Let This Radicalize You

• p. 23: “If spitting horrifying facts at people changed minds and built movements, we would have overthrown the capitalist system long ago, because the facts have always been on our side. TO move past the expectation that facts alone will transform people's politics, we have to sit with our discomfort that oftentimes people know. When it comes to many of the issues around which we're organizing, most people are aware of the problem, even if they are not acquainted with all the horrid particulars. In fact, some might be quite familiar with the problem and still choose not to act.”
• look into: The Psychology of Pandemics (Taylor)
• p. 28: “Leveraging fear gets great results for people who want to bring out the worst in others, but it garners lesser returns for those who want to bring out the best.”
• p. 31: “Powerful actors must keep us convinced that it's the people around us — everyday folks whose struggles overlap with our own — who pose the greatest threat to our safety, well-being, and happiness. It is the grandest illusion ever created: in a world where corporations and governments are poised to annihilate most life on Earth, we are made to believe that other disempowered people are the greatest danger we face.”
• pp. 31–32: “The idea that disasters autogenerate panicked, aimlessly violent hordes of people who must be controlled with an iron fist is an authoritarian fever dream. While the powerful would have us believe that frightened people are always selfish and hypervigilant, cooperation and collaborative care are common human responses to disaster.”

  • see also Behind the Bastards - "Elite Panic"
• p. 32: “The state sees communal care as an ideological threat. This is why mutual aid movements are routinely targeted and undermined by the US government.”

• p. 52: “Our goal should be interdependence: to be part of a community where rescue is viewed not as exceptional but as something that we owe each other.”
• look into: The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival (Begley)

• p. 59: “The state has the capacity to help us all survive — and even thrive — but in its current form, it is actively opposed to doing so. We must have the will to survive in collectivity, as people who are willing to seize, defy, and upend whatever they must for the sake of life, dignity, and decency — and for the sake of each other.”
• p. 76: “Why aren't these narratives of spontaneous mutual aid [during 9/11] more widely shared in mainstream culture? Perhaps it's because a recognition of our collective capacity for care during a moment of chaos does not reinforce state hierarchy. It does not reinforce individualism or what the government ultimately wanted most out of the aftermath of 9/11: a greater allegiance to US militarism.”
• look into: the National Intelligence Council's 2021 Global Trends report
• p. 79: “Care-driven organizing compels us to ask, What would it take to provide for people's needs and address the root causes of a problem? How do we care for each other as crises unfold? At what cost are we willing to offer shelter and protection to people who are under attack?”

• p. 80: “While some people engage in politics for the sake of debate or to defend their sense of moral identity, radical organizers are attempting to create something new.”
• p. 81 (quoting Ruth Wilson Gilmore): “So when people rightly denounce gentrification, a geographer will say, 'Well, what do you think that means? How does it work?' Because when we think about how it works, then that gives us some opportunity to think about what the remedy for this organized abandonment might be.”
• p. 83: Activists often feel quietly embarrassed about the important books they have not read. We have news for them: most people in movement spaces have not read the books everyone seems to quote.“
• https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/
• p. 84: “How many times have you planned to check out a museum exhibit, a lecture, a podcast, an art installation, or any other opportunity to learn and expand your analysis, and found that you simply do not have the time or energy? Some people will call themselves 'lazy' for missing such opportunities without recognizing who or what seized the time or energy they might have devoted to such tasks. We are not simply 'missing out' on knowledge; we are being robbed of it.”
• p. 84: “Many of the histories that delivered us to this movement…are hidden in plain sight…The ruling class is going to great lengths to obstruct the journey of discovering those lessons and tools.”

  • I'm reminded of the Battle of Blair Mountain; even though it ended in defeat for the union, it is of course in the interests of the powerful to keep workers from learning that armed uprising against the bosses is an option
• p. 85: “If you are unsure where to begin, we recommend you begin with the words or ideas that have already had an impact on you. As an exercise, pick out a quotation that has had a deep impact on your politics. Write it down. Now let's elaborate upon its context. What injustice was being challenged? What did the speaker want most immediately? Was the quote part of a statement to the press, a line from a speech or book, or a comment to a friend? Was it in a letter from a jailhouse? Who was president of the United States when these words were spoken? What was the economy like? Who might have disagreed with this quote at the time it was spoken, both within and outside of social movements? If the quote is from a book, have you read it? If not, is it possible these words are calling you on a journey?”
• pp. 86–87 on extractive reading and rehearsal vs. recital
• most of the reading in this list has been extractive; how can I change that?
• look into: https://www.lucyparsonslabs.com/
• p. 93: “When we become wholly reliant on a shortcut that disappears, we are left with a knowledge deficit that can become a roadblock.”

  • could I help educate activists on the use of radio technology? Obviously, legal ham operation could be a hazard in a direct action scenario, but the skills are still valuable (and plain FRS might be insufficient). How could we ensure that the equipment is available to as many people as possible?

• p. 97: “When we believe in each other, we are more likely to take risks and to invest ourselves in possibility, even when our own hopes are not fully formed. In this way, our relationships and the work of relationship building can change our sense of what's possible.”
• p. 100: “As organizers, when we find ourselves correcting people's ignorance, we should ask ourselves what we are inviting those people to do. What are we directing them toward? What do we ultimately want from them? And are our words in line with those goals?”
• p. 100: “Making people aware that an atrocity is in keeping with the character of their country is not an end in itself. In some ways, comparisons that nullify — or reproach — shock can lead to normalization and resignation: the sense that we are experiencing an unchangeable and inalterable cycle, so there's no point in getting riled up about it. For this reason, as organizers we must leverage history lessons as calls to action in the present.”

  • see also I Hate Mondays
• p. 103: “Many of the social patterns and behaviors that lead us to reject one another and to revert to individualism are the products of trauma, so to do the work of being human together, we must make space to address these emotional and physiological realities.”
• p. 103: ”…comparing Native genocide and the enslavement of Black people can lead to debates about which group has suffered more. Such debates are always self-defeating…As strategists, we must ask what is the value of attempting to rank atrocities.“
• p. 105: “Sometimes becoming 'aware' or 'bearing witness' is simply an act of consumption…Forcing people to behold injustice is not enough…The goal is to pull people into an active formation and build something.”

• look into: Elite Capture (Taiwo)
• it continues to frustrate me that the Democrats repeatedly assume that “independent” is synonymous with “centrist”
• p. 108: “Popular definitions of violence tend to include property destruction. But under these definitions, the destruction of property is usually viewed as violent only if it disrupts profit or the maintenance of wealth. If food is destroyed because it cannot be sold while people go hungry, that is not considered violent under the norms of capitalism. If a person's belongings are tossed on the sidewalk during an eviction and consequently destroyed, that is likewise not considered violent according to the norms of this society. Those destructive acts are part of the 'order of things.'”
• look into: “Domestic Violence, Firearms, and Mass Shootings” (Liza H. Gold, link in footnote 3)
• p. 109: “We are surrounded by violence in this society, even under conditions that government authorities would characterize as 'peaceful,' because violence has always been embedded in the norms and functions of this system.”
• p. 110: “Defending people who've been incarcerated for acts the state deems violent is an essential act of nonviolence — challenging the vast harm perpetrated by the state itself.”
• p. 111: “In the past, activists frequently leveraged the violence of the police…in order to expose the brutality of policing and force the public to witness and confront it. Many of those actions…took place in a context that was very different from today's world of pervasive mass media…The public has largely become inured to such imagery.”

  • cf. The Ghandi Trap
• p. 111: “The violence of the state in response to protest is rarely scrutinized to the degree that protests are scrutinized. The idea that if you are defiant in the face of authority you should expect to incur its wrath is firmly entrenched in our culture. When people who defy police are abused, we often hear people ask, “What did they think would happen?” The ubiquity of the abuse puts the onus on the abused to avoid it, because they simply 'should have known better.'”

  • should it be surprising how well this maps onto narratives of sexual violence, particularly against women?
• look into: footnote 6
• p. 113: “By forwarding these [anti-protest] bills, Republicans are telling white people who are angry at Black protesters that even if it isn't legal to hit them with cars, it should be, and that people who commit these acts have the backing of some government officials.”
• look into: FL HB 1
• I can't not think of Murder, Inc's “Mr. President”, specifically the second verse
• p. 116: “The fact that these [critical infrastructure] laws draw on the national security legislation created in the wake of 9/11 is illustrative of two important facts: laws that supposedly target 'terrorists' will always be used to target activists, and those who would interrupt systemic violence will, in turn, be associated with violence by those who maintain the system. While Indigenous land and water defenders face surging rates of targeted violence around the world, it is the potential disruption of 'critical infrastructure' projects that is associated with the catastrophe of 9/11, and it is environment activists who are depicted as terrorists.”
• p. 117: “Contributing to mass death while destroying the Earth for a profit are not considered violent acts, while damaging equipment in an effort to interrupt those harms is considered terrorism.”

  • compare with the actions of Purdue Pharmaceutical, who lobbied for greater criminalization of drug abuse while pushing their highly-abusable product for a profit; to paraphrase the above, contributing to mass drug-related death and destroying lives for a profit are not considered violent acts, while those most visibly suffering from those efforts are depicted as a threat to public safety
• look into: “Abolition Geography and the Problem of Innocence” (Gilmore)
• apparently the UK's Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Act has passed
• p. 121: “From the United States to the UK and beyond, the suppression of dissent is being ramped up, not to 'keep the peace' but to preserve a status quo so violent that it is incompatible with most life on Earth.”
• look into: Border and Rule (Walia)
• p. 124: “State violence around the world is routinely dealt out in such a manner: the state reserves the right to overstep its own laws, and even when it subsequently acknowledges its mistakes, it has already subjected people to the indignity of arrest, deprived them of their liberty, or subjected them to other violence. Such abuse is intentionally crafted to discourage others from expressing themselves or taking action, because it sends a message: even if the government is in the wrong and is ultimately forced to acknowledge as much, it can make you suffer and ruin your life in the meantime.”
• p. 126: “Discussions of human rights are necessarily limited, [Lea Kayali] noted, because rights are afforded to individuals by larger structures of power and can be revoked by those structures.”
• p. 128: “we must not allow the frameworks of the powerful to define the bounds of morality in our politics and our action. The elastic concepts of criminality and violence, as controlled by the powerful, will always be bent against us.”

• Hayes & Kaba connect pedestaling of organizers with our culture of individualism, arguing that the powerful encourage such pedestaling to reinforce that culture; I would argue that it also serves to legitimize authoritarian and hierarchical sentiments: if a movement can be reduced to the orchestrations of a few leaders, then it reinforces the idea that we are all meant to be followers
• reminder: a person's politics can occur in any mix, and those politics need not be congruous with their actions
• I was waiting for the word “parasocial” to appear
• p. 131: “If we looked into someone's previous work, writing, or practices, we might discover that they have long held some positions that we disagree with or that their organizing style may not align with our own. This does not mean that we cannot praise someone's work without running a background check or familiarizing ourselves with their entire body of work. It does mean that we should be specific about what we admire: the campaigns they have co-organized, their leadership style, their written work, or even specific words they have shared, rather than reducing them as people to emblems of good politics whose unknown words, actions, and beliefs have been overwritten with idealization.”
• p. 131: “Good organizers do not want 'fans'. They want committed and thoughtful co-strugglers. An organizer who wants your allegiance rather than your solidarity and co-investment in struggle is not someone whose leadership you should trust.”
• individual “success” is not movement success
• agh, the whitewashing of MLK
• inclusion is a compromise, not a solution; those included are expected to conform to the norms of the institutions that have deigned to include them

  • consider the superficial “diversity” of GamerGate: ”…the marginalized are unwelcome unless they obliterate themselves on the altar of the 'normal'.“; while a different situation — actually, is it that different?
• call back to Klemp's rejection of the Grand Vermeil Medal (pp. 122–123)
• when criticism comes from people with no connection to the work, check in with yourself and comrades about whether that criticism merits consideration; always question and challenge your own positions
• p. 136: “People who are understandably impatient for large-scale change often want to believe that there's a shortcut: that one group, movement, or demographic is the truth and the way and that merely cheering on that contingent will spur a revolution…Attaching oneself to such fantasies may feel like solidarity to some, but in reality it is dehumanizing, nonstrategic, and an abdication of one's responsibility to forge struggle.”
• if credited for a major development, tell the larger story of the movement instead, and invite others to join
• quoting Walia (p. 143): “our political opponents have a hard time accepting that our movements are nonhierarchical and decentralized and really believe that targeting one person can challenge the legitimacy of an entire movement.”
• look into: the Surveillance Self-Defense Project
• neat, they cited “Carol's Journey” (Zadrozny) and Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
• look into: the Hemisphere Project

• of course J comes to mind here: his absence continues to ache, but I'll never stop hoping for his return
• the capitalist order will rely on further public acceptance of mass death as inevitable in order to maintain itself

  • see again I Hate Mondays
• but grief is an expression of love, and that order is unprepared to address a mass movement of grief-informed mutual aid
• p. 153: “Many of our ancestors experienced the end of the worlds they had known…We must learn from their histories and traditions as we face an uncertain future.”
• reminder that the Right is not united by a shared vision of a better future but by a dogged adherence to extant hierarchies
• look into: “The Walls of the Tank: On Palestinian Resistance” (Malm)
• look into: “The Dignity and Hope Manifesto” (anonymous)
• look into: The Parable of the Sower (Butler)
• create spaces for processing grief and building hope

Prior to its selection for the book club, I had seen this book advertised in the pages of In These Times. I must confess that I had a hard time getting myself to read this book. I knew it was a book I would want to read, a book I needed to read. I am ashamed to admit that despite no personal involvement in any activism or organizing, I am exhausted. I want to believe that a better future is in our grasp, but that belief is so, so hard to hold onto. In her introduction, Kaba openly acknowledges that we are unlikely to ever see that better future, and as much as I despise the adherents of “fuck you, got mine”, it's hard to convince myself that an active struggle is worth it. I want to be someone who, if I must go down, will do so fighting tooth and nail, but some days waking up in the morning is hard enough.

Again, I have been in no way active in any efforts for change. The sum total of my involvement in any activism was a July 2020 march in Jackson, whereas Hayes and Kaba have been organizing for decades. Their exhaustion is earned; what right do I have? Certainly that was part of my difficulty in getting myself to open this book. Figuring out how to connect with activist communities is a daunting task on its own — it's a not-insignificant part of what drew me to the book club in the first place. Then there's the matter of contributing: with so few social wins in my own life, what could I possible have to add to a movement? Yes, I have skills, but I fail to see how they could be helpful in serving the local area.