Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities

(Paperback)

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There are few books on being a good community member and ally to parents, caregivers and children. Any group of parents will know how hard their struggles can be, but no book focuses on how childless allies can address issues of caretakers' and children's oppression in the community. Many well-intentioned activists do not interact with young people on a regular basis and do not know how, so Don't Leave Your Friends Behind provides a collection of concrete tips, suggestions and narratives to guide supporters in their work in the community.

Reviews

"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

"Don't 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 we're supposed to be."
--Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, co-editor, The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities

"Activist mothers Law and Martens propose that radical movements interested in winning must welcome parents and their children--the youngest rabble rousers. They have created a practical guide for us all to do just that, but with zero guilt trips and moralizing. Don't 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, co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times

"A powerful mixture of self-help and literature, putting 'family values' in a new light and on the agenda of social justice movements. And it's 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, teacher, author of Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years: 1960-1975

Author Bio

Victoria Law is a writer, photographer, and prisoner rights supporter. She helped initiate NYC Books Through Bars, a group that sends free books to prisoners nationwide, and she writes articles and gives public presentations about the needs of women in prison. She is the editor of Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison and the author of Resistance Behind Bars. She lives in New York City. China Martens is a writer whose zine, the longest-running parenting zine in the U.S., has been anthologized in her book The Future Generation. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.