Organizing Mixed-Class Memberships with Working-Class Interests: Lessons from CAAAV and Lavender Phoenix

In today’s political landscape, many people across class backgrounds are eager to engage in movement work. But channeling that energy in a way that truly centers working-class communities requires intentionality. How do we avoid the pitfalls of mixed-class membership organizing while still building working-class solidarity?

Two GAR members, CAAAV and Lavender Phoenix, have grappled with these questions in their own work. Both organizations have transformed their approaches to membership, leadership, and strategy to ensure that working-class interests remain at the forefront.

CAAAV’s Movement Mistake: To center Working-Class interests, you have to have a Working-Class Membership. And having a mixed class membership, without clarity about the role of each class, does not center WC interest.

CAAAV initially had a mixed-class membership, including working-class community members and middle-class youth from outside their organizing neighborhoods. While these young people were passionate, their presence created unintended power imbalances. Older working-class members often deferred to middle-class youth in decision-making, even though these elders had the deepest stakes in local housing justice fights. At the same time, middle-class youth felt frustrated by CAAAV’s structure; they wanted full membership and decision-making power but weren’t the ones most impacted by CAAAV’s housing justice work. This dynamic undermined working-class leadership and diluted CAAAV’s focus on material conditions in NYC. 

To address this, CAAAV made a strategic decision: Only working-class members could have decision-making power. The organization implemented clear membership criteria, requiring that members live in the neighborhoods where CAAAV organizes and have a deep, ongoing connection to the community. Class background was assessed through questions on membership forms, ensuring alignment with CAAAV’s working-class base building goals.

Services like legal support, translation, and housing court accompaniment were tied directly to organizing and made available only to active members, not just anyone who signed up. This reinforced the principle that every service should build organizing power. 

Additionally, CAAAV learned to say no to well-meaning but misaligned support. Middle-class individuals were denied membership and redirected to supporter roles without decision-making power. This ensured that working-class members remained the drivers of strategy.

The results were striking. By centering working-class members, CAAAV tripled their membership, staff, and budget. They built real neighborhood power to challenge landlords and city policies and developed intergenerational working-class leadership, including both elders and young people who lived in the communities CAAAV organizes.

CAAAV’s shift was about building power, building the kind of collective force that can disrupt oppressive systems.

Lavender Phoenix’s Movement Mistake: We struggled to center working-class people in membership and working class interests in strategy while navigating a transition in organizational growth.

Lavender Phoenix organizes a cross-class base of TQAPIs (trans queer Asians and Pacific Islanders), believing that shared experiences of trans and queer oppression can unite people across class. After Trump’s election in 2016, LavNix gained a lot of attention and interest in membership, but the organization didn’t have the infrastructure to effectively recruit and retain working-class members and ensure middle-class members aligned with working-class interests.

This led to LavNix’s programs reflecting middle-class interests rather than the most urgent working-class needs. Working-class members were not consistently in leadership roles, and the organization struggled to maintain their focus on material conditions.

To remedy this, LavNix conducted a rigorous community assessment, surveying nearly 300 TQAPIs, with an emphasis on working-class voices. The findings shaped a new Theory of Change explicitly linking trans justice to working-class struggles. Outreach strategies shifted to prioritize working-class trans API communities by partnering with service providers and offering free legal clinics and healing justice programs as entry points for organizing.

LavNix also introduced class caucuses, creating spaces for working-class members to assert leadership while training middle-class members on how to follow that leadership. Stronger membership expectations were implemented, making political education mandatory and developing clear pathways for working-class leadership development.

Mixed-class organizing can work, but only with intentional structures to ensure working-class leadership and interests drive the work.

What are our lessons learned?

Be clear about who your base is. Are you working-class-only or cross-class? The answer should align with your theory of power. What works for one organization may not work for another.

Build infrastructure to center working-class voices. This includes clear membership criteria, services that lead to organizing rather than charity, and ongoing political education for all members.

Don’t be afraid to say no. Well-intentioned but misaligned support can dilute working-class leadership, so redirecting middle-class supporters to non-decision-making roles is sometimes necessary.

Both organizations emphasized that these shifts took years—there’s no quick fix. By staying committed to working-class leadership, they’ve built stronger, more effective movements.