RTD Book List by Dawit Alemayehu https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12 en-us 2023-03-09 18:45:25 UTC 2026-02-09 05:28:06 UTC hello@padlet.com Viral Justice by Ruha Benjami dawit8 https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510764202 "Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.

Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father's premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother's experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well.

Born of a stubborn hopefulness, Viral Justice offers a passionate, inspiring, and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities, and helping us build a more just and joyful world." ]]> 2023-03-09 18:47:13 UTC https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510764202 Elite Capture by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò dawit8 https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510766594 A powerful indictment of the ways elites have co-opted radical critiques of racial capitalism to serve their own ends.

“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests.

But the trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests.

Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of “class” vs. “race.” By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.]]> 2023-03-09 18:49:02 UTC https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510766594 Fugitive Pedagogy by Jarvis R. Givens dawit8 https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510769311 A fresh portrayal of one of the architects of the African American intellectual tradition, whose faith in the subversive power of education will inspire teachers and learners today.

Black education was a subversive act from its inception. African Americans pursued education through clandestine means, often in defiance of law and custom, even under threat of violence. They developed what Jarvis Givens calls a tradition of “fugitive pedagogy”—a theory and practice of Black education in America. The enslaved learned to read in spite of widespread prohibitions; newly emancipated people braved the dangers of integrating all-White schools and the hardships of building Black schools. Teachers developed covert instructional strategies, creative responses to the persistence of White opposition. From slavery through the Jim Crow era, Black people passed down this educational heritage.

There is perhaps no better exemplar of this heritage than Carter G. Woodson—groundbreaking historian, founder of Black History Month, and legendary educator under Jim Crow. Givens shows that Woodson succeeded because of the world of Black teachers to which he belonged: Woodson’s first teachers were his formerly enslaved uncles; he himself taught for nearly thirty years; and he spent his life partnering with educators to transform the lives of Black students. Fugitive Pedagogy chronicles Woodson’s efforts to fight against the “mis-education of the Negro” by helping teachers and students to see themselves and their mission as set apart from an anti-Black world. Teachers, students, families, and communities worked together, using Woodson’s materials and methods as they fought for power in schools and continued the work of fugitive pedagogy. Forged in slavery, embodied by Woodson, this tradition of escape remains essential for teachers and students today.]]> 2023-03-09 18:51:12 UTC https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510769311 Rehearsals for Living- Robyn Maynard , Leanne Betasamosake Simpson dawit8 https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510771212 A revolutionary collaboration about the world we're living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists.

When much of the world entered pandemic lockdown in spring 2020, Robyn Maynard, influential author of Policing Black Lives, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, award-winning author of several books, including the recent novel Noopiming, began writing each other letters--a gesture sparked by friendship and solidarity, and by a desire for kinship and connection in a world shattering under the intersecting crises of pandemic, police killings, and climate catastrophe. Their letters soon grew into a powerful exchange on the subject of where we go from here.

Rehearsals is a captivating book, part debate, part dialogue, part lively and detailed familial correspondence between two razor-sharp writers convening on what it means to get free as the world spins into some new orbit. In a genre-defying exchange, the authors collectively envision the possibilities for more liberatory futures during a historic year of Indigenous land defense, prison strikes, and global-Black-led rebellions against policing. By articulating to each other Black and Indigenous perspectives on our unprecedented here and now, and the long-disavowed histories of slavery and colonization that have brought us to this moment in the first place, Maynard and Simpson create something new: a vital demand for a different way forward, and a poetic call to dream up new ways of ordering earthly life.]]> 2023-03-09 18:52:41 UTC https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510771212 Racism without Racists- Eduardo Bonilla-Silva yhhou https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510791244
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's acclaimed Racism without Racists examines in detail how Whites talk, think, and account for the existence of racial inequality and makes clear that color-blind racism is as insidious now as ever. The sixth edition of this provocative book includes new material on systemic racism and how color-blind racism framed many issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. A revised conclusion addresses what readers can do to confront racism--both personally and on a larger structural level. New to this edition: -New Chapter 2, "What is Systemic Racism? Coming to Terms with How Racism Shapes 'All' Whites (and Non-Whites)" explains how all members of society participate in structural racism. -New Chapter 10, "Color-Blind Racism in Pandemic Times" provides coverage of racial disparities in mortality, the role of essential workers, and hunger during the pandemic - particularly how public discourse did not reflect how these problems are worse for communities of color. -Updated discussion of police surveillance and violence reflects the current salience of police brutality in the U.S. and enhances the conversation on suave racial discrimination (Chapter 3). -Addresses the question, "What is to be done?" and offers White people ideas on what they can do to change themselves (Chapter 11).]]> 2023-03-09 19:08:48 UTC https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510791244 Freedom Dreams- Robin D.G. Kelley yhhou https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510795100 First published in 2002, Freedom Dreams is a staple in the study of the Black radical tradition. Unearthing the thrilling history of grassroots movements and renegade intellectuals and artists, Kelley recovers the dreams of the future worlds Black radicals struggled to achieve. Focusing on the insights of activists, from the Revolutionary Action Movement to the insurgent poetics of Aim and Suzanne C saire, Kelley chronicles the quest for a homeland, the hope that communism offered, the politics of surrealism, the transformative potential of Black feminism, and the long dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow. In this edition, Kelley includes a new introduction reflecting on how movements of the past 20 years have expanded his own vision of freedom to include mutual care, disability justice, abolition, and decolonization, and a new epilogue exploring the visionary organizing of today's freedom dreamers. This classic history of the power of the Black radical imagination is as timely as when it was first published.]]> 2023-03-09 19:11:49 UTC https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2510795100 We Do This 'Til We Free UsAbolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba lkaiser31 https://padlet.com/dawit8/o1aefo2wlw14fz12/wish/2512100486
New York Times Bestseller

“Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.”

What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.

With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”


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