ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes findings from a decade of mixed methods participatory action research with three social movements in the United States: the immigrant rights movement, the Occupy movement, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (LGBTQ) and Two-Spirit movements. The Transformative Media Organizing project, following K. Crenshaw, defines intersectionality as 'the ways in which structural oppression based on gender identity and sexual orientation is not independent from that based on race, class, immigration status, disability, age, poverty, and other axes of identity'. In the Occupy Research General Demographic & Participation Survey, the Occupy Research Network found that many of the most active participants were women, People of Color and/or LGBTQ folks. Social movements increasingly operate with an intersectional analysis of power and resistance, but struggle to centre narratives that break the single-issue mould. Social movements have always been tightly linked with media making. Through media production, circulation and analysis, social movement participants develop their own consciousness, narratives and, more broadly, capabilities.
