What radicalized you?
Notes from my co-conspirators
“Your teachers are all around you.
All that you perceive,
All that you experience,
All that is given to you or is taken from you,
All that you love or hate,
need or fear will teach you –
If you will learn.”
– Octavia Butler from Parable of the Sower
I believe deeply that learning happens in community.
For this month's post, I reached out to people I admire – people I’ve organized with, learned from, and who I hope to continue organizing with and learning from – to ask about what radicalized them, politicized them, transformed their social justice consciousness in some way.
While I was collecting these reflections, people often said to me “I can’t think of a singular moment.” That’s one of the reasons I wanted to do this exercise for myself. There probably aren’t singular moments for anyone – but lots of little moments, some big moments, a constellation of change and thinking and reflecting and pushing back against systems meant to harm us and kill us.
The people who wrote (or drew) these twelve reflections come from many walks of life – ages 23 to 67. Professors, students, artists, parents, community organizers, museum workers, teachers. I hope you learn from them as I have learned from them.
Trigger warning: multiple of these stories contain mentions of violence, including of sexual violence. Please take care.
Isa, 31
I mark my life by before’s and after’s. Joys and pains so great that they caused a splintering in the universe, though the rest of the world carries on. My radicalization came from one of these cosmic shifts. When my brother went to prison. Out of all my before’s and after’s this is the one where I dwell the most because its debris still coats so much of my life and the lives of my family.
There are so many injustices that exist within society’s justice; from small to grave. The first letter I wrote my brother I couldn’t send because I decorated it with raised stickers. The first call I picked up I hung up because I didn’t know what the voice meant by accept the charges of the call.
As a brown girl living in rural Arizona, I had felt injustice and systemic sufferings before, both blatant and subtle. The otherness that the prison system produces is part of the punishment.
For me, part of radicalization involves asking questions and as we live and learn and grow, we ask better questions, but I’m still asking this one: what does justice look like?
Sara, 30
How I was politicized: a [work in progress] recipe
The skill of noticing - from my mixed-race, multi-faith family
That early spark - from my American Studies professors, queer, Asian-American, mothers in the midwest
A relationship and responsibility to land - from hālau, my dad, and Kanaka ‘Ōiwi
An organizing lineage - from my paternal grandmother, the housing organizer, watercolor painter, and wonderfully opinionated grandma
Generosity and resilience - from the young people and families in schools where I was a teacher, in Chicago and Brooklyn,
Community, care, and “let’s just try it” - from queer and trans found family in New York City
Spiritual rootedness - from my mama
Political rigor in practice - from Grace and Jimmy Boggs, Audre Lorde, Mariame Kaba, and many more.
SooJin, 47
How to Radicalize Yourself, or How to Raise Your Political and Social Consciousness
I was literally uprooted from my birth country and family in South Korea. I was a budding five year old in the rich soil of Seoul, replanted in the monocultural soil of whiteness. But instead of flowering in my new adoptive family and community, I withered away in the Midwest soil where racism, sexism, xenophobia, and Christian patriarchy fed and watered me daily.
Forced Transplantation. Dislocation. Otherness. Oppression.
These are common experiences among historically marginalized peoples. But being part of an oppressed class does not automatically radicalize you. Being oppressed doesn’t necessarily lead to the elevation of your political and social consciousness. (Just think about all the white women who voted for Trump or the Black and Brown people who want to be like him.)
I became radicalized in the liberatory classrooms of Howard University. On this hallowed HBCU ground where I voluntarily transplanted myself, I gained the language and framework for identifying and addressing the root causes of inequality, oppression, and unfairness. After all, that’s what it means to be radical: to address the root. We address root causes in order to remedy and optimize change. We address root causes because it is the only way to truly transform.
Sojourner Truth. Ida B. Wells. Harriet Jacobs. Frederick Douglass. WEB Du Bois. James Baldwin. bell hooks. Audre Lorde. Toni Morrison. Frantz Fanon. Aimé Césaire.
From these philosophers, theorists, and writers, I gained the vocabulary and analytical lens through which I could identify, name, and explain the root causes of anti-Blackness, colonialism, and misogynoir. As these seeds of knowledge took root in me, the stranglehold of white supremacy began to lose its grip on my consciousness and catapulted me into decolonizing my mind, body, and soul. And this is how I became radicalized, how I was able to raise my consciousness to see with X-ray eyes the root causes of not only societal inequalities but my own internalized oppression.
As a fertile ground for pollination, Howard also jumpstarted my ability to forge solidarity with people whose lived experiences were different from my own. This, too, was a key ingredient for raising my consciousness. Solidarity work teaches us that radical change – change that begins at the roots, at the foundation level – cannot be achieved without the collective. Radicalism is not a solo endeavor. Nor is it a single-issue project because the roots of oppression and inequality are varied, multiple, deep, and interconnected. So we, too, need to be varied, multiple, and interconnected in order to create the transformative change required to eliminate all forms of oppression.
These were the key ingredients to my radicalization:
Attend to the Root (cause of a problem)
Engage in a Liberatory Education - aka feed your mind with knowledge from Black and Brown radical thinkers
Decolonize your Mind - aka address your own internalized oppression
Forge Solidarity across Difference
I pay homage to all the Black, Brown, and Indigenous ancestors and people who have sowed their consciousness-raising seeds through their writing, art, and activism. Those seeds took root within my mind, body, and soul. And I have been forever transformed because of it.
Thank you. 감사합니다. Philámayayapi. Aṣẹ.
Adria, 30
Stories. I’ve always craved stories – I’m the grandkid who asked for another story, another recounting of someone who passed before I was born. I clamored for my mother to tell me about her childhood, to show family photographs and tell me how it felt to be there. I never chose dare, I always chose truth, I wanted to tell my own stories or listen to others recount their crushes or embarrassments. I’d stay up at sleepovers to tell or listen to the yearning brought on by watching high school romcoms and eating leftover Halloween candy. I turned to books early, especially speculative fiction, fantasy, and romance, to show me worlds I couldn’t quite comprehend yet, but felt were important. I turned to art to see how others could imagine the world so differently than myself. I don’t remember one moment that emboldened me to think outside of the systems I grew up in, or a singular moment I felt a shift, but the stories I learned, listened, read, lived, all feel as if they moved me to change, to think, to build another future than the one I was presented and expected to continue.
Iko’tsimiskimaki, 28
Yusra, 27
six moments that radicalized me then and now:
(1) Praying the Maghrib prayer at the Standing Rock reservation in 2016, having driven from Madison, WI to protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline — and finally understanding, for the very first time, that our prayer (in all its many forms) is, always has been, and always will be a deeply political act
(2) The poem “we lived happily during the war” by Ilya Kaminsky
(3) When I was sexually assaulted at the age of 18, and the detective assigned to my case told me - after meeting with my assailant - that he seemed like a really nice guy, who actually had even been thinking about asking me on a date!
(4) The occupation of the 4th precinct, following the murder of Jamar Clark
(5) Reading these lines, from the acknowledgments in Danez Smith’s book, titled “Homie”:
& how many times have you loved me without my asking? how often have i loved a thing because you loved it? including me
and thinking instantaneously about my best friend Sam, overcome with my own ability to love someone with all of my being - and suddenly becoming so intensely hyper aware of how capitalism steals from us the ability to love each other that fiercely, that openly, that unabashedly, all the time.
(6) The film "Foragers," which showcases the Palestinian practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Occupied Palestine. and everything I have seen, heard or learned about the millions of ways in which Palestinans protect, affirm, and sustain life, in the face of the Zionist entity's attempts to insist upon death
David, 67
When I was a child in the 1960s and a teenager in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, both of my parents worked on civil rights issues, and they often involved us kids in them.
One of the biggest local issues when I was in middle school related to the local housing ordinances, which supported or at least failed to stop the redlining that kept the north portion of Evanston a white enclave. Black and white religious leaders led a movement to change the law.
When I was in 6th grade we participated in marches throughout Evanston to bring attention to the issue. I had an African American friend who was also named Dave. We marched together with a sign we made that said, “Two Dave’s for [Open Housing].” We used the symbol for open housing, which is a house with an equal sign inside it. About fifty years later I learned that we caught the attention of a Chicago Sun Times photographer when I saw a picture of us in a book.
At any rate, I remember going with my father to City Council meetings that were so crowded that most of us had to stand outside on the sidewalk waiting to hear the results of the vote. The measure passed, which felt good, but later when I was in college I did a project with two African American students where we learned that redlining still existed in Evanston a decade after the law was passed.
I spent a lot of time as a young man sitting and visiting with my father. From him I learned about the distinction of what used to be called institutional [i.e. structural] versus individual racism. We talked a lot about inequality, exploring the question of whether you could more effectively make change from within institutions or from the outside. The push needs to come from both places at once. One question that he told me to always keep in mind was whether, later in life, I will look back and say to myself, I should have done thus and such, but I was too scared or it was too easy not to. The other question he told me to think about – at the end of your life, will anyone say – the world is a better place because he was here? I try to think about social justice issues, as they are called nowadays, when I ask those questions.
Note: My father was raised Lutheran before he converted to Unitarianism. I later wondered, after it was too late to ask him, if he was influenced at all by Luke 12:48, which reads in part, “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.”
Anonymous
I grew up with a father who was physically and verbally abusive. I was regularly beaten and told that I meant nothing in this world. I saw my mom, the most amazing person I know and who was a survivor of domestic violence when she was younger, be called a “fat pig” and yelled at relentlessly. In elementary school I had to defend my mom by entering the conversation with a knife to make the abuse stop. When my mom took me to see a therapist to talk about the abuse, the therapist also asked me about being a bi-racial second-generation immigrant and raised Muslim. After the session, the therapist told my mom that she reported the abuse to Child Protective Services, explaining that this meant I could be taken away from my family. The therapist’s adamance made it clear that she saw my father as inherently violent because of his identity as a Muslim man from the Middle East. Instead of supporting me and my family by looking critically at generations of abuse and the structural violence of an unjust u.s. immigration system, she viewed me as falling victim to an ‘abusive Islamic culture.’ My mother was terrified and so was I – I did not want to be taken from her. I knew I needed a safe space to process, and it is never safe to have a mandatory reporting process that is inherently racist and relies on police and separating families. Since then, I have been committed to looking at interpersonal violence through an abolitionist/transformative justice lens that does not rely on policing and prisons. Knowing how it feels to be emotionally abused and treated like I do not matter has made me someone who deeply wants to build people up – to tell people how beautiful, brilliant, and amazing they are and see them grow and thrive. I prioritize my chosen family and friendships that make me feel whole. I am committed to advocacy work that is built on collective liberation and ending prisons/policing.
More radicalizing resources suggested by Anonymous
Good Muslim/Bad Muslim (Poem, Safia El Hillo)
Assata: An Autobiography (Book)
Revolutionary Emergency Partners (REP) (Abolitionist emergency hotline in MN)
Survivor Defense as Abolitionist Praxis, Survived and Punished (Toolkit)
Muslim Abolitionist Futures (Website, Archive)
Octavia’s Brood (Book)
Before the Next Bomb Drops (Poetry Book)
Halal if You Hear Me: The Breakbeat Poets v. 3 (Poetry book)
Rosalyn, 60
At some point most Indigenous people in the United States come to realize that their Indigenous nation, its government and its territory are colonized, that their people have suffered genocide and cultural genocide, that they have been and are being oppressed and that they are being occupied by a foreign power.
The majority of citizens of the United States come from other countries, they can return home to those nations, speak their own languages, and practice their own religions. But Indigenous people are from here. Our place is here, our countries have been colonized and settled by the U.S., our languages, cultures and religions have been suppressed. “Home” is within occupied lands.
Coming to that realization can be mind blowing. And it can serve as a paradigm shift. It is difficult, once this “ah ha” moment occurs, to ever go back.
It is at that point that you say to yourself, “Fuck me.”
“Why am I living under occupation? Why is my country being settled by outsiders? Why are we still being oppressed? Why did this happen to us? To me?”
Indigenous people have no choice but to be political or radical as we push back against U.S. settler-colonialism and occupation. We did not come to America, America came to us. This is our home.
Ronelle, 23
I think a lot of little moments radicalized me, all of which had the theme of realizing me being kind and believing everyone had the best intentions was not enough to solve anyone’s struggles.
But I’ll share a moment that has been seared into my memory. Some time during early high school, I completely lost feeling in one of my legs and had extreme pain in my lower back while trying to roll out of bed. Terrified and gasping in pain, I yelled for my older sister and she said it was serious enough to get mom, which is a big deal in my home. She got my mom, who is a nurse, and as she poked around, my thoughts spiraled to the worst possible outcome. I told her I wanted to go to the hospital. That's when my younger brother came in and whispered into my ear, “Are you positive you need to go to the hospital? It will be expensive, especially an ambulance ride, and if it turns out you’re fine, then you're throwing 1000s of dollars down the drain”. Of course that made me feel awful and I didn’t want to cause any more financial strain to my family than my existence already did. I ended up telling my mom I would wait it out and see if it gets better in the next few hours. Why did my younger brother know this information that seems way to mature for a 12 year old to actively be thinking about? This is the same boy who once told me, “Imagine someone putting a ball in your hands when you are 6 and telling you your entire life’s worth is based on what you can do with this ball”. Anyways, why was health care so expensive? While my mind was on fire from pain, why did I have to make the decision to wait it out? Shortly after that I learned that access to health care is for the most part tied to employment with decent benefits in America. The more questions I asked myself, looked up on google, and asked people who would talk to me about random, deep topics, the more I realized the world was unfair in the worst ways possible. It wouldn’t be until later that I started to learn about strategies.
Michelle, 31
In the 11th grade I took AP US History and AP Language and Composition. I was, as many high schoolers are, drowning in a meritocracy because you believe grades can give you meaning. While we sped through manifest destiny and chattel slavery, and ran past the civil war in history, in AP English we read The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. My eyes opened. Douglass’ book was the first time I read something that challenged the idea of an inherent American goodness and moral superiority — propaganda I readily absorbed as a young immigrant child trying to give meaning to my journey from elsewhere. “Life is better here because this is a better place” is something I told myself often because it made it easier to grieve all I had left behind. I finished reading the book within the week and all my essays for class became about Douglass. I thought about him, about dehumanization, about anti-blackness, about abolition, about history and all the rushed lessons through centuries of horror, I couldn’t stop wondering what else was lies. How can this be “the land of the free”? Although I immigrated here as a young child, I have been incredibly fortunate to live a largely similar life to that of my citizen peers, but around this time, the time when everyone gets their drivers license, I found out that I could not do the same. I felt left out, less than, and trapped. This small freedom, by bureaucratic reason, was not something I could have. At that point, I had lived in the US for just as long as I had lived in my birth country, and yet, it seemed that no matter how hard I tried, how much history I learned, how perfect my English was, how much I excelled in school, or how much I loved America, according to papers and consulates, until I became a citizen, I was inherently different from my peers no matter how much we were the same. The American Dream is a trap that gives your immigrant life of sacrifice meaning. I’m lucky to have had this year of revelations and learning that disappeared it from my psyche so early in life. The house of cards didn’t fall all at once- first the top, then one by one the corners came down: the arbitrary realities of the law, the violence and cruelty, the blatant lies about this place. I began to resent America, and the resentment only builds the more I learn. With this resentment, I can will myself past the illusion of American capitalism, beyond the gospel of upward mobility, see through blatant nationalism and ignore empty platitudes, and from here I can see that a better future is possible.
Abaki, 31
my lineage
When I was in second grade, I stopped saying the pledge of allegiance out loud, instead mouthing the words when we had to say it daily in class. In third grade, I won third place in a local writing contest for my essay “Why racism is dumb.” I wouldn’t have done these things – I wouldn’t have begun to challenge systems of oppression around me at such a young age – without the intentionality of my parents. I learned far more about tribal sovereignty and self determination, the violence of colonialism, and the long history of Native activism in the U.S. from my parents than I ever did in school. To earn my allowance money as a child, in addition to chores around the house, my parents had me read books about tribal history and culture and write reports on a weekly basis. I also grew up hearing stories about organizing and protests they’d participated in – like violent clashes between Native spear fishermen and racist white people in Wisconsin in the 1980s and 90s. Allies, including my parents, would form lines, locking arms, to protect the Native fisherman against racist white people who bore signs that read things like “save a Walleye, spear an Indian.”
learning from women of color
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde
The Uses of Anger by Audre Lorde
Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism edited by Daisy Hernandez and Bushra Rehman
Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis
As We Have Always Done by Leanne Simpson
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Classes with Juliana Hu Pegues
Classes with SooJin Pate
Conversations with my peers in lounges, dorm rooms, coffee shops, and on walks to the river
caring deeply
I worked for a higher education in prison program for two years in my mid-20s. For this job, I’d drive 45 minutes to a men's prison outside of St Louis, Missouri, once a week to help with tutoring and study hall. After my first day at the prison, when I got back to the campus of the “elite” private university where I was a student, I burst into tears. I’d read a lot about prisons before, but visiting a prison regularly, and slowly developing relationships with students, made me angrier than ever before at the system. It felt so massive that anything I did would be insignificant. One day, a particularly cold day, the students weren’t allowed to transfer from their housing units to the study hall room for some security reason. I sat outside for 20 or 30 minutes – there wasn’t a correctional officer to let me into the computer lab building, either – until the students arrived and we could start study hall late. At the time I didn’t think much of it; it was another typical day dealing with a violent and dehumanizing bureaucracy. A few years later, in a going away/thank you card, an alumnus of the program wrote: “I’ll never forget when you sat outside for us.” I wracked my brain for a minute to figure out what he was referencing, until I remembered that day years prior. About a year later, in a letter of recommendation for my PhD program, another alumnus of the program wrote: “If this situation bothered her she never showed it to the student body. Her empathy for our condition trumped her own concern for her feelings or comfort.” People remember when you care about them. And that isn’t insignificant.
being in my body
My weight has fluctuated throughout my adulthood. Right after college, in a deep state of depression, I inadvertently lost 25 pounds in about a year. A nurse congratulated me. I was horrified; I felt unhealthier than I’d ever been before. About three years ago, at an appointment for a prescription to help manage said depression, the doctor shifted the conversation from my mental health to my weight, telling me I should lose 60 pounds. She told me to stop drinking soda (I don’t) and to run a half marathon (I’ve done two). I haven’t been back to the doctor since. The same year, I started listening to a podcast called Maintenance Phase, which has helped me I learn about the bias/junk science behind the BMI, the food pyramid, ‘miracle’ weight loss pills like Ozempic and Fen-Phen, and how each is deeply related to anti-fatness and the assumption that the only important health metric is weight. It’s also helped me disentangle the relationship between my body size and my self worth.
dreaming of many tomorrows
As I’m sitting on a porch, eating good food and laughing with my friends, I realize that this is all I want in life.