#RadicalReadz: SEE NO STRANGER
“If we take a linear view of history, then we are sliding backward. But if we see the story of America as one long labor, then we have a different view,” Valarie Kaur says in her new book, SEE NO STRANGER: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. “Progress during birthing labor is cyclical, not linear. It is a series of expansions and contractions, and each turn through the cycle brings us closer to what is being born. I see this pattern through U.S. history. The labor is ongoing, the injustice relentless. But each time people organize, each turn through the cycle opens a little more space for equality and justice.”
SEE NO STRANGER: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love is a practical guide to changing the world, a synthesis of wisdom, a chronicle of personal and communal history — all joined together by a story of awakening.
As a nation, we are experiencing our own awakening right now. We are in the midst of an uprising for Black lives the world has never seen. Millions of us are flooding the streets, risking our lives, to call for justice since George Floyd’s public lynching. Millions more are rising up in solidarity. Revolutionary love is when you are brave enough to see no stranger. That means George Floyd and Tony McDade are our brothers, Breonna Taylor is our sister — and every black person who is suffering, sick, poor, or dying in America is part of our own family. When people who have no obvious reason to love each other come together to grieve, they can give birth to new relationships, even revolutions. It is time to reimagine the institutions that order the world.
This uprising is possible because of movement leaders who have been in the labor for decades — now joined by newly inaugurated activists — and the many generations of freedom fighters, of ancestors that came before us. Whether you are new to the work of social change, or you have been in the fire for decades, See No Stranger offers stories and tools to anchor your efforts and fortify you to last in the labor of birthing a nation that has yet to be born.
