Best of 2023: Let This Radicalize You w/ Mariame Kaba & Kelly Hayes
Jan 1, 2024
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Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes discuss their book Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care, exploring topics such as disappointment in organizing, the power of relationships in activism, empathy in COVID organizing, defunding and resource allocation, collective survival, and building structures based on interdependence.
Politics involves constructing narratives and cultivating empathy for effective organizing.
Reciprocal care and cooperation are crucial for collective survival and building a better world.
Resistance against narratives of mass death is necessary, focusing on collective care and compassion.
Deep dives
The Power of Narrative and Constructing Meaning
The book emphasizes that politics involves conflict over meaning and constructing narratives. It challenges the notion that facts alone motivate political action and highlights the importance of how facts fit into a broader narrative. It explores the role of cognitive biases in shaping beliefs and behavior and aims to cultivate empathy and understanding in organizers. The book encourages organizers to move beyond divisive narratives and focus on finding common ground and effective ways to communicate with different types of people.
Dependence on Each Other for Collective Survival
The book stresses the importance of depending on each other and not abandoning one another for collective survival. It challenges the idea that politics is all about winners and losers and highlights the need for reciprocal care and cooperative efforts. It acknowledges that relying on others can be challenging but emphasizes that organizing and working together are necessary for addressing pressing issues and building a better world.
Resisting Conditioning and Building a Different Story
The book examines how people are being conditioned to accept mass death as the cost of doing business and calls for resistance against this narrative. It encourages readers to challenge the prevailing stories that depict human beings as selfish or uncaring. The book urges people to reject the idea that everyone needs to be locked up and highlights the countless examples of people coming together, showing care, empathy, and aiding one another. It emphasizes the power of storytelling in reframing our understanding of ourselves and the world, and it calls for narratives that acknowledge and amplify collective care and compassion.
Recognizing Human Potential and Forming Alliances
The book believes in the potential of human beings to engage in collective action and make change. It highlights the importance of forming alliances, building trust, and engaging in dialogue. It encourages organizers to move beyond individual instances and focus on long-term strategy, understanding the complexities of human behavior, cognitive biases, and the need for various approaches to communication. The book calls for organizers to recognize the value of empathy, understanding, and depending on one another to navigate political challenges and work towards collective liberation.
Importance of paying attention to positive news
The podcast episode highlights the importance of not exclusively focusing on negativity and bad news. It encourages listeners to acknowledge the positive things happening in the world and amplify those stories instead. By doing so, the episode suggests that people can create a virtuous cycle of positivity and cooperation, fostering collective care and pushing for resources to be directed towards promoting the good.
Building new social relations through small actions
The podcast emphasizes the significance of starting small and taking action, even if it may seem insufficient at first. It underscores the power of collective survival work, demonstrating that small-scale actions can create ripples and have larger impacts over time. The episode encourages listeners to engage in solidarity and prefigurative politics by cultivating right relationships with others, making revolution irresistible through everyday acts of care, and finding ways to contribute to social change based on one's own skills and abilities.
As we send off 2023, we’re releasing a series of some of our favorite episodes of the year—including some newly unlocked episodes that have previously only been available to patrons. This episode was originally released on May 18th, 2023. To support the show and help make episodes like this one possible, become a patron at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod.
Original description: Bea speaks with Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes about their new book Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care, released this week.
Find Let This Radicalize You here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1922-let-this-radicalize-you
Find our book Health Communism here: www.versobooks.com/books/4081-health-communism
Pre-order Jules' new book here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/733966/a-short-history-of-trans-misogyny-by-jules-gill-peterson/
Death Panel merch here (patrons get a discount code): www.deathpanel.net/merch
As always, support Death Panel at www.patreon.com/deathpanelpod
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