Freedom is a Constant Struggle

Summary, part 1

Organizing 101

Laying the groundwork for sustained movements.

Davis provides many lessons and commentary on justice-focused progressive organizing throughout the book. One message she stresses consistently is the need to lay the groundwork and do it well.

Organizing is not only about mobilization efforts like protests or rallies, but also day-to-day meetings, strategizing, and solidarity-building.

She believes that the Occupy movement of 2011, which did transform our ability to talk about capitalism so openly, could have had an even larger and more sustained impact had organization occurred beforehand.

Although Occupy was a spontaneous reaction to the 2008 recession and income inequality in the United States, Davis points out that we cannot romanticize spontaneity and leaderless movements (more on leaders later).

She also notes that when organizing does happen, the people you fight for must always be part of the conversation. In abolition work, for example, you must make sure prisoners are involved in meetings and planning, which can be done by setting up teleconferencing and having inmates phone in. 

Additionally, she notes that the electoral arena is a field for organizing, but cannot and should not be the primary focus of progressive organizers. After all, reform-which is what comes from electoralism-is not enough. For the abolition movement, reform has only ever brought better prisons. For progressive movements like abolition, ideological change is necessary.

Political discourse

Davis is also concerned that current political discourse has become flat, meaning that we are unable to conceptualize the working class, let alone poor people. (It is implied she refers to the Marxist’s understanding of the working class and class consciousness.) We also do not talk about globalization when we talk about immigration. Issues should not be either-or.

We should advocate for LGBT+ rights in the military while also working to dismantle the Pentagon. The implication of flat political discourse is organizing efforts that do not recognize the larger structures at play that create injustice.

Idolizing leaders and remembering Black history.

Davis strongly discourages the idolizing of movement leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela. This is not because their work was not important, but rather because progressive organizers need ethics free of selfishness and individualism. Neither King nor Mandela, she argues, would want the collective efforts behind the movement to be forgotten or overshadowed by their personalities when reflecting on history.

She also points out that the ideas these figures shepherded do not belong exclusively to them; they belong to the movement.  Additionally, she notes that movements are most powerful when those not directly associated with the issue at hand associate with the movement (e.g., men supporting feminism).

The idolization of figures like King and Mandela is dangerous because it deflects our attention from persisting social problems. For example, over 900 streets named after King, but over 2.5 million (mostly Black people) are incarcerated and die at the hands of police.

The focus on these figures also prevents us from recognizing the collective subject of history produced by radical organizing. Many thinkers and activists contributed to the advances of the Black liberation movement that have gone underrecognized, such as the many Black women who spearheaded the Montgomery Bus Boycott. While the boycott was a success, the Black women behind it are often overlooked.

Another figure she spends time talking about is President Barack Obama. Many were under the impression that because a Black man became President of the United States, the last barrier of racism had fallen. Davis points out that this way of thinking about racism is wrong and highlights a failure to conceptualize the legacy of racism.

Racism did not end when slavery ended. Racism did not end when segregation ended. Racism did not end when Barack Obama became president.

Davis also spends time unpacking how we have incorrectly or incompletely remembered the Black liberation movement’s history because of idolizing President Abraham Lincoln.

President Lincoln, for example, did not free the slaves of his own volition. Black slaves chose to fight in the Civil War and forced Lincoln to pass the Emancipation Proclamation. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all slaves-750,000 slaves who lived in border states not participating in the war, and some Union-occupied areas in the Confederacy were not freed.

Another example is how we often overlook and underestimate the impact of the period of Radical Reconstruction. This period saw many Black officials get elected, public education fought for by former slaves (which also expanded public education to poor white people), and the creation of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. To alleviate this, we need to relearn how to talk about race and racism.