---
title: "Resolving Active Conflicts"
description: "Practical steps for resolving conflicts while maintaining trust, cooperation, and shared goals"
author: "Author name"
date: "2025-04-15"
related:
  - "operational-security-mutual-aid"
  - "making-decisions-without-hierarchy"
  - "avoiding-burnout-sustainability-in-the-ruins"
thumbnail:
  vertical: "resolving-active-conflicts-vertical.svg"
  horizontal: "resolving-active-conflicts-horizontal.svg"
background:
  color: "#E2EFFF"
---

Conflict is not the enemy of mutual aid. It's an inevitable feature of any genuine collective effort. The sanitized fantasy of frictionless cooperation belongs to corporate team-building retreats, not to the real work of building alternative structures of care and support. When people come together with different experiences, needs, and visions, tension emerges. The question isn't how to avoid conflict, but how to metabolize it productively.

The neoliberal imagination wants us to believe that conflict signals failure, that properly functioning groups hum along without disagreement. This is ideological mystification. Real solidarity is forged through working through differences, not around them.

Any approach to conflict resolution needs to rest on three foundational pillars. First is structural clarity: clear, agreed-upon processes for decision-making, membership, and conflict resolution. Ambiguity breeds conflict. Second is political analysis. Most conflicts aren't about surface disagreements but deeper questions of power, resources, and strategy. Resolution must excavate these underlying dimensions. Third is collective responsibility. Conflict resolution isn't something that happens to a group. It's work the group does together.

Mutual aid groups have various conflict resolution methods at their disposal, tools that can strengthen collective capacity and create structural options before conflicts escalate. Which methods work depends on material realities like group size, not abstract preferences about process. Consensus building works when groups can afford the time investment but breaks down under resource pressure or tight deadlines. Conflict workshops provide skill-building before tensions arise, though they're only as effective as people's willingness to actually use the tools. Supermajority voting (75-80%) balances efficiency with broad buy-in when consensus feels impossible. Facilitated group conversations create structured space for working through tensions collectively rather than letting them fester in side conversations. Facilitated negotiation brings in outside support when internal dynamics make resolution difficult, though finding truly neutral facilitators with political analysis can be challenging. Circle processes draw on indigenous practices to center relationship and accountability, particularly effective for addressing harm. Code of conduct enforcement establishes clear boundaries and consequences, essential for groups serious about creating safer spaces and after conflict. Direct negotiation between affected parties works when power dynamics are relatively balanced and people have conflict resolution skills. Conflict management councils create dedicated structures for handling disputes, drawing on the experience and long standing context of respected group members willing to take on this responsibility.

Building conflict resolution capacity isn't optional. It's infrastructure. Groups that wait until conflicts explode to think about resolution processes are like activists who wait until the police arrive to think about security culture. The methods you choose depend on your group's material conditions and scale, but the principle remains constant: conflict-capable groups are built, not born, through deliberate practice and structural preparation. The key is having multiple tools available and choosing strategically rather than defaulting to whatever feels most comfortable. Writing down the methods that your group has chosen to use can make it easy to choose what method might work best for your group when a situation arises.

Capitalist competition trains us to see conflict as zero-sum. Mutual aid offers a different model: conflict as compost, messy organic matter that, when processed well, creates richer soil for collective flourishing. Most conflicts contain valuable information about what needs to change. They reveal hidden assumptions, unmet needs, and structural problems invisible during smooth times. Groups that learn to metabolize conflict develop stronger practices, deeper relationships, and more effective organizing. The goal isn't harmony but antifragility, groups that get stronger through stress rather than breaking under pressure. In a world designed to isolate us, learning to work through conflict together is both means and end.

The revolution will not be conflict-free. But it can be prepared to manage conflicts before they inevitably arise.
