You can listen and download a 57-minute sample of the audiobook here!
Upcoming Speaking Events Calendar and Access Info—Wear a Mask!
SCROLL DOWN FOR DATES AND ACCESS INFO
My new book is coming out and I am doing a bunch of conversations about it. I will keep updating this list as they get confirmed, but for now, mark your calendar, and use the links below to get tickets when relevant (I’ll update the links with specific event links as my hosts make them ready).
I’m asking that everyone wear KN95 or N95 masks to in-person events and please test before you come, in hopes of making these events more accessible to more people. Masks will be provided at events, and people will be asked to wear them unless an access need prevents it. If you have other access questions or requests about these events, please contact the people hosting the events, since they know more about their venues than I do.
May 21, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR in conversation with Garrett Felber about his book A Continuous Struggle
May 22, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR
May 23, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
May 23, Heart Of The Valley Anti-Capitalist Bookfair @ The Book Bin, Corvallis, OR
ACCESS INFO
Most of the events above are spaces I cannot visit beforehand and have never been to, so I’m trying to think about how to maximize transparency about access, and also support COVID safety to the best of my ability. There is no doubt that these events will be imperfectly accessible, and I am making efforts to increase access where I can. I am grateful to friends at various Mask Blocs and Clean Air Clubs, especially Mask Bloc Seattle and Seattle Clean Air Collecitve, as well as to Emi at Long COVID Justice, for advice in developing this approach.
I hope my approach will build awareness around COVID safety and other access needs, and provide transparency for people considering attending about what to expect. Here’s what I’m doing:
- I am telling people to mask at my events even if the venue does not require masks, and I will ensure masks are provided. If you want help get masks and clean air devices to the space, please contact the venues! That’s a huge help.
- I am telling people to test before coming.
- I am asking all venues that will be hosting me to fill out a survey, the results of which you can view HERE to see more detailed access information about the venue and event and how to contact the venue with access questions.
- I do not have capacity to make all these events high-quality hybrid events, so instead I am planning several high-quality online events, which can be found in the list above.
- I’m working to connect venues with Clean Air Clubs so that they can get UV devices and air filters in the space.
- I have purchased a UVPro device from Bioabundances which I intend to bring to events to help clean the air. Many thanks to Bioabundance for collaborating with Clean Air Clubs and for giving me a discount on this device to support this book tour.
Please contact the venues for follow up questions–they know more than me about what is possible in their space. I hope these efforts increase the chance of people connecting to these events, and I look forward to being with you all online or in person!
P. S. I sent the access survey form to the venues on Jan 10, it may take some of them a little time to fill it out. Many are volunteer-run spaces.
Recent Past Events
January 17, Elliott Bay Books, Seattle, in conversation with Angela Garbes
January 19, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR, with Demian DinéYazhi
January 24, Creating Change Conference, Las Vegas, NV, in conversation with Jaime Grant
January 29, Possible Futures Bookstore, New Haven, CT, with Luciana McClure-Lewis
January 30, Yale Law School, New Haven, CT
January 31, Making Worlds Bookstore, Philadelphia, PA
February 2, Word Is Change Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY, with Morgan Bassichis
February 3, Bluestockings Bookstore, NY, in conversation with Mariame Kaba
February 4, Brooklyn Heights Branch, Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY, with J. Wortham
February 12, Online, hosted by Seattle University School of Law
February 14, Fireweed Collective, Online
February 26, Online, Barnard Center for Research on Women
February 28, California Institute for Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA
March 2, In person at Restore Oakland, or register here if you want to attend online, organized by Ella Baker Center
March 2, Hosted by Queer Crescent at Merritt House, Oakland
March 3, University of California, Berkeley (this event is both in-person and online)
March 5, Brooklyn Rail, Online
March 7, Stories Books & Cafe, Los Angeles
March 12, Online, hosted by University of Maine
March 15, Community Book Center, New Orleans
March 16, John Thompson Legacy Center, New Orleans
March 30, Hosted by Simon Fraser University and UBC, Vancouver, B.C.
March 31, Online, hosted by Firestorm Books, in conversation with Kai Cheng Thom
April 3, Downtown Public Library, hosted by A Room of One’s Own Bookstore, Madison
April 4, University of Wisconsin, Madison
April 5, Cactus Club, Milwaukee (this event will also be livestreamed)
May 1, Cleveland Park Library, hosted by Loyalty Books, Washington, D.C., with Jaime Grant, author of Polyamory for Dummies
May 3, Red Emmas, Baltimore, MD
May 7, Chicago, IL, co-sponsored by Haymarket Books, Pilsen Community Books, and In These Times.
New Book! Out January, Pre-Order Now
My new book will be out January 14, 2025!
Around the globe, people are faced with spiraling crises, from the pandemic and climate change-induced disasters to the ongoing horrors of mass incarceration, genocide, racist policing, endemic gender violence, and severe wealth inequality. More and more of us feel mobilized to fight back, often dedicating our lives to collective liberation. But even those of us who long for change seem to have trouble when it comes to interpersonal relationships. Too often we think of our political values as outward-facing positions again dominant systems of power. Many projects and resistance groups fall apart because people treat each other poorly, trying desperately to live out the cultural myths about dating and relationships that we are fed from an early age. How do we divest from cultural programming that gives us harmful expectations about sex, dating, romance and friendship? How do we recover from the messed up dynamics we were trained in by childhood caregivers? How do we bring our best thinking about freedom into step with our desires for healing and connection? Love in a F*cked-Up World is a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, so we can stick together while we work for survival and liberation. Pre-order through Bluestockings and get 15% off with the code F*CKED<3.
Click here to watch the webinars I did with Fireweed Collective over the last four Valentine’s Days about dismantling the romance myth, which capture some of the themes of the book.
New Tool: Cultivating Solidarity in Times of Escalating Repression
I’ve been working on this new tool about how to respond to escalating repression without falling into classic anti-solidarity traps with Community Justice Exchange, Jocelyn Simonson, PIlar Weiss, Atara Rich-Shea and Zohra Ahmed since last year, and we’re excited to share it! You can find the entire tool at bit.ly/cultivatesolidarity. Check out the video from our launch event below.
Video: Defending mutual aid
Don’t miss this recent webinar, packed full of info about the current ways that mutual aid work is being criminalized and attacked, and how organizers can keep doing our work even as pressures build.
New Interview with Sad Francisco Podcast
It was delightful, as always, to talk with Toshio Meronek about nonprofitization, queer resistance, gentrification, cops and more. Check it out.
Videos: Romance Myth Webinar Series Updated with 2024 Video
I had the pleasure of collaborating with Fireweed Collective again to put on a fourth installment of my Dismantling the Romance Myth webinar series. The fourth webinar focuses on how we get caught in fears of abandonment and engulfment and what we can do to act in alignment with our values when those fears show up. Below you’ll also find the prior years’ videos and links to the slide decks from each year’s webinar.
Fourth Webinar with ASL:
Fourth Webinar with Spanish Interpretation:
2023 Webinar:
2022 Webinar:
2021 Webinar:
Old anti-marriage animated video
Something I made a long time ago, when it was fun to make animated characters say your propaganda for the first time. Content warning: dry humping.
EVENT: Should Social Movement Work Be Paid? January 5, 2023
Should Social Movement Work be Paid?
Thursday, January 5, 2023
7PM EST/ 4PM PST
Sponsored by the Patricia Wismer Professorship in Gender and Diversity at Seattle University, and BCRW
REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dean-spade-should-social-movement-work-be-paid-tickets-483783729157
The COVID pandemic and George Floyd/Brionna Taylor rebellion of 2020 brought new attention to the role of mutual aid work in surviving crises and organizing resistance. People started thousands of projects giving out food, rent money, and bail money, doing errands for each other, providing childcare, emotional support, transportation, and other essentials. Many people learned more about the histories of mutual aid in social movements as vectors of survival and mobilization. The long-time critique of non-profitization of social movements reached newly politicized people as debates surfaced about whether to register mutual aid projects as non-profits.
In this talk, Dean Spade will explore a vexing question being discussed in many movement groups: should people be paid to do this work? Should groups should seek funding to create staff positions or stipends for people participating in the work? Is it a matter of racial, economic, gender and disability justice to pay people to be part of movement groups? Does the process of raising money tie groups too closely to philanthropists or governments? Does paying participants limit the potential growth of movements? Is payment the best way to recognize labor in groups? Is paying people a good way to reduce barriers to participation? How does paying people impact the culture of social movement work? Does it institutionalize the work? These questions have immediate practical significance, and also unearth larger themes about what it means to do resistance organizing within capitalism where people are demobilized, isolated, and struggling to meet basic needs.
This event is a continuation of the Building Capacity for Mutual Aid Groups workshop series, which started as a series of four online workshops led by Dean Spade:
Workshop 1 – No Masters, No Flakes! (October 28, 2021)
Workshop 2 – Decision-Making (November 11, 2021)
Workshop 3 – Skills for Abolitionist Practice (December 9, 2021)
Workshop 4 – Bringing New People into the Work (January 20, 2022)
ACCESSIBILITY
ASL and live transcription will be provided. This event is made possible by the Patricia Wismer Professorship in Gender and Diversity at Seattle University.
Podcast Interview about Jealousy, Relationship Anarchy and the Romance Myth
