How Principles Keep Our Advocacy from Becoming Toxic

Most advocacy spaces I’ve stepped into seem to start with values like justice, equity, inclusion, human dignity, or community. These words are everywhere, in mission statements, on signs at rallies. Values are in training sessions and grant proposals, and plastered on university walls and across social media.

And for good reason, values are the heartbeat of advocacy. They're the “why” behind the work, a moral compass for movements, and the reason so many people devote their time, energy, and emotional capacity to making the world a better place.

And, here’s a problem we rarely talk about: we can have excellent values and still practice advocacy in ways that harm people and, subsequently, the movements we belong to.

This is a central piece to what I now call Toxic Advocacy. It didn’t come quickly, and I certainly didn’t arrive at it without pushback from my own fear and ego. However, after decades of watching activists, organizers, students, and myself fall into harmful patterns of communication or behavior, while still holding honorable values, I've had to confront an uncomfortable truth that values alone are not enough.

There’s a quiet myth that runs beneath most activism, and it’s more damaging to our causes than we think: if our values are good, then whatever we do in service of those values must also be good. Once we decide our cause is righteous, it becomes incredibly easy to justify almost any behavior. We can shame, dismiss, attack, or humiliate (and still feel morally clean) because our values give us a sense of permission.

It's also exactly where advocacy starts to drift. The moments that truly test us aren’t the moments when we declare our commitment to justice, but the moments when we’re angry, defensive, comfortable, certain we’re right, or afraid. Advocacy doesn’t force calm upon the storm; it brings calm in it. If we're in our own storms, we’re capable of doing real harm while believing we’re doing good, because when the pressure rises, our values alone aren’t enough to steady us. They evaporate unless something firmer is holding them in place.

“When we combine the courage to make clear what works for us and what doesn’t with the compassion to assume people are doing their best, our lives change.”  — Brené Brown, Rising Strong

Principles As Rudders and Anchors

That “something” is principles. Values tell us what we care about. Principles tell us how to behave when what we care about is threatened. If values are our compass, principles are our ship's rudder, anchor, and mast.

To leverage a Marcus Aurelius quote: "Enough debating what it means to be a good human. Be one." Values, especially good ones, guide our outer vessels. To do good work, we also have to be good people. Integrity is a principle of making sure our character and behavior match our stated values and intentions. People look for integrity often first before they're willing to even listen.

Some advocacy spaces are overflowing with values but lacking in principles. This is attributable in part to corporate work environments and professional conduct. It can be difficult enough to navigate these as an individual or with a partner. We may know what we’re fighting for, but we struggle to articulate the behavioral commitments that keep us aligned with our values when anger spikes.

This gap between the values we profess and the principles we lack is the breeding ground for toxic advocacy.

Toxic Advocacy: Not a Trend

People don’t usually intend to be harmful. They intend to be effective, protect the vulnerable, and fix injustice. Because their values are good, they assume their methods must also be good. But that’s not how it always ends up happening. Good values don’t redeem harmful behavior: Harmful behavior corrupts good values.

Justice work takes on cruelty, and righteous ends unrighteous means. That’s why we can see compassion work carried out with contempt. We can see dignity work carried out with humiliation. Inclusion work carried out with exclusion was accepted. None of these apparent contradictions exists because people’s values aren’t real.

Their values and principles are at odds, their tools and models misaligned, and inner leadership is at odds with outer engagement. The same individual issues we can all struggle with have also always been able to perpetuate through an organization or culture.

We live in a values-rich but principle-poor advocacy culture. We’re excellent at naming what matters. We’re terrible at creating the boundaries that prevent us from turning our values into weapons.

Nor is this a left or right, gender, or generational issue; it’s a human one. When we’re certain we’re right morally, historically, or socially, our ego takes the wheel. And a righteous ego can justify an astonishing amount of harm.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach still stands in such stark contrast to so much modern advocacy. King’s values of justice, equality, love, and human dignity are values to be upheld, but his actual power came from his principles and engagement with people. He was unshakeable, not because he was stubborn, but because he anchored in principles that held him steady when the waves were raging. His principles constrained his behavior in ways that protected his values from corruption.

He refused to humiliate, to dehumanize, or to participate in violence. He refused to meet cruelty with cruelty. He refused to let urgency become an excuse to abandon integrity. For him, the goal was not only a just world but also a just process for creating it.

“When we are in the box, we see others as objects....When we are in the box, we invite others to be in the box.” — The Arbinger Institute, Leadership & Self-Deception

Dishonorable Compromise

King’s idea of “honorable compromise” wasn’t about appeasing oppression or surrendering moral clarity. It was about recognizing that compromise, when anchored in dignity and common humanity, could advance justice without sacrificing the soul of the movement. He was flexible in method but unwavering in principle. That’s precisely why he was able to build coalitions, gain legitimacy, and move society forward in ways that still reverberate today.

Today's advocacy culture tends to do the opposite: it is firm in method and flexible in principle. We grab onto whatever strategy gets reactions, likes, or political wins, and we bend our principles. If it feels like the other side “deserves it,” we may abandon them completely. We convince ourselves, and others, that shaming someone is justified because our values are good. We assume exclusion is necessary because our cause is righteous ("...they're doing it anyway..."). We tell ourselves retaliation is accountability, and we turn dehumanization into a tool, all while insisting we’re fighting for dignity.

The scary part is when we can't see it.

Some hypothetical human-level examples:

•  A nonprofit team meeting that devolves into moral grandstanding

• An activist humiliating someone publicly in the name of justice

• A counselor witnessing values weaponized in organizational culture

And this is why advocacy feels so fractured, reactive, distrustful, and incapable of building the kinds of coalitions needed to create real, lasting change today.

If we want advocacy that heals divides, we need to anchor our work not just in the values we cherish but in the principles that protect those values. Principles are behavioral commitments that constrain our worst impulses and elevate our best ones. They are the guardrails that keep us aligned with our values even when our emotions flare, even when we’re tired, and even when we’re pressured to “fight fire with fire.”

Principles are what prevent certainty from becoming arrogance, passion from becoming cruelty, and justice from becoming punishment. They keep the work humane, grounded, and trustworthy.

And when we practice advocacy with both values and principles, something shifts. Our work becomes more credible, our coalitions become stronger, our conversations become more open, and our communities become more resilient. People begin to sense that we’re not just fighting for justice - we’re fighting with justice. We’re not just trying to win, we’re trying to repair. We’re not just trying to be right, we’re trying to do right.

In advocacy, values tell the world what we care about. Principles tell the world whether or not they can trust us.

Integrity-based Advocacy

“Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

And trust, not outrage, is what actually changes people. It’s what builds alliances. It’s what makes space for dialogue, nuance, and growth. It’s what allows us to move beyond the common enemy model and toward Integrity-based advocacy — advocacy that is firm in its values, grounded in its principles, and trusting in our shared humanity. Integrity is simply the alignment between the values we hold and the principles we live by.

Values matter, and values alone won’t get us where we need to go. Values inspire the work, but principles guide it. Integrity is when our outside matches our inside, when we are the same with our neighbors as our enemies.

If we want to build a society rooted in dignity, justice, and belonging, then we must reflect our principles. Principles, not passion, determine whether our work is healing or harmful. And at the end of the day, integrity isn’t something we claim. It’s something we practice, especially when it’s inconvenient.

When we advocate with both values and principles, we don’t just change policies, we change ourselves. This is slow generational work that requires discomfort. Restraint and inner peace are not for the faint of heart, but the pure. In the long run, it's the only sustainable path to the world we’ve been trying to build.