes a blueprint for building a powerful, broad-based coalition.
The Accessibility and Inclusion Checklist
The second tool is a simple but profound Accessibility and Inclusion Checklist. This should be a living document used for every single event, meeting, and piece of content you produce. It moves beyond the bare minimum of wheelchair access. The checklist should prompt you to ask: Is this venue accessible via public transport? Have we provided a quiet space for neurodivergent attendees? Is there childcare available? Have we included captions on our videos and image descriptions on our social media posts?
This checklist must also address financial accessibility. Is the event free? If not, is there a “no one turned away for lack of funds” policy? Consider linguistic accessibility: is the language you’re using full of academic jargon or acronyms that will exclude newcomers? This tool forces you to think about inclusion not as an afterthought but as a core component of your organising, making your spaces genuinely welcoming to all. This is a fundamental aspect of inclusive organising in the UK.
The Power Structure Analysis
The third tool is a Power Structure Analysis. This is about looking upwards, not just inwards. For any given campaign, you must map the architecture of power you are up against. Who holds decision-making power? Who profits from the status quo? What corporations, politicians, media outlets, and state institutions are upholding this injustice? Most importantly, where do these systems of power overlap?
For example, in a campaign against a new oil pipeline, a power analysis would reveal connections between the fossil fuel company. These banks finance it, the politicians who receive their donations, and the media outlets that run their advertisements. It may also reveal connections to colonial histories of land theft. This analysis reveals the true nature of your opposition and helps you identify multiple strategic points of intervention, moving beyond a single target.
The Intersectional Campaign Planning Grid
The fourth tool is an Intersectional Campaign Planning Grid. This is a simple table to guide your strategy sessions. The columns could be: “Campaign Goal,” “Key Message,” “Target Audience,” “Proposed Tactic,” and “Potential Unintended Consequences.” The final column is the most important for an intersectional analysis. For every tactic you propose—a protest, a petition, a media stunt—you must ask: “Who could be negatively impacted by this?”
For instance, a tactic of occupying a government office could lead to arrests. The grid forces you to consider how the consequences of arrest are vastly different for a white, middle-class student versus an undocumented migrant or a trans person of colour, who would face much greater risks and violence in police custody. This tool doesn’t necessarily mean you abandon high-risk tactics, but it ensures you plan for them responsibly, with robust legal support and aftercare that accounts for these differential risks. This forms the basis of a responsible intersectional approach to campaign design in the UK.
A Language Guide for Inclusive Communication
Finally, create a Language Guide for Inclusive Communication. Language shapes our reality, and as activists, we must be precise and respectful. This guide should be a collective document that outlines your group’s commitment to using inclusive terminology. It should include best practices for talking about race, gender, disability, and other identities, always defaulting to the language preferred by the communities themselves.
For example, it would specify using “people of colour” rather than outdated terms, using correct pronouns for trans and non-binary people, and employing person-first (“person with a disability”) or identity-first (“disabled person”) language based on community preference. It should also include a commitment to avoiding ableist metaphors (e.g., “falling on deaf ears”), militaristic language (“fighting on the front lines”), or other phrases that can be alienating or harmful. This practice is central to any toolkit for intersectional grassroots organising.
These tools are not bureaucratic hurdles. They are navigational aids designed to make our activism smarter, safer, and more powerful. They provide a structure for asking the right questions and ensuring that our actions are always aligned with our deepest values of solidarity and justice. They help us build movements that are not just fighting for a better world, but are also a living example of what that world can look like.
Integrating these practices requires time and commitment, but the payoff is immeasurable. It leads to more creative strategies, broader coalitions, and more resilient movements. It is the practical, hands-on work that turns the theory of intersectionality into a tangible reality in our fight for liberation.
UK-Based Case Studies: Intersectionality in Action
Theory and toolkits are essential, but seeing these principles in action provides the clearest picture of their power. The UK is home to numerous inspiring organisations that have placed intersectionality at the very core of their work. By examining what these groups get right, we can draw valuable lessons for our activism. They show us that an intersectional approach is not just possible but is already winning tangible victories and building sustainable movements.
Imkaan: A Black Feminist Response
One of the most vital organisations in the UK is Imkaan, a Black feminist network dedicated to addressing violence against Black and minoritised women and girls. Founded in 1998, Imkaan’s work is a masterclass in intersectional practice. They recognised that mainstream services for domestic and sexual violence were often inaccessible, unsafe, or actively hostile to women of colour. Their response was not to simply ask for more inclusion in existing services, but to champion the need for specialist services “led by and for” Black and minoritised women.
What Imkaan gets right is its unwavering focus on marginalised leadership and self-determination. They argue that women of colour are the experts on their own lives and must lead the development of solutions. Their research and advocacy consistently highlight how intersecting factors like insecure immigration status, racism within state agencies, and language barriers create unique forms of vulnerability. By centring these realities, Imkaan has successfully campaigned for dedicated funding streams and policies that acknowledge the specific needs of the women they serve, showing how an inclusive campaign strategy can achieve concrete results.
DPAC: Disability Justice is Economic Justice
Another powerful example is Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC). Formed in 2010 to fight the devastating impact of austerity on disabled people, DPAC’s analysis has always been profoundly intersectional. They understood from the beginning that the government’s welfare “reforms” were not just about saving money; they were an ideological assault on the lives of disabled people, rooted in ableism and a capitalist logic that devalues anyone who cannot be “productive” in a narrow economic sense.
DPAC’s strength lies in its ability to build solidarity across identities. Their campaigns have highlighted how benefit cuts disproportionately harm disabled women, disabled people of colour, and those with mental health conditions. They have forged powerful alliances with trade unions, anti-poverty campaigners, and housing activists, showing how the fight for disability justice is intrinsically linked to the fight for economic and social justice for all. Their direct-action tactics, often involving civil disobedience, are designed to be inclusive, ensuring that people with different impairments can participate and lead. They embody the principle of “inclusion by design, not as an afterthought.”
Climate Justice: A Narrative from the Youth Movement
The youth climate movement offers an important narrative of a movement learning to practice intersectionality. When the UK Student Climate Network (UKSCN) helped launch the school strikes, their initial focus was, understandably, on carbon emissions and ecological collapse. However, through engagement and coalition-building, their analysis has deepened significantly, providing a case study in how to build a more just and inclusive climate movement.
Instead of just talking about melting ice caps, they began partnering with migrant rights groups. Their narrative shifted. They started telling the story of how a farmer in the Global South, displaced by a drought made worse by the emissions of wealthy nations, is then forced to make a perilous journey only to be met by a hostile border in Europe. This story connects climate action directly to anti-racism and migrant justice. They demonstrated that you cannot be for climate justice if you are not also for migrant justice. This is the intersectional approach to campaign design in the UK in action.
Trans Safety Now: Resisting Hate through Coalition
Finally, the Trans Safety Now Campaign provides a compelling case study of intersectional resistance to state violence. Emerging from a need to document and resist the rise of organised anti-trans hate, their work explicitly connects transphobia to wider reactionary politics. They analyse how anti-trans rhetoric in the media and politics is a “dog whistle” used to attack broader feminist and queer liberation movements, and how it is often linked to anti-immigrant and racist narratives.
Their resistance is intersectional by necessity. They understand that the fight for trans safety cannot be won without also fighting against police brutality, because trans people, particularly trans people of colour, are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement. They challenge the reliance on carceral solutions and instead advocate for community-based safety and mutual aid. The campaign demonstrates how a targeted community can use an intersectional lens to analyse its attackers, identify allies, and build a defence strategy that strengthens everyone’s liberation.
These organisations are not perfect, and like all movements, they are engaged in a constant process of learning and growth. However, they share a common set of principles that we can all learn from. They prioritise power-sharing and the leadership of the most affected. They build their strategies on a deep analysis of interlocking systems of power. And they practice solidarity that is active, reciprocal, and rooted in a shared vision of liberation.
Intersectionality as a Weapon Against Hate Speech & Right-Wing Narratives
In recent years, the very concept of intersectionality has become a primary target for right-wing politicians, media commentators, and online hate groups. They attack it, along with terms like “woke” and “critical race theory,” as part of a coordinated political strategy. Understanding why they attack it is the key to understanding its power, and it reveals how we can use intersectionality not just to define our politics, but as a defensive and offensive weapon against hate.
Exposing the “Divide and Rule” Strategy
Reactionary politics thrives on division. Its primary strategy is to take a complex and anxious world and provide simple, reassuring answers by creating scapegoats. It tells a white working-class person that their economic precarity is the fault of immigrants, not decades of neoliberal policy. It tells cisgender women that their rights are threatened by trans people, not a patriarchal system that harms them all. This strategy only works if people remain in their silos, seeing their struggles as separate and competing.
This is precisely why the right wing is so terrified of intersectionality. Intersectionality is the tool that exposes their game. It pulls back the curtain on the scapegoating mechanism and reveals that the same structures of power are harming all of these different groups. It builds bridges of solidarity where the right seeks to build walls of resentment. When a movement for migrant rights and a movement for trans rights see their struggles as connected, the right’s “divide and rule” strategy collapses.
We must learn to use intersectionality as an analytical tool to dissect and expose right-wing dog whistles and policies. A dog whistle is a political message that uses coded language to signal support for a prejudiced viewpoint without saying it explicitly. For example, when politicians talk about “defending our history” or “common sense,” they are often signalling to a racist or transphobic base. An intersectional analysis helps us decode these messages and show who is being targeted.
Consider the wave of anti-trans legislation and media hysteria. An intersectional lens allows us to see this not as an isolated issue but as a calculated “wedge issue.” It is designed to fracture feminist and LGBTQIA+ coalitions. We can counter this by highlighting the connections: showing how the arguments used against trans people (that they are “unnatural” or a threat to children) are recycled from the homophobic campaigns of the 1980s and the racist propaganda of earlier eras. This is how activists can apply intersectional theory in the UK to build a united front.
Effectively using intersectionality to combat hate speech in the UK requires that we shift our response from being purely defensive to being proactively analytical. When a politician introduces a hostile anti-migrant bill, our response should not only defend migrants. It should also expose how the bill uses racist tropes to distract from the government’s failures on the economy, the NHS, or the climate crisis. We must show other communities how that same logic of scapegoating will eventually be turned on them.
This coalition-based approach to countering hate is far more powerful than operating in isolation. When anti-trans activists are confronted not just by trans people but by a broad coalition of feminists, migrant rights groups, and trade unionists, their narrative of being a “grassroots women’s movement” falls apart. It reveals them for what they are: a small part of a broader reactionary political project. Our solidarity is their greatest fear.
This means that in our public messaging, we must constantly make the links. In a campaign against a racist policing bill, we should highlight that it also threatens the right to protest for climate activists and gives police more power to harass Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities. We must show that the fight for racial justice is also a fight for everyone’s civil liberties. This is what it means to build a truly united movement.
The right has tried to turn “intersectionality” into a dirty word, a symbol of everything they want people to fear. Our response should be to embrace it and demonstrate its power. We should proudly state that yes, we believe our struggles are connected. Yes, we believe that you cannot fight for one group’s liberation while ignoring another’s. We must reframe intersectionality not as a sign of weakness or division, but as a sign of sophisticated political analysis and unbreakable solidarity.
When they shout “culture wars,” we must respond by talking about class war. We must show how these manufactured moral panics are a deliberate distraction from the real issues of inequality and exploitation that affect the vast majority of people. Intersectionality gives us the framework to make this argument clearly and compellingly. It is the tool that allows us to change the conversation from their terms to ours.
This requires courage and discipline. It means resisting the urge to get bogged down in endless, bad-faith debates and instead focusing on building our power base. It means educating our communities about how these tactics work and inoculating them against the politics of division. Intersectionality can defend us — not just define us.
Finally, the right’s attack on intersectionality is a backhanded compliment. It is an admission that our interconnectedness is a profound threat to their power. Our task is to prove them right by building a movement so broad, so united, and so deeply rooted in solidarity that their attempts to divide us are rendered utterly powerless.
From Awareness to Action: What You Can Do Next
Transforming our movements requires more than just intellectual agreement with intersectional principles; it demands a conscious and continuous effort to integrate them into our daily practice as activists. This final section provides a concrete set of actions, questions, and resources to help you bridge the gap between awareness and action. It is a starting point for embedding intersectionality in your organising, starting today.
Educate Yourself and Your Comrades
First, begin with self-reflection and education. We all have gaps in our understanding and unconscious biases shaped by the society we live in. Take responsibility for your learning. Seek out and read work by Black feminists, disability justice activists, and trans thinkers. Listen to podcasts and watch documentaries that centre the experiences of marginalised communities. This is not about feeling guilty; it is about building your capacity to be a more effective and ethical ally.
Second, apply an intersectional lens to your group or organisation. Start a conversation about who is in the room and, more importantly, who isn’t. Look at your leadership structure: does it reflect the communities you claim to represent? Examine your campaign materials: is the language inclusive? Does the imagery reflect a diversity of experiences? Gently and constructively challenge assumptions and practices that may be exclusionary.
Ask the Right Questions
Before joining or starting a new campaign, ask a specific set of diagnostic questions. These questions can help you gauge whether a movement is genuinely committed to intersectional practice.
- “Who is leading this campaign, and are they from the communities most affected?” Look for signs of marginalised leadership and shared power.
- “How does this campaign analyse the problem?” Listen for whether they connect their issue to broader systems of power like racism, capitalism, or ableism.
- “Who are your coalition partners?” A strong campaign will have active relationships with a diverse range of groups.
- “What is your strategy for ensuring the safety and inclusion of all participants?” Look for a concrete plan that goes beyond tokenistic statements.
One of the most common challenges is redirecting conversations when someone says, “Let’s just focus on one issue at a time.” This is a critical moment. Instead of getting into an abstract debate, try to use concrete examples to illustrate the connections. You could say, “I understand the desire for focus, but we can’t effectively fight for climate justice without addressing racial justice, because pollution disproportionately harms communities of colour. By tackling both, our movement becomes stronger and more just.” Frame it as a matter of strategy, not just morality.
Resources for Further Learning
Building your capacity for this work is vital. Below is a short, non-exhaustive list of UK-based resources that can provide valuable toolkits, insights, and further learning opportunities.
- Organisations to Follow and Support: Imkaan, Sisters Uncut, DPAC, Stonewall, Runnymede Trust, Black Protest Legal Support, and Decolonising Economics.
- Independent Media and Publications: gal-dem, a magazine by women and non-binary people of colour; Novara Media, which often features intersectional analysis of UK politics; Red Pepper magazine.
- Toolkits and Zines: Many activist groups produce their own resources. Look for zines on allyship, community safety, and campaign strategy from groups like queer mutual aid networks.
Cultivate a Culture of Care
Another practical step is to use your resources—whether it’s time, money, or social media reach—to support organisers from more marginalised communities. If you’re part of a well-funded campaign, consider how you can share resources with smaller, grassroots groups. Use your platform to share their messages. Show up for their events. This is a tangible act of solidarity that moves beyond words.
Think about how you conduct meetings. Simple changes can make a big difference. Use a progressive stack, a moderating technique where you prioritise speakers from marginalised groups who have spoken less. Start meetings with a check-in on access needs. Ensure decision-making processes are transparent and democratic. These small acts of intentional practice create a culture of care and inclusivity.
Remember that this is a process. No individual or organisation will get it right all the time. The key is to remain open, humble, and committed to learning and doing better. Embrace a culture of critical friendship, where you can hold each other accountable with compassion and a shared sense of purpose. This work is not a detour from the “real” activism. It is the real activism. It is the patient, deliberate work of building trust, relationships, and shared understanding that are the foundations of any powerful movement.
Intersectionality as Practice
Let’s return to Asha, standing in the rain, her sign’s message blurring but her purpose crystal clear. Imagine, for a moment, a movement that was built from the very beginning with her reality at its centre. A movement that didn’t need to be reminded that housing justice is also racial justice, disability justice, and queer liberation, because it understood this from the start. What would that movement look like?
Its rallies would be planned with accessibility as a primary, non-negotiable component. Its campaign demands would be crafted with an understanding of how a policy on housing would uniquely affect a disabled Black woman. Its leadership would include people like Asha, not as tokens, but as strategists whose lived experience provides the sharpest analysis of the systems they are fighting. Its vision of victory wouldn’t just be about saving a building; it would be about creating a society where everyone has a safe, dignified, and affirming place to call home.
This is not a fantasy. It is a political possibility. Building this kind of movement is the central task of our time. It requires us to move beyond the comfort of single-issue campaigns and embrace the challenging, complex, and beautiful work of building true solidarity. It requires us to see intersectionality not as a burden that complicates our work, but as our most powerful strategic asset.
To those who say this is too complicated, that it divides us, we must answer with clarity and conviction. What is truly complicated is living a life like Asha’s, navigating a world that attacks you on multiple fronts every single day. What truly divides us is not acknowledging our differences, but pretending they don’t exist, leaving our comrades to fight their battles alone. A movement that ignores these realities is not united; it is simply a hollow one.
The beauty of an intersectional approach is that it leads to a more profound and resilient solidarity. When we understand how our struggles are interconnected, our reasons for fighting alongside one another become deeper. We are no longer just allies in a temporary coalition of convenience. We become comrades in a shared struggle for collective liberation, bound by a mutual understanding that our fates are intertwined.
This is the work that will build a movement capable of winning. Not just winning small victories, but fundamentally transforming the structures of power that cause so much harm. A movement that can fight on multiple fronts simultaneously because it understands how the fronts are connected. A movement that is too broad to be ignored, too deep to be co-opted, and too united to be broken.
Think of it as weaving. Each thread represents a struggle: for racial justice, for queer liberation, for economic equality, for climate action. A single thread is weak and can be easily snapped. But when woven together, with care and intention, they create a fabric that is strong, intricate, and beautiful—a fabric capable of clothing a revolution. Intersectionality is the art and science of that weaving.
So, the next time you are at a protest, look around you. See the different bodies, the different histories, the different struggles present in that crowd. And instead of seeing a fragmented collection of separate interests, choose to see a powerful, interconnected whole. Choose to build the bridges, to ask the questions, and to show up for the fights that may not seem like your own, but truly are.
This is the invitation. To move beyond activism as usual. To build movements that are as caring, complex, and powerful as the communities they represent. To create a political home where everyone, especially those who have been pushed to the margins, can finally be at the centre. No one is free until we are all free — and no strategy works unless it works for the most oppressed among us. A movement built on this truth is a movement that cannot be stopped. It is a movement worth building.
References
Combahee River Collective. (1978). A Black feminist statement. In Z. R. Eisenstein (Ed.), Capitalist patriarchy and the case for socialist feminism (pp. 362–372). Monthly Review Press.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. The University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.
Disabled People Against Cuts. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved August 5, 2025, from https://dpac.uk.net/
Imkaan. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved August 5, 2025, from https://www.imkaan.org.uk/
Sisters Uncut. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved August 5, 2025, from https://www.sistersuncut.org/
Trans Safety Now. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved August 5, 2025, from https://transsafetynow.com/
UK Student Climate Network. (n.d.). Home. Retrieved August 5, 2025, from https://ukscn.org/
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