Laura Flanders and Friends: Solutions-Focused Progressive Perspectives on Politics, News, and Culture

“Love In A F*ed-Up World”: Dean Spade’s Self-Help Book for Movements

Jan 22, 2025

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

Explore the timely insights from activist Dean Spade on how reshaping our personal connections can bolster our fight for justice, as featured in his latest book, "Love in a F*cked Up World."

This show is made possible thanks our members! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate Thank you for your continued support!

Description: In a time of climate catastrophe, genocide, mass incarceration and political turmoil, people need to work together – better! That’s why lifelong activist Dean Spade has written “Love in a F*ed Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together”. Which tools can help people and social justice movements face conflict and emerge stronger (rather than weaker)? Which stories do we tell ourselves that aren’t helping us think — or act — in our best interest? In this timely conversation, Spade shares tips on how we might get our interpersonal houses in order so that we’re better equipped to show up for others and the causes we care about. Spade is a lawyer, educator, and author of “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)”, and “Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of the Law”. He’s the director of “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!”, and in 2002 he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City, a law collective that provides free legal services to trans and gender non-conforming people who are low income and/or people of color. He has useful things to say about romance too, which are worth bearing in mind, as the Valentine’s marketing crush hits, as Laura reflects in her commentary.

“. . . Most of us are taking in all the bad news by ourselves through a screen . . . One of the best things we can do to support our own wellbeing through the overwhelm is be with others, joining any kind of project in our communities, a creative project, a mutual aid project . . .” - Dean Spade

“The typical self-help genre is very focused on the individual. It doesn't contextualize the kinds of suffering that everyone's going through in a broader feminist analysis, anti-capitalist analysis, anti-racist analysis . . . If we understand that our individual suffering is a bunch of bigger scripts, . . . it can be a little bit freeing.” - Dean Spade

Guest: Dean Spade: Author, Love In A F*ed-Up World: How To Build Relationships, Hook Up, And Raise Hell Together & Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

This show is made possible thanks our members! To become a sustaining member go to https://LauraFlanders.org/donate Thank you for your continued support!

Watch the broadcast episode cut for time at our YouTube channel and airing on PBS stations across the country

Subscribe to episode notes via Patreon

Music In the Middle: “We are Rising” by activist, singer and songwriter, Taína Asili. She created the song for One Billion Rising’s 2020 global campaign.. And additional music included- "Steppin" and "All The Ways" by Podington Bear.

Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:

• The New Transgender Movement: Race, Poverty, Gender, Policing, and Pinkwashing, Watch

• Emergent Strategies for Abolition: Andrea J. Ritchie’s Toolkit for Activists: Watch / Download Podcast

• Mariame Kaba: Rooting Out Our Culture of Harm: Watch / Download Podcast: Episode & Full Uncut Conversation

• adrienne maree brown: Pleasure Activism and Black Women’s Legacy of Joy, Watch (06:58) / Download Podcast: Full Uncut Conversation (37:20)

“Love In A F*ed-Up World”: Dean Spade’s Self-Help Book for Movements

Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:

Related Articles and Resources: