Let This Radicalize You

Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care

Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781642598537
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.

Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the convergence of mass protest and mass formations of mutual aid, and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.
The book is an assemblage of co-authored reflections, interviews and questions that are intended to aid and empower activists and organizers as they attempt to map their own journeys through the work of justice-making. It includes insights from a spectrum of experienced organizers, including Sharon Lungo, Carlos Saavedra, Ejeris Dixon, Barbara Ransby, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore about some of the difficult and joyous lessons they have learned in their work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword: Radicalization Is Vital
• Introduction: Remaking the World
• Introduction: We Can Only Survive Together
• Chapter 1: Beyond Alarm, toward Action
• Chapter 2: Refusing to Abandon
• Chapter 3: Care Is Fundamental
• Chapter 4: Think Like a Geographer
• Chapter 5: Rejecting Cynicism and Building Broader Movements
• Chapter 6: “Violence” in Social Movements
• Chapter 7: Don’t Pedestal Organizers
• Chapter 8: Hope and Grief Can Coexist
• Chapter 9: Organizing Isn’t Matchmaking
• Chapter 10: Avoiding Burnout and Going the Distance
• Conclusion: Relationships, Reciprocity, and Struggle
• Conclusion: Beyond Doom, toward Collective Action
• Afterword: Movements Make Life
• Appendix A: Navigating Police Use of Chemical Weapons
• Appendix B: Attorney’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• Notes
• Index
• Back Cover