This was absolutely infuriating to read. If you follow @slpng_giants or have ever RTed their stuff as I have, you owe it to yourself to read this. This resonated with me on so many levels as a Black woman working in progressive/left organizing spaces with white men. https://twitter.com/nandoodles/status/1281366542253469696

What she describes here (a more professionally established, connected white colleague cutting you out of your own projects, building a brand around himself and then making you feel like a hanger-on on your own work) is so real and I’ve been exactly where she is.

It’s not even about professional advancement, which while important on an individual level is not what movement work should be about. It’s about whose voices get heard and lauded by media and their gatekeepers. Whose perspective on SJ is centered?

When she describes him blowing up at her for a snarky comment on his insta and saying she’s useless and in it for attention and that he doesn’t owe her anything, I felt my stomach drop and all those feelings rush back,it was so similar to my experience with this.

The fact that he yelled at her until she apologized *to him* for daring to “embarrass” him in front of his friends is just such textbook emotional abuse. I’m so disgusted by this. The work Sleeping Giants does is good and important but idk y’all.

We need to really have an examination of this dynamic of domineering white male savvy professionals who mentor “novice” nonwhite people (esp women) in these activist spaces. It is clearly an ongoing problem, and not just some of us being unlucky enough to have crossed these men.