Taking care of ourselves
Hell Yeah Self-Care!: A Trauma-Informed Workbook – Meg-John Barker & Alex Iantaffi In this creative workbook and journal leading mental health pioneers, Alex Iantaffi and Meg-John Barker, provide you with the tools to begin your self-care journey and develop sustainable self-care routines and rituals that work for you.
Being in the here and now
“Palliative activism, or Fighting for justice without hope” – Florence Ashley
If we are doomed to suffer, maybe we can ensure that there will be love among the suffering.
Staying hopeful
“A Brutal Beginning: Orienting Ourselves Amid the Shock and Awe” – Kelly Hayes “Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities” – Rebecca Solnit
Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next.
“Can nonviolent struggle defeat a dictator? This database emphatically says yes”
The Global Nonviolent Action Database details some 40 cases of mass movements overcoming tyrants through strategic nonviolent campaigns.
Taking action
Here you can find your representatives, how to contact them, bills they’ve introduced, committees they serve on, and political contributions they’ve received.
“Some actions that are not protest or voting” – organized by Mariame Kabas “Chop Wood, Carry Water” – Jessica Craven
This weekday newsletter gives you easy, effective political actions to take to stave off despair,
effect positive change and elect more true public servants.
Twice monthly checklist of positive actions to take, weekly digest of good news
“Skill-based Training Modules for Trump Era”
Trainings on mutual aid, de-escalation, action security, and other skills
40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists
Inside are 40 completely legal tactics—many of which are accessible to people from different backgrounds, skill sets, and identities—that can be used to counter and contain White Nationalist, fascist, and violent Far Right organizing in your community.
Harnessing our Power to End Political Violence
The HOPE guide is designed to help people across the United States counter political violence. It aims to empower individuals and strengthen communities to make political violence backfire against those who incite, threaten, and enact it.
Over the next few years, MAGA leaders will launch attack after attack, perpetrate outrage after outrage, commit injustice after injustice with the goal of keeping us disoriented, demoralized, and demobilized. Rather than exhausting ourselves reacting to each new indignity, we must expose the throughline between attacks and remain consistent and determined. We do that by telling a single, clear story about who we are, what our opposition intends, why they scapegoat, and how we build power to defeat them.
Buliding community
“Organizing Reading Group Training”
Political educator David Kaib will be hosting reading group trainings in late February/early March and beyond
“A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster” – Rebecca Solnit
An investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster’s grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local.
“Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care” – Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba
The authors examine what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster. The book is intended to aid and empower activists and organizers as they attempt to map their own journeys through the work of justice-making.
Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls – Kai Cheng Thom
What happens when we imagine loving the people—and the parts of ourselves—that we do not believe are worthy of love?
“How to Fight Disinformation: Introduction and Overview”
This is a series about how communities can fight back and protect themselves against weaponized disinformation.
“We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice” – adrienne maree brown
“How do we seek accountability and redress for harm in ways that reflect our values?”
Learning from our ancestors/elders
“I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction” – Kidada E. Williams
The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals, and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized place in collective memory. But this pivotal era looked very different to African Americans in the South transitioning from bondage to freedom after 1865.
Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow – Henry Louis Gates
An essential tour through one of America’s fundamental historical tragedies, Stony the Road is also a story of heroic resistance, as figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells fought to create a counter-narrative, and culture, inside the lion’s mouth. As sobering as this tale is, it also has within it the inspiration that comes with encountering the hopes our ancestors advanced against the longest odds.
How to Survive a Plague: The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS – David France Here is the incredible story of the grassroots activists whose work turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Almost universally ignored, these men and women learned to become their own researchers, lobbyists, and drug smugglers, established their own newspapers and research journals, and went on to force reform in the nation’s disease-fighting agencies.
“Why We Fight” – Vito Russo
“If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from homophobia. If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from racism. If I’m dying from anything, it’s from indifference and red tape, because these are the things that are preventing an end to this crisis. If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from Jesse Helms. If I’m dying from anything, I’m dying from the President of the United States.”
Surviving President Tr*mp: Lessons from the 1960s and Octavia E. Butler – Tananarive Due “Well, the clock has turned. Now another Really Bad Time has come. It’s the time Butler warned us about, when even the fascistic presidential candidate in her novel Parable of the Talents (the second Parable novel) used the phrase ‘Make America Great Again.’”
How to Win a Rigged Game – Samantha Hancox-Li
“I want to look to one of the most effective social movements of American history, one that succeeded despite facing the longest odds: the Civil Rights Movement. And I especially want to dwell on the strategic choices the Movement made in order to break the back of Jim Crow.”