New Book! Out January, Pre-Order Now

Cover image of Love in a F*cked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together

My new book will be out January 14, 2025!

Around the globe, people are faced with spiraling crises, from the pandemic and climate change-induced disasters to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, genocide, racist policing, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. More and more of us feel mobilized to fight back, often dedicating our lives to  collective liberation. But even those of us who long for change seem to have trouble when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Too often we think of our political values as outward-facing positions again dominant systems of power.  Many projects and resistance groups fall apart because people treat each other poorly, trying desperately to live out the cultural myths about dating and relationships that we are fed from an early age. How do we divest from cultural programming that gives us harmful expectations about sex, dating, romance and friendship? How do we recover from the messed up dynamics we were trained in by childhood caregivers? How do we bring our best thinking about freedom into step with our desires for healing and connection? Love in a F*cked-Up World is a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, so we can stick together while we work for survival and liberation. Pre-order through Bluestockings and get 15% off with the code F*CKED<3.

Click here to watch the webinars I did with Fireweed Collective over the last four Valentine’s Days about dismantling the romance myth, which capture some of the themes of the book.

EVENT: Should Social Movement Work Be Paid? January 5, 2023

Should Social Movement Work be Paid?

Thursday, January 5, 2023

7PM EST/ 4PM PST

Sponsored by the Patricia Wismer Professorship in Gender and Diversity at Seattle University, and BCRW

REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dean-spade-should-social-movement-work-be-paid-tickets-483783729157

Picture of a button on a shirt that reads “I was gonna fight for liberation but we didn’t get the grant :(“

The COVID pandemic and George Floyd/Brionna Taylor rebellion of 2020 brought new attention to the role of mutual aid work in surviving crises and organizing resistance. People started thousands of projects giving out food, rent money, and bail money, doing errands for each other, providing childcare, emotional support, transportation, and other essentials. Many people learned more about the histories of mutual aid in social movements as vectors of survival and mobilization. The long-time critique of non-profitization of social movements reached newly politicized people as debates surfaced about whether to register mutual aid projects as non-profits. 

In this talk, Dean Spade will explore a vexing question being discussed in many movement groups: should people be paid to do this work? Should groups should seek funding to create staff positions or stipends for people participating in the work? Is it a matter of racial, economic, gender and disability justice to pay people to be part of movement groups? Does the process of raising money tie groups too closely to philanthropists or governments? Does paying participants limit the potential growth of movements? Is payment the best way to recognize labor in groups? Is paying people a good way to reduce barriers to participation? How does paying people impact the culture of social movement work? Does it institutionalize the work? These questions have immediate practical significance, and also unearth larger themes about what it means to do resistance organizing within capitalism where people are demobilized, isolated, and struggling to meet basic needs. 

This event is a continuation of the Building Capacity for Mutual Aid Groups workshop series, which started as a series of four online workshops led by Dean Spade:

Workshop 1 – No Masters, No Flakes! (October 28, 2021)

Workshop 2 – Decision-Making (November 11, 2021)

Workshop 3 – Skills for Abolitionist Practice (December 9, 2021)

Workshop 4 – Bringing New People into the Work (January 20, 2022)

ACCESSIBILITY

ASL and live transcription will be provided. This event is made possible by the Patricia Wismer Professorship in Gender and Diversity at Seattle University.

May-June 2022, Events in Europe

I’m so grateful that Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis and the Next has been recently published in  ItalianCatalan, and Czech and is forthcoming from various publishers in Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, German, Korean.

I’m doing some events this May and June in Europe related to these versions being published. Here’s the current information on events, some still being finalized.

May 28, 18:00, Prague Anarchist Book Fai

Cover of Czech edition of Mutual Aid

June 2, Desgraca, Lisbon

June 8 Barcelona

June 10 Ateneo La Maliciosa, Madrid

June 15   Milan – Circolo Anarchico Ponte della Ghisolfa

June 16 Florence – Comitato di vicinato di San Casciano (Firenze)

June 17 Bologna – Vag 61 Social Center

June 19 Rome – Forte Prenestino Social Center

Last week in June, details still TBD, Berlin. Book forthcoming from _worten&meer_.