Charlene A. Carruthers: Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements

Excerpt

In a dynamic assessment of our current political movement, the former director of Black Youth Project 100, Charlene A. Carruthers, lays out a manual for activists and organizers to follow in her debut book entitled, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Leading upfront with a Black queer feminist lens, Carruthers disavows singular narratives of past grassroots organizing including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, offering a more complete truth of the Black radical tradition. Framing the challenge that organizers are faced with today, Carruthers re-examines the widely cited partial quote from Frederick Douglas, “power concedes nothing without a demand.” Instead, she purports that it is organized power that concedes nothing without a demand. Using what she calls “The Chicago Model,” a legacy of creative strategy and coalition building across multiple groups, as a framework, Carruthers offers tools for organized strategy and principled struggle in each crevice of the book, which is what makes this text uniquely accessible and compelling, departing from past organizing manuals on the subject. …