Author’s Note
Preface
CHAPTER 1
All of Us or None of Us
CHAPTER 2
Reviving the Black Radical Imagination
CHAPTER 3
The Case for Reimagining the Black Radical Tradition
CHAPTER 4
Three Commitments
CHAPTER 5
Five Questions
CHAPTER 6
The Chicago Model
CONCLUSION
The Mandate
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
One of America's most influential activists, Charlene A. Carruthers has spent over a decade developing leaders as an effective strategist, community organizer, and educator. She is a Black lesbian feminist and founding national director of the BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), a leading organization of young activists in the movement for Black liberation. Her work has been featured in outlets including the Nation, NBC News, BBC News, Huffington Post, the New Yorker, Al Jazeera, Ebony, USA Today, and the Washington Post. Carruthers was born, raised, and still resides on the South Side of Chicago.
“This handbook for the revolution is a rousing call for collective
liberation.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Timely and important, Carruthers’ book is a strong testament to
the resilience of the radical black liberation movement as well as
an impassioned appeal to continue the fight for social justice in a
political environment characterized by increasing hostility to
equality and difference. Powerful, potent reading.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A powerful handbook to the contemporary black liberation movement
. . . A bracing and provocative report from the front line.”
—Booklist
“The slim, passionate volume chronicles Carruthers’ political
evolution and features important lessons learned through an
education in Saul Alinsky-informed community organizing, providing
concrete tools for a new generation.”
—In These Times
“[Unapologetic] does not waver in its commitment to telling hard
truths or demanding justice.”
—Women’s Review of Books
“Charlene Carruthers carries the burden, the beauty, the wisdom of
four hundred years of Black struggle. But she also brings a
critical perspective and a creative vision, rooted in her extensive
experience as an organizer and organic intellectual and in her
fierce and fearless commitment to truth. This is an inspiring,
powerful, but difficult book, because she confronts our movements,
our people, our closeted silences, toxic masculinity, patriarchal
violence, romantic and selective historical memory, and our future
head-on, through a radical Black queer feminist lens. Welcome to
the Black radical tradition.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical
Imagination
“This brilliant and powerful book is a clarion call to keep alive
the Black radical tradition in these reactionary times. Charlene A.
Carruthers is an exemplary organic intellectual rooted in the
struggles of black poor and working people, especially LGBTQ youth,
with a subtle analysis and an international vision for freedom. She
stands in the great lineage of Harriet Tubman, Ida B.
Wells-Barnett, and Marsha P. Johnson—grand fighters and great
lovers of everyday black people and oppressed folk everywhere!”
—Dr. Cornel West
“Charlene Carruthers is a powerful organizer, radical thinker,
paradigm-shifter, and one of the most influential political voices
of her generation. Anyone seriously interested in the struggle for
Black liberation in this country needs to listen carefully to what
she has to say.”
—Barbara Ransby, author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom
Movement and Making All Black Lives Matter
“Leadership is the ability to not only make your own way but to
return to give others a roadmap that they, too, can follow. This is
what Charlene Carruthers does with Unapologetic. She offers us a
guide to getting free with incisive prose, years of grassroots
organizing experience, and a deeply intersectional lens. She
doesn’t forget any of us, and reminds us that bringing all of
ourselves and our people with us is the only way any of us will get
free.”
—Janet Mock, author of Redefining Realness and Surpassing
Certainty
“Unapologetic serves as our marching orders. Charlene gives us not
just a manual but a prayer, an intention, a critical path forward,
and a deep analysis on where we’ve been. She educates us about
community violence and state violence, and provides the clarity to
show why Black liberation is crucial for us all.”
—Patrisse Khan Cullors, coauthor of When They Call You a Terrorist:
A Black Lives Matter Memoir
“Unapologetic is a beautiful, insightful, and powerful analysis of
this moment, Black movements, and Black radical futures. Both
Charlene Carruthers’s work as an organizer and organic intellectual
and her writing in Unapologetic embody the Black radical tradition
and the best of Black feminism today. Carruthers confronts the
difficulties of organizing in this era, while also detailing the
possibilities of collective struggle. She helps us understand the
contours of a Black queer feminist future and what we all must do
to get there. This is a must-read for anyone committed to freedom
and liberation.”
—Cathy J. Cohen, Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of
American Politics
“With this clear call to action, Charlene Carruthers’s Unapologetic
is a desperately needed analysis of the past, the present, and
where we must head into the future. It’s a must-read for everyone
who wants deeper, honest insight into the struggles happening in
our country right now, clarifying why stopping anti-Black racism,
homophobia, and sexism and building transformative power
intersectionally are urgent necessities for our families,
communities, and the nation.”
—Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, author, executive director and cofounder
of MomsRising.org
“Unapologetic is as much a narrative about collective youth-driven
organizing by those affiliated with the current Movement for Black
Lives as it is a story about how one young Black woman from the
South Side of Chicago found herself leading one of the most
consequential formations of the past decade. The book offers
practical tips for organizers along with a critical analysis of the
promise and pitfalls of this current iteration of the Black radical
tradition. As an organizer, I found myself nodding along as I read
this terrific book while taking notes to improve my own
practice.”
—Mariame Kaba, founder of Project NIA and cofounder of Survived &
Punished
“Charlene Carruthers speaks with the authenticity and authority of
an organizer from the front lines of struggle. Cut from the cloth
of the South Side of Chicago, Carruthers offers a critical
perspective into the experience of organizing and building a
movement from the inside. As an organizer, Charlene provides rare
insight into the strategies, tactics, and raging debates that
animate the phenomenon of Black Lives Matter. If you want to
understand this movement and the people whose hands are dirty from
working with the grassroots, then you need this book.”
—Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author of From #BlackLivesMatter to Black
Liberation
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