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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
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
challenging
informative
medium-paced
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
I worried this might feel too similar to We Do This Til We Free Us, and I was delightfully wrong. I loved the focus in this particular collaboration, drawing on organizing stories and reflections to specifically inform and uplift current and future organizers (vs. describing a politics of abolition, etc.). There were several moments that deeply resonated with where I've been in the *10 days* of this new administration, calling us to relentlessly believe in a better future while we recognize that a lot of things are really, truly awful right now. Once again, it's a reminder that the racism, classism and fascism we face are not new and not specific to the Republican party, and we're called to continue our work in every administration. This really does feel like a capsule of the conversations you have "on the drive home," and I would highly recommend it to others who desperately want to learn more from those who have committed their lives to abolition and community care.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism, Police brutality, Classism
Minor: Confinement, Suicidal thoughts
informative
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hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Let This Radicalize You helps build the gap between advocates and organisers, especially for those who have no experience with or exposure to organising. It shows how movements and efforts in the past have succeeded, yes, but it also notes where those efforts needed to change and why, and how adapting to new circumstances helped those movements survive. It preaches adaptability, which I think is crucial in this age, when so many mutual aid and community building efforts are focused on and achieved through social media such as Instagram and TikTok. Heyes and Kaba bring up the important point of how so many of us for whom advocacy started online don't know how to participate in these areas offline.
While they touched on many topics such as the military- and prison-industrial complex, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the genocide in Palestine, the main point Heyes and Kaba always kept in sight was the importance of community and support. All the stories they tell are of people succeeding not despite their community but because of it, because they chose to form groups and ask for help, because they chose to be kind and compassionate and just. In a world where the Western quality of individualism is seen as the goal, Heyes and Kaba remind us to remember the people around us, those who we will turn to if there is a crisis. They urge us to band together to fight capitalism and those who benefit from keeping us apart. If that isn’t the most beautiful message, I don’t know what is.
Read this if you are feeling cynicism or despair after pulling up the news. There’s always someone doing something. The world is not stagnant.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
This book is for anybody that is an organizer and needs help grounding yourself and sharing the work with others so as not to be burned out. It’s also for those that don’t think of themselves as organizers but would like to do something to help.
I read this in January 2025 and I really needed the grounding it provided. After reading this I feel even stronger that anybody can be an organizer. This is how we not only survive the global rise of fascism but imagine and then build a better world. We can all find the organizer within us and take shifts doing community care.
02/2025
I read this in January 2025 and I really needed the grounding it provided. After reading this I feel even stronger that anybody can be an organizer. This is how we not only survive the global rise of fascism but imagine and then build a better world. We can all find the organizer within us and take shifts doing community care.
02/2025
hopeful
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
As with a lot of nonfiction, this was a little slow moving. Best to take it in small chunks I think. Despite moving slow and the audiobook narrator being a little robotic, the content was really great. It's a very inspiring book that got me thinking about things in a different way. My favorite takeaway was thinking about reading as an act of resistance. Educate yourself, read diversely, read broadly, be curious, keep learning. There is a reason a certain group wants to eliminate higher education and targets libraries, resist them by reading all the books. There's also a great portion about being patient in conversations that I definitely need to work on. All in all, I really enjoyed this and am thankful to libro.fm for the gift after the cheeto's second election.
informative
Highly recommend! This paired really well with Mutual Aid by Dean Spade
challenging
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hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Although intended for young organizers, as an activist I found this book informative and inspiring. Really helpful info in the appendix too.