I remember a quote along the lines of "you won't change the system from within, but it will change you."

Kind of like how good cops inevitably either stop being good or stop being cops.

I think most people with that arc were cynical and self-serving in their "community organizing" phase. Careerists, basically, gathering credentials and connections. There are a lot of people like that in "leftist" groups and unions and they are probably the most dangerous people in those groups, as anything disrupting their work (like a reasonable deliberation on what projects to focus on) threatens their personal trajectory. So they will fight, often in unprincipled ways, to keep that planned trajectory.

reminds me of the first election after the counterrevolution in hungary, so 1990. a lot of starry-eyed idealists (with real morals) got elected and got filtered out or demoralized over the first 4 year cycle. by the second, it was purely just the slimy fucks getting elected.