Gonna go on a random but heartfelt rant: It’s important for the entire progressive movement to invest in opposition research led by women and people of color.
We can’t build effective strategies to win without deeply understanding opponents of equality and justice.
Our opponents are not single-issue people. They are racist, sexist, anti-LBGTQ at the same time. Their vision of white supremacy depends in part upon controlling sexuality.
But what I see is a reticence in (primarily white male-led) progressive efforts to investigate anti reproductive rights work or men’s rights activism as part of the main event of what we are all fighting.
Why are anti-abortion groups that threaten or even use violence not on hate group lists? Why are groups that are anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion identified, but only for their work to suppress the LGBTQ community and not also women?
In many ways, the left has failed to acknowledge that patriarchy is entwined with white supremacy and we need to fight the whole rotten potato.
Also, the left has failed to appreciate that gravity of the threat to *all* of our issues by failing to take on the anti-abortion movement head on. These are groups that power conservatives in general elections, these are the folks who gave Trump many of the votes he needed.
Meanwhile we’ve got some Democrats trying to “compromise” on abortion or even joining hands with the white supremacists to restrict it. When we fail to see the pals for who they really are, part of what we should look to is the research behind our movements.
Putting women and people of color in leadership is not the only answer to fixing structural problems in the theories the progressive movement uses to build strategies, but it’s a significant piece of the puzzle.
TL/DR: Opposition research should be intersectional. Sexism and anti-abortion bigotry is not just a wiz-bang of the far right; they are core values and mobilization strategies. It would be nice to see more women and people of color treated as rightful experts we are in this field
