Let This Radicalize You

As we write this book, the pandemic continues, and the supposed light at the end of the tunnel is a “return to normalcy” concocted by a government eager to restore the status quo that delivered us to this moment. In the interest of capital, we are being sold a narrative of recovery that ignores the structural failings that have magnified the impact

that shared sense of having been discarded creates a solidarity among some imprisoned people that’s about “refusing to throw each other away.” Put simply, Cosby explains, “We refuse to abandon.”

The remedy to alienation, a state that often keeps people cooperative and docile in the face of injustice, is belonging

Capitalism robs us of our time, exhausting our bodies and minds, while pollution, stress, and shifting media patterns shorten our attention spans, and other mediums offer effortless modes of escapism. The gutting of public education was geared toward the prevention of an “educated proletariat”—as a Reagan adviser once put it

Given the sheer amount of media available to any person with an internet connection, we have no shortage of “witnesses” to atrocity. Forcing people to behold injustice is not enough. Nor is the goal to simply generate a reaction—any reaction—to injustice; such noise can easily become a passing clamor. The goal is to pull people into an active forma

Everything is a story, and people need to understand themselves as having a meaningful role within the story you, as an organizer, are telling. If their role in your story feels like “doom appreciator,” most people will recoil, retreat to their own smaller story, and keep the focus there.

“So I think a lot about starting with asking, ‘What do you want? What do you need? How can I help? Here’s what we’re working on. How does that sound to you? What are we missing? What else is needed?’ Not ‘Do you want to get involved?’ or ‘You should get involved.’”

organizing is the work of dreaming new worlds into being

the cultivation of joy as a form of sustenance and a means of rebellion.

We talked a lot about “new” models of engagement, even though the old ones would have served us just as well.