Powerful social movements are made of relationships between people. They are made up of collaborative projects of all kinds-art, protests, mutual aid, direct action, and more-and most of us struggle when we work together. We get bossy and flaky, we gossip, we want others to dislike people we have felt slighted by, we get perfectionistic, we procrastinate, we hold grudges, and we ghost. We’ve got a lot to learn about how to show up in the work with rigor and love, especially in this moment, when we need each other so badly. In this talk, Dean Spade will share from his latest book, Love in a F*cked Up World, and his broader work about building skills for having each other’s backs while doing hard work in harrowing times.
Dean Spade has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He is a professor at the Seattle University School of Law. He is the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law. In 2015, Dean released a one-hour video documentary, Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!, which can be watched free online with English captions or subtitles in several languages. Dean’s book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next) was published by Verso Press in October 2020. Dean’s new book is Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together.
Free and open to the public
Event sponsored by the Center for Research on Gender and Women and Department of Geography. Funding also provided by the Hilldale Lecture Fund. Co-sponsors include: English Department, Havens-Wright Center, Human Rights Program, Center for Humanities, IRIS-NRC, and the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center.
