Abstract
With Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care (2023), Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba (longtime social movement educators and collaborators in struggle) present a guide for those “young in their work” (p. 6) about how and why to sustain a lifelong commitment to care-driven political organizing. The book's title draws from Kaba's popularly circulated saying—“Let this radicalize you, rather than lead you to despair” (p. 149)—and invokes the text's main invitation: In the face of racist, capitalist, colonial, and heteropatriarchal violence, we can always renew radical commitments to hope and liberation. Fueled by lessons from on-the-ground organizers, we can resist fatalism in an increasingly destabilized and fear-provoking society. Let This Radicalize You establishes that community organizing is a creative modality for reshaping our understanding of the world; organizers are storyteller-educators who facilitate how we learn, relate, and question our own assumptions through political action.
The latest installment of Haymarket Books’ Abolitionist Papers Series, this text anchors in stories of seasoned organizers, scholars, and artists, especially those working towards abolition of policing and the prison-industrial complex in colonially known North America. In vignettes about grassroots actions and struggle, the book's structure itself models the relationality and interdependence of organizing practice. While mostly written in the collective “we” voice, the authors individually wrote Introductions and Conclusions, which touch on the significant role of mentorship, informal teaching, and intergenerational knowledge-making.
Opening with a quote from Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 1 introduces that effective organizing is about “developing the capacity to bring people into relationship with one another … to overcome alienation and fear” (p. 38). Trust and belonging, they argue, empower two kinds of political education through organizing: unearthing histories together to strengthen activism, and the more difficult work of unlearning internalized oppression. Chapter 9 expands on practices for that latter work, such as how to navigate intra-movement conflict, ideological diversity, limited skill in listening or patience, a culture of banking education, and an intolerance for mistakes while learning. Chapter 4 positions political “learning as rebellion and rehearsal” (p. 82), emphasizing the purposeful application of knowledge towards subversive action. These chapters primarily name political education as a strategy within organizing; the book implicitly shows (yet might have further explicated) how all organizing activities are themselves a form of political education. We are radicalized through hopeful action, relationship-building, and care.
Chapters 2 and 3 illustrate how “refusing to abandon” (p. 41) others by practicing mutual aid is “a form of cultural rebellion” (p. 59), particularly when the logics of state warfare and “security” justify neglect or harm. Those logics enable state power to threaten or delegitimize care-driven organizing, or to co-opt nonviolence rhetoric to suppress movement tactics, as explored in Chapter 6. This is the most comparative chapter, contrasting historical and contemporary examples from the U.S. civil rights movement, anti-protest law, land and water movements, and briefly, Palestinian resistance—inadvertently drawing attention to the book's otherwise focus on a United States context. The authors might have further acknowledged this narrower context and its implications for learning about organizing.
Chapters 5, 7, and 10 surface warnings for organizing practice. Hayes and Kaba push organizers to distinguish themselves from “political hobbyists” (p. 98), avoiding the allure of cynicism or pontification without disciplined action. Pedestaling organizers (including oneself) is risky, opening vulnerability to exploitation and surveillance, or projections of charismatic leadership or individualized exceptionalism. Chapter 10 considers the effects of exhausting burnout and rejuvenating rest on organizers’ capacity for long-term work and self-care. Chapter 8 and the Conclusions reflect on the active practices of hope and grief as ways to build “life-giving relationships” (p. 222). This may especially resonate with readers amidst 2023's (and ongoing) rapidly growing global movement against colonialism and imperialism (and violations of human rights).
The text closes with takeaways from scholar-organizer Harsha Walia (organizing is the antidote to despair, collective liberation necessitates collective care, we need each other), legal and safety advice for organizers resisting police violence, and a glossary of working definitions for frequently named concepts. These sections, alongside a separately distributed 104-page workbook and shorter discussion guide, contextualize the book's potential as both an applicable organizing tool and a critical teaching material for and about political education in this decade.
Let This Radicalize You is simultaneously broad and specific; poetic and practical. Its attention on recent years lends it relevant momentum as an informative resource for educators and organizers interested in citing recent U.S.-based strategies (2020s) for resistance in their teaching, writing, or activism. I especially recommend this book to those refreshing their motivations or epistemic frames in their own political education projects—or, who work with learners eager to dive into action with intentionality. Hayes and Kaba's offering will inspire a wide range of readers, with a multitude of entryways into a broader ecosystem of radical political learning.
