“If we aren’t intersectional, some of us, the most vulnerable, are going to fall through the cracks.”

– Kimberlé Crenshaw

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not live single-issue lives.”

– Audre Lorde

Intersectionality provides us with a framework grounded in woman of color feminist theory and practice that allows us to value the myriad striations of identity that communities and individuals embody, while reminding us not to ask people to compartmentalize aspects of their identity. Rather than asking people to simplify their identity in an act of soul-splitting simply in order to “fit in” with our work, intersectionality encourages us to seek a deeper, more boundless container for the ways that identity shapes each of us and the invitation to movement work that each of us carries. Intersectionality simultaneously provides us with a critical tool for the naming, analysis, and addressing of power and privilege dynamics. As Kimberlé Crenshaw says, “If we aren’t intersectional, some of us, the most vulnerable, are going to fall through the cracks.” In heeding Crenshaw’s words, and by seeing through the lens of intersectionality and recognizing our dynamic expressions, we aim create spaces that are inclusive, affirming, just, and that resist marginalization and re-traumatization, especially of those most vulnerable.