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What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there's no one left beside us? This little book felt like a healing balm. I hope so very much that others will listen to Brown, even if they don't necessarily agree with her beliefs on everything.What I like most about Adrienne Maree Brown is her love and empathy for other humans, and it comes across in everything she writes and does. Here, she asks us to question what
I appreciate the author's stated intention to work through and reflect on criticisms from survivors of abuse that came in response to the essay as it was initially posted in July; I won't rehash those criticisms here. However, the rush to publish without taking time to deeply consider and incorporate those criticisms made this book unhelpful at best and actively harmful at worst. Including lines like "I am not speaking of survivors naming their abusers" isn't the same as integrating our experien...
I decided to read this book finally so I could really see if my thoughts aligned with AMB. I feel conflicted because I do think we are experiencing a crisis on the left with how we handle conflict. I don’t see callouts as inherently bad or good, I see them as a strategy that organizers and oppressed people use to get them closer to their goals. But I also can’t lie and say when I see a callout my first worry is, will I be next? I think that has to deal with being part of a harassment campaign th...
“If I can see the ways I am perpetuating systemic oppressions, if I can see where I learned the behavior and how hard it is to unlearn it, I start to have more humility as I see the messiness of the communities I am part of, the world I live in.”We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative JusticeI did not realize how short this was w hen I went to read it.This book was a Christmas present. I had been wanting to read it. As you may have guessed, it is about today's "cancel culture"....
This was a great, quick and informative read! By no means comprehensive nor claiming to be, but great musings on accountability and abolition. I really appreciated the distinctions made between abuse, harm, conflict, misunderstandings, mistakes, differences, and contradictions - super helpful for conceptualizing a variety of difficult situations that sometimes get collapsed. Also appreciate the description of when call-outs can be effective, as well as explaining when, why, and how they can be h...
WE WILL NOT CANCEL US is a small booklet borne out of adrienne maree brown's essay over the summer grappling with cancel culture and abolition dreams. I love seeing how thinkers think, learning their process, their missteps and edits, and so I appreciated the way she tackled this book as her thoughts and language surrounding cancel culture are emergent. I'll say firstly, I don't believe cancel culture actually exists in the way that the right talks about it, but I have seen internet and intraper...
“We hurt people.Of course we did, we are human.We were traumatized/socialized away from interdependence. We learned to hide everything real, everything messy, weak, complex. We learned that fake shit hurts, but it’s acceptable (...) We disappointed each other, at the level of race, gender, species…in a vast way we longed for more from us. But we will not cancel us (...)We will not cancel us. But we must earn our place on this earth.”A powerful book which acknowledges the flaws and ongoing proble...
Absolutely transformational. This summer I had several experiences that convinced me that cancel culture is not the way to go when airing grievances. I have been following the writing that has started to spring up, from Kai Cheng Thom, Tada Hozemi, and Clementine Morrigan about how we can be more effective and simply more human in our conflicts with each other. This booklet by adrienne maree brown is vital to those efforts. She creates a lot of definitions, which is very helpful in a world where...
There are some very welcome framings of transformation in this text, and the intentions at the beginning of the work were beautiful and helpful. A lot of this writing felt more like it was for adrienne than for the public, and there was too much explaining motivations for the piece, definitely in an effort to be accountable. I’m grateful for adrienne’s work as a mediator and author, but I was hoping for less generalizations about transformation work + the left, and more specifics about the mecha...
Summary: A plea to those within the modern abolitionist movement to not use “cancelling” or “call outs” against one another.I picked up this book online, intrigued by the title. On reading the book, I discovered that I was overhearing a conversation among an “us” of which I am not a part. I say this at the outset to explain my approach in this review. It is simply to listen and, hopefully, learn, and reflect in my description of this book an accurate rendering of its message. adrienne maree brow...
«This is not a case against call outs. There is absolutely a need for certain call outs – when power is greatly imbalanced and efforts have been made to stop ongoing harm, when someone accused of harm won’t participate in community accountability processes or honor requested boundaries, the call out is a way of pulling an emergency brake. But call outs need to be used specifically for harm and abuse, and within movement spaces they should be deployed as a last option.» «It doesn’t make sense to
"We Will Not Cancel Us" is an argument for trying other things before we call one another out about our missteps, especially publicly. The theme of this book is extremely welcome in this cultural moment, for obvious reasons I won't even bother itemizing.The author is a conflict mediator who works within social movements to help people get through interpersonal problems among peers. Though she doesn't list the exact movements in which she works, she makes it clear that we are talking about left-w...
This book could heal our communities and the left and bring us together to fight for collective liberation! I couldn't recommend it more!
I really enjoyed this book. It gave me lots to think about. I need to discuss with a person and work through the ideas. Really good though slightly self conscious.
Really suffers from a lack of examples. We're told call out culture and cancel culture is reasonable sometimes but not others and the confines are terribly unclear as to which is which. A single example of this happening and what should have happened instead would have elucidated the argument a lot but instead it was so general as to not make a big impact on me.
What started off as thumbing through the pages ended up with me spending the whole morning reading this book. She spoke with such clarity and thoughtfulness that I couldn't put it down. In fact I will read it again, and again, reminding myself of the call she put forth. I worry about call out culture. I am often disappointed with how it materializes both in myself and in others. So, reading this books is a breath of fresh air.
There are some for whom a book like this will feel like a hug. My sense is there are certainly a lot more conversations on this topic along these lines than were happening five years ago, but I'm sure there are people out there who have not yet come across them. The basic premise of the book, which I align with, and might provide that hug, is that if we are interested in building a better world we have to be better with each other. We have to understand that the world we want to change is a worl...
I got a ride from adrienne maree brown (name drop!) back in 2008. Although I don't remember much of our conversation from the two and a half hour drive, I do remember how comfortable I felt around them and how easy it was to have a conversation. It's twelve years later and I've read every book she's published; like our conversation, I appreciate the way she tackles tough topics using language that just about anyone can understand. Many other folks have spent hundreds of pages trying to get acros...
a lovely lovely book. i think one of the things that was new to me in this book was the idea of hopelessness being something that the oppressor wants. like it’s very intuitive but i has never thought about it. our despair and our nihilism about our oppression is something the oppressor wants. they don’t want us to challenge these systems they want us to give up. i am so happy that transformative justice entered my life when it did. brown talked specifically about emergent strategy and how we sho...
Reading this was a sigh of relief. It clearly analyses many of the things I've seen happening in the past and not fully understood, it also points to a way forward. An important read (especially for marginalised people) that I can't recommended enough.