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Podcast

Read this When Things Fall Apart

Join Kelly Hayes in conversation with Shane Burley, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Atena O. Danner as they discuss the launch of Read this When Things Fall Apart, bundle of letters to activists and organizers on the frontlines in catastrophic times.

In social movements, some heartbreaks are all but inevitable. Campaigns will be lost. Mental health crises will occur. Social ills, like gender-based violence, will manifest themselves in movement spaces. People will experience profound personal losses. Grief, alienation, and despair can grind us under. Sometimes, we need accompaniment. Sometimes, we need to be met where we’re at by a caring voice of experience. Read This When Things Fall Apart is a care package for activists and organizers building power under fascistic, demoralizing conditions. It’s an outstretched hand, offering history lessons, personal anecdotes, and practical advice about how to navigate the woes of justice work. A survival guide for the heart, this is a book for activists to keep close, and to share with co-strugglers in need.

Personal, reflective, and hopeful, Read This When Things Fall Apart harnesses the writers' individual moments of despair into living, breathing wisdom that chips away at the supposed inevitability of fascist life. Restorative like a letter from a trusted friend and invigorating like a story from a mentor, the book is an indispensable companion for all of us navigating challenging times. Featuring letters from Mariame Kaba, Ashon Crawley, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Eman Abdelhadi, Brian Merchant, and more.

Get the book: https://www.pilsencommunitybooks.com/item/vCQt68DQBH3U0CUUWZyWRw

Speakers:

Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, organizer, movement educator and photographer. They host Truthout’s podcast Movement Memos and are co-author of the book Let This Radicalize You, with Mariame Kaba. Hayes is also the creator of Organizing My Thoughts, a weekly newsletter about politics and justice work.

Shane Burley is a journalist and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author and editor of four books, including ¡No Pasaran!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis (AK Press and the Institute for Anarchist Studies, 2022) and Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism (coauthored with Ben Lorber; Melville House, 2024). His work has been featured in places like NBC News, The Daily Beast, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, Truthout, In These Times, Jewish Currents, The Baffler, Yes! Magazine, and Oregon Humanities.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (they/she) is an older cousin, regular person, memory worker, disability and transformative justice uncle bytch, and the author or coeditor of ten books including The Future Is Disabled (coedited with Ejeris Dixon; Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022), Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement (AK Press, 2020), Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018), Tonguebreaker (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019), and Dirty River (Arsenal, 2016). A 2020–2021 Disability Futures Fellow, Lambda and Jeanne Córdova Award winner, five-time Publishing Triangle short-lister, and longtime disabled QTBIPOC space maker, they are currently building Living Altars, a cultural space by and for disabled QTBIPOC writers.

Atena O. Danner is a cultural worker who imagines Black liberation, engaged in boundless curiosity. As a poet, singer, and visual artist, Atena creates work that encompasses kitchen-table specificity and folk story relatability, covering topics including neurodiversity, human connection, and collective liberation. As an organizer and activist, she has worked to incorporate struggles for justice into her life as a caregiver in a family of complex needs while also writing and publishing in journals, antholo- gies, and her own book of poetry, Incantations for Rest: Poems, Meditations & Other Magic (Skinner House, 2022), which was awarded a Nautilus Silver Award for poetry in 2023.

Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/qrpIX72ivqs

Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org

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