Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care

by Kelly Hayes

“The war that matters is the war against the imagination / all other wars are subsumed in it.”3

Transformative change happens when we are willing to build the things that we know must exist.

It can be easy to deem people who reject crucial facts as “bad people.” Some may, indeed, be doing terrible things. But many are just laboring through life, making sense of it as best they can. We have to strive to receive people on these terms.

If spitting horrifying facts at people changed minds and built movements, we would have overthrown the capitalist system long ago, because the facts have always been on our side.

Effective organizing, therefore, does not begin with having the most compelling argument or the most dazzling direct action, but with developing the capacity to bring people into relationship with one another, such that they might begin to overcome alienation and fear.