“Sneaking in” and “carving out” as reparative praxis: Navigating conditional solidarity at media industry events to catalyze industry transformation

South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual tech, media, and music megaevent in Austin, Texas, that curates a future-focused program around themes of convergence, innovation, inspiration, and impact. This article examines how such media industry events catalyze resistant and reparative communicative practices when social justice movements gain traction in popular discourse at critical junctures like the one that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on three years of ethnography and 17 interviews, I analyze how SXSW participants navigate “conditional solidarity”—a pervasive norm where justice commitments under progressive neoliberalism remain contingent on elite values and interests while co-opting movement symbols to maintain relations of power. At events like SXSW, marginalized communities tactically “sneak in” resistant discourses and “carve out” alternative spaces for worldmaking. Ultimately, this study proposes a framework for reparative praxis that leverages discursive openings and opportunities for participation within dominant industry spaces when they arise.