I got so much from this post, Maha. I think we can’t stop trying to enlarge the group of voices just because we inevitably create exclusions. New elites are okay as long as being elite isn’t their reason for congregating and as long as they are generous. I was going to say that marginals deserve to have somewhere to meet people who get them but I know that ‘deserve’ wouldn’t be appropriate – you know what I mean. These words of yours ring true for me, very much so:
Getting together to support each other is both valuable and conducive to change because the common ground we have enables us to take our ideas deeper, as opposed to our regular f2f conversations where we face so much resistance we can only get so far after so long.

Thanks Maha, great post.