Collective care is the work

Janey Starling and Seyi Falodun-Liburd begin with burnout, conflict, and departure inside social movements. Radical organizations may criticize capitalism’s exhaustion of people while reproducing urgency, overwork, and dependence on a few members’ emotional labor. Drawing on Black feminism and disability justice, they argue that collective care is not recovery after the meeting; it is infrastructure deciding whether a movement lasts, who can participate, and who will be sacrificed.

“Collective” means moving need from private shame into shared design: discussing access, money, workload, conflict, rest, and safety; allowing people to name limits; and preventing care from settling repeatedly on women, Black, queer, or disabled members. It does not mean avoiding accountability or preserving comfort at all costs. The ability to address harm, repair relationships, and adjust power is a more demanding organizational practice than reliance on individual heroism.

The talk offers principles from Level Up rather than a manual every movement can copy. Under-resourced groups still face urgent politics, limited time, and scarce money. But the speakers change the measure of effectiveness. Actions and media attention are not enough; participants should be able to remain, grow, and retain their wholeness through struggle. A liberation politics that advances only by exhausting its most marginalized people has already contradicted its goal through its method.