Navigating conflict when building power with Dean Spade

On November 20, 2025, Shareable hosted activist, organizer, and writer Dean Spade to lead a Mutual Aid 101 session about navigating conflict.

So many of our mutual aid groups and solidarity economy projects are dealing with burnout, conflict, and the pressure of doing real care work with limited capacity. We currently find ourselves in a particularly “ horrible f#ck*ng moment in the history of humans,” to quote Dean Spade. And it’s leading many of us to feel judgmental, aggravated, and resentful, which, in turn, can strain our relationships to the brink.

But Dean was also quick to remind us that internal conflict has always been part of movement work, and will always be. So we’d best lean into it.

This workshop focused on practical tools for staying grounded, building trust, and keeping our groups strong.

Listen to the podcast, watch the video, scroll through the slide deck, and access all the resources that were shared during the session below.

About the speaker:

Dean Spade has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He is a professor at the Seattle University School of Law.

He is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law. Bella Terra Press published a Spanish edition in 2016.

In 2015, Dean released a one-hour video documentary, Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!, which can be watched free online with English captions or subtitles in several languages.

Dean’s book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next), was published by Verso Press in October 2020. It is also out in Spanish, Czech, German, Catalan, Italian, Thai, Korean, and Portuguese.

Dean’s new book is Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together.

Other videos are available on this site, as well as many of Dean’s articles, interviews, book chapters, and syllabi.

Resources

• Links from Dean, Shareable, and session participants
• Slides: Video: Navigating conflict when building power
• Video: Navigating conflict when building power
• [Human edited] Transcript: Navigating conflict when building power
• Feedback form: https://forms.gle/bKxu4Mu667iduxJ17
• Shareable’s Mutual Aid 101 Toolkit 

Whether you’ve attended our Mutual Aid 101 sessions, used our Mutual Aid 101 Toolkit, or enjoy listening to The Response, resources like these are only possible because folks like you donate to Shareable. 

Please take a minute while you’re listening to click the link in the show notes to donate $5, $10, or $50. Every bit helps! https://www.shareable.net/donate/

Episode credits:

• Hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Produced and edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats