The annual Pride parade in our area is a huge affair. Like a carnival and the Mardi Gras all in one, circus performers walk around in stilts, people throw beaded necklaces at the crowds, and there is much face painting, flag waving, hair dying and “can you top this” garb. The parade marches through the downtown and on to the fairgrounds at the edge of town, where dozens local organizations set up booths in support of the LGBTQ community.

Members of my church have marched in the parade for years, and set up a booth at the fairgrounds with all kinds of bling to give away: buttons and candy, blessings to go. I’ve wanted to be with them, to show that I am an ally in the cause of equality in gender expression, sexual justice, and the LGBTQ population.

Despite my annual queries and nudging, however, the organizers of this event have not taken people with disabilities into account. The parade doesn’t have a way to help people in wheelchairs join in with the marchers. In order to attend the fair afterward, disabled people with their walkers and canes have had to park as far away as everyone else and navigate the distance to the cluster of booths. The grounds themselves are like cow pastures – all lumpy and rutted.

It is a classic example of the failure to understand intersectionality. Organizers of such events tend to focus completely on their specific constituents, ignoring others who need to be included. That’s particularly ironic in this case, given that the LGBTQ community invented this whole Pride event to bring people out of the shadows and help them feel included in the larger society!

When I spoke about the Pride event to a friend of mine who is deaf, she recalled a time when she wanted to attend a church conference in another state. Her mother called ahead to ask the organizers if the conference would provide someone to do sign language for the deaf during the sessions, and was told they hadn’t thought about that, but they definitely would take care of it.

After my friend drove for several hours to attend the conference, however, no sign language interpreter was present. Did the organizers intend to exclude the deaf population? How did they expect deaf people to participate? My friend turned around and drove back home. And this was a church conference! Put on by people who had been promoting openness and inclusion for years!

The organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, 2017, ran enthusiastically toward the issue of intersectionality, wanting women in all their diversity, with all their far-ranging agendas, to participate in this momentous event. They were happy to include the young and the old, the gay and the straight, male allies, different religions and different races.

Disabled people were included in the march. The organizers also created a virtual march for those who couldn’t attend. They worked hard to welcome everyone who understood the imperative call for women’s rights, women’s equality, and social justice on behalf of women.

At the same time, the event organizers did not seem to have any tools to deal with friction between progressive Jewish women and Zionists, or pro-Israeli factions with pro-Palestinian factions, or anti-Semitism and feminism. The inability to address misunderstanding and mistrust among these constituents caused a very public rift in an event working to create unity.

No event is free of important intersections. The bigger the audience for a particular event, the greater the likelihood that the organizers need to reach out beyond their own community. Although it can be difficult for event organizers to envision ahead of time all of the populations that could be gathered in and included, they can make provisions for problem-solvers, communicators and ombudspersons who will assist those who are stranded on the fringes.

Understanding the connections among diverse interest groups is the rational-intellectual end of intersectionality. Acting on that understanding requires the affective-moral principle of altruism. Altruism is when we use the events we organize as an opportunity to promote someone else’s welfare. It is making a practice out of being concerned for the welfare of others, not just those in our immediate frame of reference.