Dean Spade is a trans activist, writer and teacher. Stephanie Luce interviewed him about his recent book Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And the Next).
The anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin, writing in 1902, called Mutual Aid "the conscience — be it only at the stage of an instinct — of human solidarity." This new book offers insight into how that idea can live in today's world.
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The essence of Chanukah is the theme of resistance. The story commemorates the victorious resistance of the people over the power and might of empire. Chanukah celebrates the spiritual strength of resistance to an often harsh and unyielding world.
The fight for housing security has already become a part of the general struggle against inequality made possible by the epochal rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
We need to come away from the current upheavals with organization, with vision and goals, with program and campaigns that all persist and mature and strengthen rather than folding back into business as usual.
This book, says reviewer Renaud, "fits squarely within a left tradition that highlights Marxism’s method rather than its dogmatic prescriptions," in trying to come to terms with today's insurgent, left-oriented social movements.
A popular narrative today is that we live in a country which is deeply divided. And the Democratic Party, we are told, is nearly as split as the nation itself. But chatter in the press and social media may overlook some fundamental points of agreement about changes we need to make in our economy. That’s the premise behind a new pledge, the “Agenda for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity, and Economic Justice,” that has been signed by more than 70 prominent progressives.
Organizing for the long haul.
Shortly before his death, James Baldwin wrote that in the U.S., “White is a metaphor for power,” an observation that is deep background for much of the discussion in the masterly book under review, where race and class are intertwined, yet surface differences are used to split the labor force and maintain capital’s hegemony. The book can usefully inform debate on race and class and aid in reconstructing a revolutionary project in the context of Trumpworld.
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