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1.02k reviews for:
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
Mariame Kaba, Kelly Hayes
4.57 AVERAGE
1.02k reviews for:
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
Mariame Kaba, Kelly Hayes
4.57 AVERAGE
inspiring
fast-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
One of the most thought-provoking and introspective books I've ever read. I went through a whole stack of tabs because there were so many thoughts and insights that stuck out and really made me examine not just myself but the world and my relationship to it. It's definitely geared toward activists and organizers, but even as someone whose acitvism is more centered in legal work rather than protests or action groups, I found it highly informative, digestible, and actionable for myself. I would highly recommend this to anyone feeling a general sense of despair or cynicism about the world because while this doesn't counter that per se, it does offer tools and insights for how to combat those feelings and do work in your own life to make things better in your community or corner of the world. The focus on realism, hope, and cooperative care is something we all could use.
challenging
slow-paced
I appreciate the insights in this book on mutual aid and reciprocal care. I believe this is a good read for social workers especially at this time when federal funds are being stolen away from organizations. I think it is important to wean off nonprofits and look towards more grass roots as we are seeing nonprofits bend backwards to appease the current administration and in the process, removing information and shutting the door on people who rely on this help.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
(audiobook review)
The information in this book was insightful and hopeful overall, and I appreciated it making space for true self care and no one-size fits all approach. It did take me awhile to finish as I could only suggest it in small bits because it is information-dense (which is a good thing). It is a good practice in self reflection and really humbling yourself to creative collaboration and mutual aid. I would recommend it for activists and organizers, young and old, new and seasoned. Sometimes it was heavy because the subject matter is heavy, but it is handled with grace and empowerment and focuses on not what the individual can do but what the community can do for itself/each other. The last chapter and the conclusion were my favorite, ending on a high note filled with quotes from inspirational folks like James Baldwin and Octavia Butler. And the afterword was interesting in that it was informative for protest strategies to protect the self.
Again perfect book for the times, no matter if you’re just starting out in your activism journey or a seasoned organizer. A loving call to arms minus the guilt. Just keep moving forward.
The information in this book was insightful and hopeful overall, and I appreciated it making space for true self care and no one-size fits all approach. It did take me awhile to finish as I could only suggest it in small bits because it is information-dense (which is a good thing). It is a good practice in self reflection and really humbling yourself to creative collaboration and mutual aid. I would recommend it for activists and organizers, young and old, new and seasoned. Sometimes it was heavy because the subject matter is heavy, but it is handled with grace and empowerment and focuses on not what the individual can do but what the community can do for itself/each other. The last chapter and the conclusion were my favorite, ending on a high note filled with quotes from inspirational folks like James Baldwin and Octavia Butler. And the afterword was interesting in that it was informative for protest strategies to protect the self.
Again perfect book for the times, no matter if you’re just starting out in your activism journey or a seasoned organizer. A loving call to arms minus the guilt. Just keep moving forward.
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
This book gave me hope. It didn't make me feel awful for not being an organizer or an activist. It showed me that by dreaming of a better world and practicing hope with space for grief I can survive these times.
The book of the future.
So how can you, how will you, lessen suffering where you are? There are times when I feel overwhelmed with what to do, where to start, the problems seem so big and so intractable. In those times I ask myself a set of questions that serve as guideposts and help to ground me.
1. What resources exist so I can better educate myself?
2. Who is already doing work around this injustice?
3. Do I have the capacity to offer concrete support and help to them?
4. How can I be constructive?
I shared these questions on twitter a few years ago and it is still my pinned tweet. You are not needed everywhere, but we are all needed somewhere. It’s important to find your somewhere and plant yourself there. There are other things you can do as you answer the question of how you will lessen suffering today. The first step is to refuse to accept that nothing can be done and that nothing will or can change. Don’t be cynical, sincerity is a virtue. I am a fan of uncynical people who don’t justify their inaction by suggesting that nothing will change. If you are faltering at internalizing the fact that change is constant, find others to remind you. In fact, everything is changing all of the time. We must remember the teaching of Octavia Butler who wrote, “all that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change.”
So, how do we make change happen? You, as an individual, are only a tiny pebble in a vast sea. We can personally make ripples, but it takes collective action to make waves. It may be unfashionable or too earnest to say but, the reality is that each of us bringing our pebbles to the lake and throwing them in is what it takes to make change. I think the images of an endless line of us throwing our pebbles into the lake is beautiful. A necessary act taken together.
Of course, collective action is not the only ingredient to make transformative change. We also need sound strategy and resources, and we need radical imagination. Radical imagination is essential to organizing and also important to me because the horizon that I am working toward is a world I have never seen. A world without policing, imprisonment, or surveillance. As my friend, writer, artist, and scholar, Eve Ewing says, “in order to create pathways towards that which we have never seen, we have to led with imagination.” All of the most important and impactful social transformations happened because people fought and struggled for things they had never seen.
A friend and organizer once said, “As we prepare for more waves of bad news, I am remembering that there is always a next right thing to do, that I am never alone in my despair, and that when we come together, we can create new worlds that are kinder and more of what we all deserve. After such a long year filled with different kinds of loss, I am remembering that organizing is always an option and it works.”
We have a role to play in building those new worlds. Determine what the next right step is for you. There is always something worth doing. Find your lane and push ahead. Make connections with others, refuse to acquiesce, to despair. Imagine your way forward. There are many ways that things can be different in the world and we don’t know how things will turn out, so we might has well fight like hell for the world we want to inhabit. History teaches us that relatively small groups of people have been responsible for some of the most consequential societal changes. It’s usually the minority of the minority that engages in struggle at any historical moment. This is reassuring because it means that we don’t have to convince everything in order to obtain critical goals. It leaves room for surprise.
If you are reading this book, then you have been chosen to be a helper. You’ve been enlisted to help take constructive action. As playwright Anna Deavere Smith advises, “start now, every day, becoming, in your actions what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.”
Though we can’t stop all suffering, we can each work to lessen suffering for someone else. My attention is focused on looking for and trying to nurture the things that lessen suffering. Every day I commit to bringing my imperfect and small actions to the pile. What are those concrete actions for you?
Finally, I wake up every single day and decide to practice hope. I do this because this is something that is singularly in my control to do. The social theorist Henry Deroogh writes, “hope expands the space of the possible and becomes a way of recognizing and naming the incomplete nature of the present.”
For me, hope is not a metaphor, it’s a lived practice. It isn’t a thing I possess, rather, I have to remake it daily. I don’t have hope, I do hope. It’s an active process that I have to regularly commit to. Hope not as an emotion but as a discipline. Hope for me, is grounded in the reality that wonderous things happen alongside and parallel to the terrible every single day. To paraphrase Rebecca Solnit, “hope isn’t a substitute for action. It is a basis for it.”
In Islam one of the Hadiths says, “the messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him said: if the resurrection was established upon one of you, while he has in his hand a sapling, then let him plant it.” This for me is the embodiment of hopeful practice. Even if the end times are upon us we should still plant trees. This is disciplined hoped. Hope in the doing. Hope as action. How will you practice and cultivate hope today?
So how can you, how will you, lessen suffering where you are? There are times when I feel overwhelmed with what to do, where to start, the problems seem so big and so intractable. In those times I ask myself a set of questions that serve as guideposts and help to ground me.
1. What resources exist so I can better educate myself?
2. Who is already doing work around this injustice?
3. Do I have the capacity to offer concrete support and help to them?
4. How can I be constructive?
I shared these questions on twitter a few years ago and it is still my pinned tweet. You are not needed everywhere, but we are all needed somewhere. It’s important to find your somewhere and plant yourself there. There are other things you can do as you answer the question of how you will lessen suffering today. The first step is to refuse to accept that nothing can be done and that nothing will or can change. Don’t be cynical, sincerity is a virtue. I am a fan of uncynical people who don’t justify their inaction by suggesting that nothing will change. If you are faltering at internalizing the fact that change is constant, find others to remind you. In fact, everything is changing all of the time. We must remember the teaching of Octavia Butler who wrote, “all that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change.”
So, how do we make change happen? You, as an individual, are only a tiny pebble in a vast sea. We can personally make ripples, but it takes collective action to make waves. It may be unfashionable or too earnest to say but, the reality is that each of us bringing our pebbles to the lake and throwing them in is what it takes to make change. I think the images of an endless line of us throwing our pebbles into the lake is beautiful. A necessary act taken together.
Of course, collective action is not the only ingredient to make transformative change. We also need sound strategy and resources, and we need radical imagination. Radical imagination is essential to organizing and also important to me because the horizon that I am working toward is a world I have never seen. A world without policing, imprisonment, or surveillance. As my friend, writer, artist, and scholar, Eve Ewing says, “in order to create pathways towards that which we have never seen, we have to led with imagination.” All of the most important and impactful social transformations happened because people fought and struggled for things they had never seen.
A friend and organizer once said, “As we prepare for more waves of bad news, I am remembering that there is always a next right thing to do, that I am never alone in my despair, and that when we come together, we can create new worlds that are kinder and more of what we all deserve. After such a long year filled with different kinds of loss, I am remembering that organizing is always an option and it works.”
We have a role to play in building those new worlds. Determine what the next right step is for you. There is always something worth doing. Find your lane and push ahead. Make connections with others, refuse to acquiesce, to despair. Imagine your way forward. There are many ways that things can be different in the world and we don’t know how things will turn out, so we might has well fight like hell for the world we want to inhabit. History teaches us that relatively small groups of people have been responsible for some of the most consequential societal changes. It’s usually the minority of the minority that engages in struggle at any historical moment. This is reassuring because it means that we don’t have to convince everything in order to obtain critical goals. It leaves room for surprise.
If you are reading this book, then you have been chosen to be a helper. You’ve been enlisted to help take constructive action. As playwright Anna Deavere Smith advises, “start now, every day, becoming, in your actions what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.”
Though we can’t stop all suffering, we can each work to lessen suffering for someone else. My attention is focused on looking for and trying to nurture the things that lessen suffering. Every day I commit to bringing my imperfect and small actions to the pile. What are those concrete actions for you?
Finally, I wake up every single day and decide to practice hope. I do this because this is something that is singularly in my control to do. The social theorist Henry Deroogh writes, “hope expands the space of the possible and becomes a way of recognizing and naming the incomplete nature of the present.”
For me, hope is not a metaphor, it’s a lived practice. It isn’t a thing I possess, rather, I have to remake it daily. I don’t have hope, I do hope. It’s an active process that I have to regularly commit to. Hope not as an emotion but as a discipline. Hope for me, is grounded in the reality that wonderous things happen alongside and parallel to the terrible every single day. To paraphrase Rebecca Solnit, “hope isn’t a substitute for action. It is a basis for it.”
In Islam one of the Hadiths says, “the messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him said: if the resurrection was established upon one of you, while he has in his hand a sapling, then let him plant it.” This for me is the embodiment of hopeful practice. Even if the end times are upon us we should still plant trees. This is disciplined hoped. Hope in the doing. Hope as action. How will you practice and cultivate hope today?