Praise for Dont Leave Your Friends Behind:
These self-identified radical mothers have produced a powerful mixture of self-help and literature, putting family values in a new light and on the agenda of social justice movements. And its not just self-help for radicals who are parents but food for everyone who seeks to become their better, more compassionate selves.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, activist, author, teacher
This book is mind-blowing, brilliant, and urgently needed! It is full of useful models and strategies for creating resistance that breaks down barriers to participation for children and people caring for children, and integrates deeply transformative commitments to building radically different activist culture and practice. This is a must-read for anyone trying to build projects based in collective action.
Dean Spade, author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law
Here is required reading of the utmost importance: essays that will help us all to get it right. Because what we want is for our children, when asked where did the movement, the occupation, the resistance, the revolution go, to answer, after looking around them at the world we have so thoughtfully created, that it is right here, in places like this.
Katherine Arnoldi, author of The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom
Activist mothers Law and Martens propose that radical movements interested in winning must welcome parents and their childrenthe youngest rabble-rousers. They have created a practical guide for us all to do just that, but with zero guilt trips and moralizing. Dont Leave Your Friends Behind puts teeth into the slogan Another World Is Possible by showing us what a healthy left might look like.
James Tracy coauthor of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times
Dont Leave Your Friends Behind is an essential resource for the interdependence revolution in progress. As a queer, chronically ill woman of color who loves and needs the parents and kids in my communities, I am hungry for these on-the-ground stories of how parents, allies, comrades, fam and friends are rewriting the world by refusing to hold mamas, papis, and kids anywhere but at the center of our movements and communities, where were supposed to be.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, coeditor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities
Finally! Dont Leave Your Friends Behind is a resource we have long since needed to make the world we deserve which is full with love, and parents and kids and time and space and intentionally taking care of each other. Get ready for a cooler, more accessible, more possible and purposeful intergenerational movement. Get ready to win!
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Broken Beautiful Press, Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, and Queer Black Mobile Home Coming Project.
Activists talk about creating a better world for future generations yet often neglect the needs of children and parents in their midst. Dont Leave Your Friends Behind is a poignant, powerful, and much-needed reminder of how movements can raise their own awarenessand that crucial next generation of activists as well.
Randall Amster, author of Anarchism Today and executive director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association
Dont Leave Your Friends Behind is an inspiring call to action for social justice communities globally. It is shows us not only why but how we should not merely tolerate children and parents in our activist communities, it shows, through honest and illuminating stories, that centering them in our communities and movements strengthens our work and our analysis. I cannot wait to be able to hand a copy of this book to many nonparent activist friends and say, See, this is a vision of the future that is too beautiful not to struggle for.
Maia Williams, editor of Outlaw Midwives zine
Dont Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities 2012 by Victoria Law, China Martens, and the individual contributors
This edition 2012 by PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-396-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012945336
Interior design by Antumbra Design/Antumbradesign.org
Cover design by Josh MacPhee
Cover illustration by Melanie Cervantes
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA on recycled paper, by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com
An earlier version of Audacious Enough Mama was originally published on the blog Fabulosa Mujer. Fathering the World first appeared in Rad Dad issue #2. The Red Crayon originally appeared in HipMama magazine #40. How to Build Community That Involves Single Parents was originally published on the blog Hermana Resist. Mami vs. Mommy, Mamihood vs. Motherhood: What Do Mami Movements Need? was originally published on the blog Mamita Mala: One Bad Mami http://www.lamamitamala.com/blog/?p=401. A Message from Mamas of Color Rising originally appeared on the Mamas of Color Rising blog: http://mamasofcolorrising.wordpress.com/2010/06/. An earlier version of Experiencing Critical Resistance 10 (CR10) Through the Childrens Program originally appeared on the SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW website: http://www.sparkrj.org/. Whose City? KIDZ CITY! originally appeared in the Indypendent Reader #12 (spring/summer 2009). An Open Letter to Movement Men was originally published on the website for the Bay Area Childcare collective. Men Running Childcare originally appeared on the London Pro-Feminist Mens Group blog: http://londonprofeministmensgroup.blogspot.com/2009/04/men-running-childcare.html. This Poem Is in Honor of Mothers, Homefulness and Un Corazon separado por una frontera originally appeared in Poor Magazine. Accessibility was first published in Cripchicks Blog: http://blog.cripchick.com/archives/2910.
Preface
Dont Leave Your Friends Behind is a compilation of essays, narratives, and concrete suggestions on ways that social justice communities and movements can support the parents, children, and caregivers in their midst. It is a book for everyone, particularly activists and organizers without children of their own, who would like to become better allies to the parents and children in their communities.
This book is the culmination of a seven-year collaboration between two radical mothers, Vikki Law and China Martens. The origins of Dont Leave Your Friends Behind go back to 2003 when we first met and co-facilitated a workshop (for parents) on creating a radical parents support network at Baltimores Anarchist Bookfair. At first, we attempted to hold our workshop inside the building where the bookfair took place. When we realized that parents were having problems keeping their small children occupied, we moved the workshop onto the grass outside so that the children could play. One mother volunteered to do childcare, so that the other parents could talk and listen without missing the discussion to chase their children. However, this meant she missed the workshop entirely. The parents who attended all stated that they had very little support from their radical communities; they often felt forced to rely on mainstream resources that were neither meeting all of their needs nor reflecting their values. Our conversation with disheartened, burnt-out, and tired parents was a stark contrast with the carefree-looking faces of attendees without children who were joyfully walking by, sometimes smiling at the children as they passed. They had the energy we needed! The radical parents needed the support of the predominantly childless crowd who were coming and going all around us.
