Library Week: Anti-Racism Reads featuring Let This Radicalize You

As part of Library Week 2023, join us for the next installment of Anti-Racism Reads, which will feature a group discussion on the book Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the revolution of reciprocal care.

We have copies of this book available at no cost to reduce barriers to participation. Please indicate when you register if you would like a copy.

Facilitator: Jessica Hutchison

When: Thursday October 5, 2023 | 12 – 1 PM

Where: Dana Porter Learning Lab

Register

Find the book: Library’s catalogue (Omni), W Store .

About Let This Radicalize You

What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.

Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the convergence of mass protest and mass formations of mutual aid, and consider 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. It includes insights from a spectrum of experienced organizers, including Sharon Lungo, Carlos Saavedra, Ejeris Dixon, Barbara Ransby, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore about some of the difficult and joyous lessons they have learned in their work.

About Jessica Hutchison

Jessica is a white settler, abolition feminist, and activist-scholar who is deeply committed to dismantling racist and colonial systems that perpetuate harm and violence. She is an assistant professor in Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University, whose work is informed by her long-standing prisoners’ rights advocacy and solidarity with those most impacted by systems of oppression and domination. Jessica teaches in social work and critical criminology; is a research associate with the Centre for Indigegogy; and an active member of a grassroots collective in Waterloo Region advocating for the redistribution of police funding towards community-based and equity-centred initiatives.