Even if we don’t get to see it, we’re gonna die trying: Radical organizers dreaming of liberation within a late stage nightmare

Abstract

Drawing from oral histories with radical community organizers, in this piece I curate a collage of excerpts discussing wildest liberation dreams, respond in poetry and prose, and offer prompts to scaffold liberation envisioning. This is a slice of a larger, praxis-oriented oral history, archival, and auto ethnographic research project, in which I amplify approaches to political organizing that aim beyond inclusion toward transformation, and intentionally build connections across fronts of struggle. The 10 New York City-based organizers and oral history narrators steeped in this work are largely queer and either first- and second-generation, Black, Xicana/Mexican, Asian, White Dominican, and Indigenous migrants, or are (non-immigrant) Indigenous to lands occupied by the US. I play with form to attend to the emotional and analytic dynamic of the conversations, the powerful feelings narrators’ responses elicited in me, and the shifting meaning of the ‘I don’t knows’ that peppered discussions of liberation dreams. It is my hope that this curation of responses and shimmers of hope continue awakening feelings and inspiring collective expansion of the ever-emerging horizon of liberation/liberatory strivings.