"Rehearsing The World As It Should Be In Real Time"

Thinking About Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba's Let This Radicalize You

“We can also invite people to imagine what’s possible by modeling and rehearsing the world as it should be in real time, in the spaces, groups, and relationships that we build.” (Let This Radicalize You, 38)

I was wary of writing this blog post. There are so many more people, infinitely better versed on abolition and who have been committed to practicing organizing efforts for years that you should be paying far more attention to, including the authors of the book I want to write about today, Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba. But my friend Steve reminded me that this is my space, I’m not taking a platform from someone else, and sometimes it can be nice to have a beginner’s perspective. With further context, I also really enjoy documenting my learning journeys, the moments when I realize how much I don’t know and adding more knowledge to my store. And fundamentally, even though, I may not be politically organizing, I think there are lessons about care, community, and radical imagination that anyone who picks up Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care can learn from and try to incorporate into their lives. To return to the quote I cite at the start, Let This Radical You invites readers to make changes in the way you live currently, but that requires us to imagine another way of life is possible.

So what better place to start than radical imagination?

My interest in abolition and scholarly interest in fantasy developed together, I think. There was a moment when I realized Oh! Abolitionists are engaged in this really important speculative practice of world-building, just like fantasy authors, except the stakes in some ways are much higher. But the core principle of imagining new worlds made me understand that abolitionists were real-life alchemists. The magic I sought in books, the transformative work I craved to see in real life, organizers and activists were doing. These are people who believe in a world not yet seen and on their sheer will power and community power, make it so.

Just like fantasy authors could imagine worlds great adventure, abolitionists can imagine a world for us where everyone’s needs are met. Yes, it is a daunting project; no, it will not happen overnight. But everyone can carry a stone to a new location to build a new shelter.

That leads me to my second take away from Let This Radicalize You: get it where you fit in.

In Kaba’s conclusion, she says, “You are not needed everywhere, but we are all needed somewhere. It’s important to find your somewhere and plant yourself there.” (230)

To supplement this project of radical imagination and to create this new world, I understand from reading that we really do need every type of person. Organizers need folks to organize, folks that are coming in with particular talents that they can offer and can use in different ways.

I think sometimes when I think about justice projects or freedom projects, I get caught up in the imagery of the march or the protest or the coordinated action. And while Let This Radicalize You helps me understand why those events are important, they cannot be the only places I can help.

Again, I am returning to this quote at the beginning “modeling and rehearsing the world as it should be in real time,” because for me, maybe I’m not always on the front lines, but I can take a lot of these ideas about collective care into the spaces I inhabit. Those spaces are often classrooms at Predominately White Institutions that attract a lot of Black students. I can practice care and hope in my classroom. Maybe that is my ministry.

Another piece I’m thinking about in relationship to this text is identifying my community/ies. So for me, this often looks like asking myself the question: To whom am I held accountable? Which is something that Hayes and Kaba ask in the text as well. Identifying my communities will help me figure out where I can lend a hand. My biggest communities of which I am a part and which I serve tend to be my students at my university, but I think it’s also worth investigating why students at a private institution tend to be one of the few groups I mobilize around at the moment.

Related to this question of community, is the question of sustainability and self-care. I really appreciated Hayes and Kaba writing that none of this work is sustainable if you don’t care for yourself, but caring for yourself really shouldn’t be an individual project. Like everything else, care should be a communal and collective project.

I think so much of what they write about comes down to care and a desire to get folks to think about a collective good, rather than an individual. To know your neighbors, offer mutual aid to someone you don’t know…As I understand Hayes and Kaba, for abolition to work, it has to fundamentally be a collective project of care where everyone gets in where they fit in to make sure everyone’s needs are met so that policing and prisons become obsolete. Getting folks to let go of individualism is a tough project. I should know, I am a hyper-individual person that wants very badly to be more in community because I know what a public good it does.

So I take it slowly. I make sure I know my neighbors. I pour into the communities where I already inhabit. I commit to running classrooms that operate under collective systems of care. I read what I can and learn more. I engage in mutual aid when I can. I try. I practice. I rehearse for the world I want to see.

Reading things like Let This Radicalize You always makes me want to get up the next day and keep disciplined, as Kaba would say. Even if I falter, this is something I do want to commit to and get better at every day.