Executive Director of Bala Rising, Niloufar Khansari, brings their years of movement lawyer experience to unpack how we can bring collective governance into our daily lives.
One evening in mid-2017, a client of mine called in tears: “ICE followed my brother from our house on his way to work,” she said, trembling. “They arrested him. I’m scared they’ll take his DACA away. What can I do?”
We were a small team back then at Pangea Legal Services ––– about 10 full-time staff ––– scrambling to respond. Hundreds of calls flooded in each day, filled with fear and urgency. “¿Qué hacemos si hay una redada de ICE? ¿Qué pasa si la migra viene a mi casa?” (What do we do if there’s an ICE raid? What happens if immigration comes to my house?) These were not theoretical fears. They were immediate, real, and deeply unsettling.
Trump had just begun his presidency, and the effects of his campaign’s rhetoric were rippling across immigrant communities. Policies were already stripping away rights, pushing communities into panic. But in these moments of crisis, there was also a spark –– an opportunity to organize and build power through collective action.
Turning Crisis Into Collective Action
Across the Bay Area, grassroots organizations like Pangea Legal Services, Faith in Action Bay Area, and the East Bay Immigrant Youth Coalition rose to the occasion. Nationally, immigrant and other social justice groups were mobilizing, sharing resources, and driving creative campaigns to resist policies that targeted our communities. What gave me hope, even amidst the chaos, was the resilience and leadership of those directly impacted: ordinary people rising up and organizing themselves.
At Pangea, we leaned into collective power. With our partners, we developed promotora training programs that focused on community self-defense and equipped undocumented leaders to organize against ICE raids within their own neighborhoods. Together with Migra Watch –– modeled after Cop Watch –– these programs trained thousands of undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizen allies to document ICE actions and build rapid-response networks. This collaborative effort transformed fear into actionable solidarity, empowering entire communities to stand together.
One promotora said it best, “This isn’t just about protecting my family—it’s about changing the system for everyone.” Her words stayed with me because they capture the heart of what we were building: a movement rooted in care, accountability, and shared power.
Collective Governance: Resilience From Within
Amidst the external challenges, we also turned inward. We asked ourselves: How can we reflect the community justice we advocate for in the way we run and manage our organization?
This was where collective governance came in. We began a formal, structured transition to move decision-making at Pangea out of the hands of a few senior leaders. Instead, committees made up of staff at all levels started taking on these responsibilities. This shift wasn’t just about spreading the workload; it was about aligning our internal practices with our values of sharing power.
I have to acknowledge, as a co-founder and senior leader at Pangea, this transition was not always easy for me. I was used to making decisions quickly, often consulting the same small group of senior staff who shared my sense of urgency. At first, opening up these processes felt slow, energy-consuming, and even frustrating at times. But I realized that what we gained far outweighed the initial discomfort. Decisions became richer because they were informed by a broader range of perspectives, and the process itself led to greater accountability and transparency.
The areas where teams most often seek transparency and collective participation –– money, hiring, and letting people go –– are also some of the most complex and emotionally charged. At Pangea, addressing these challenges head-on taught us that creating truly collective processes takes more than collective values alignment. It demands patience, trust, and a long-term commitment to align actions and structures to the culture of the organization. While all these areas are significant, our journey around finances and budgeting offers key insights into how transformative this work can be.
For example, instead of two senior leaders approving an unbudgeted expense, a finance committee, made up of one senior leader and two newer members, took the responsibility. Together, they created shared criteria and guidelines for common expenses, which not only made the process more clear but also gave newer staff insight into critical organizational functions.
These small but significant shifts in distributed decision-making allowed staff to build on skills beyond their roles and allowed institutional knowledge to be shared across the team. Over time, this structure contributed to greater stability, especially during staff transitions or leaves.
Our decentralized governance was particularly tested when new funding opportunities emerged. Many of these came with conditions that threatened to compromise our values. In one instance, when debating whether to accept a funder’s conditional grant at Pangea, our resource mobilization committee carefully weighed the options. One path offered immediate financial benefits to address pressing needs; the other prioritized safeguarding long-term community trust and our mission. After thorough discussion, we collectively decided to reject the grant. It was a hard decision, but one that deepened trust within our team and the communities we served.
In other cases, we reached different conclusions. Sometimes deciding to take calculated risks when the potential benefits outweighed the compromises. What mattered most was the process: every decision was thoughtful, participatory, and rooted in our collective principles.
We weren’t alone in this work. Organizations and worker cooperatives across the United States and beyond have been adopting similar collective decision-making systems. Groups like Movement Generation, The Sustainable Economies Law Center, La Colectiva Legal del Pueblo, North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO), and Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance (AORTA) were building systems that adopted similar systems of collective governance. For example, the Sustainable Economies Law Center used participatory structures to guide legal and policy advocacy efforts, while NASCO developed collective frameworks for cooperative housing communities. Pangea was in conversation with some of these organizations at the time, drawing inspiration from their models to strengthen our own commitment to aligning internal decision-making with shared power and justice. These models showed that shared leadership wasn’t just possible but was necessary for building movements capable of withstanding anything.
Letting Go of Control: A Shift Toward Shared Power
Letting go of control and embracing collective power brought its own set of challenges. Even though I believed in the values of shared leadership, collective governance didn’t come naturally to me. I had to unlearn years of conditioning that taught me to value speed, individualism, competition, and relying on a small, familiar group to make decisions. Shifting to a structure rooted in collaboration required me to slow down, reflect, and grapple with the discomfort of letting go.
Processes that I used to complete quickly now required multiple steps and deeper collaboration, often involving individuals new to decision-making roles. These team members needed time to develop the skills and confidence necessary for thoughtful contributions. For example, when setting our budget, our eight decision-making committees, each with 3-6 members, were tasked with projecting expenses and making budget requests to be combined into our larger collective budget. Many team members, unfamiliar with financial decision-making, deferred to hierarchical habits, seeking permission instead of advocating for their needs. Creating space for them to grow into these roles meant more coordination, patience, and trust. We sought input from team members who, while not yet fully resourced or empowered, brought valuable insights to the table. Over time this collaboration created a sense of ownership and accountability that hadn’t existed before.
At the same time, I was learning to let go of being the final decision-maker. It wasn’t easy to lean back and trust the process, especially when I had to answer to funders and the board for decisions I hadn’t personally made. It was humbling, and at times, deeply uncomfortable. But I began to see this struggle was part of the work –– empowering others and building systems of shared leadership required us all to grow.
We were all learning together, and it was often far from smooth. But over the years, what we built evolved into something I felt deeply proud of: an approach to budgeting and decision-making that was more participatory, thoughtful, and collaborative than anything I could have created on my own. Together, we moved from relying on assumptions to creating shared, written understandings that reflected our collective power and sustained us as an organization. It was hard, but it was worth it.
Lessons from History: Ella Baker and Participatory Democracy
What we were trying to do wasn’t new. Many before us had grappled with the same question: How do you build a movement that reflects the justice you’re fighting for?
Ella Baker, one of the most influential leaders of the civil rights movement, offered a powerful answer. As a mentor to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), she rejected conventional hierarchical leadership in favor of participatory democracy. SNCC, a youth-led organization rooted in the South, was formed in 1960 and became a key force in the civil rights movement, organizing voter registration drives, sit-ins, and freedom rides that challenged segregation and built Black political power in the face of systemic oppression. Decisions were made collectively, not handed down from the top, empowering communities to take ownership of their struggles and their solutions.
Baker’s approach to leadership was shaped by her years of organizing in rural Black communities and her work with larger organizations like the NAACP. She saw firsthand that lasting change came not from charismatic leaders but from ordinary people organizing themselves. She believed that movements were strongest when they trusted the wisdom of the people most affected. “Strong people don’t need strong leaders,” she said, reminding us that true leadership is about cultivating leadership in others.
This philosophy shaped SNCC into an inspiring model of collective leadership and community empowerment. Its structure allowed young activists, many of them college students, to take on leadership roles while centering the voices and experiences of rural Black communities on the frontlines of the struggle.
Pangea and many others are building on the foundations laid by leaders like Ella Baker. We aren’t just resisting unjust systems; we are building the just world we envision where power is shared, leadership is collective, and accountability is mutual. And, as Ella Baker’s legacy teaches us, sustainable change always starts from within.
Building the Future We Envision
The work hasn’t been easy, and the challenges ahead are even greater. As we face another Trump administration and the ripple effects of policies and judicial appointments that threaten our communities one thing is clear: the systems we’re up against will not protect us.
We will have to act boldly and decisively, guided by our values, not fear. The systems we build internally have to reflect the just world we’re struggling for externally. This isn’t about achieving perfection. It’s about learning, adapting, and staying committed to our principles, even when it’s hard.
History shows us that we’ve been here before. From SNCC to today’s grassroots movements, collective leadership has been a driving force for resilience. Across the country, organizations are demonstrating that collective models of governance are not just effective, they are essential for building movements that last.
Thankfully, we don’t have to navigate the challenges of shared leadership alone. Programs like Collaborate to Co-Liberate from the Nonprofit Democracy Network offer invaluable guidance. With modules led by thought leaders like adrienne maree brown and Gopal Dayaneni, the program equips movement leaders with tools to create liberatory governance structures –– ones that can withstand turbulence while remaining grounded in values of care and justice.
Together, we’re not just reacting to crises –– we are creating the conditions for justice to thrive. Collective governance is challenging. It will test our patience, creativity, and endurance. But it’s also one of the most powerful tools we have for building resilient movements.
Our movements don’t just need to resist injustice; they need to model justice. And that work begins at home, in the systems we design, the decisions we make, and the relationships we nurture every day.
We’ve done this before, and we will do it again. Justice begins at home. Let’s build the future we envision now –– together.
