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Buy The Intercessor<\/em> paperback or ebook from Amazon<\/a>, Barnes & Noble<\/a>, Bookshop.org<\/a>, or Ingram<\/a>! <\/strong> <\/p>\n I simply don\u2019t believe that we can stop the devastation wrought by white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy\u2014and its global manifestation as imperialism\u2014without powerful social movements, and I simply don\u2019t believe we will be able to build the kind of movements capable of that without overcoming the politics of powerlessness, without facing our ambivalence around rank, our conflict avoidance, our orthodoxies about identity, our clinging to shallow belonging, our descent into despair, and yes, our failure to harness love as the weapon that it is.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This long sentence near the end of Yotam Marom\u2019s new book encapsulates the whole chapter-by-chapter sequence of issues that make up this extremely interesting and readable book<\/strong>. The author\u2019s website describes him this way: \u201cYotam Marom is an organizer, facilitator, and writer based in Brooklyn, New York with over twenty years of participation in movements and experience in facilitation, strategic planning, group dynamics, and conflict work.\u201d I wear a few extra hats (visual artist, for example), but substitute 50 years for 20, it it pretty much describes my own long march through the political and cultural left, which is one reason why I was eager to read For Louder Days and am now eager to recommend it. <\/p>\n Yotam was one of the lead organizers for Occupy Wall Street 15 years ago (though being called a leader would have triggered that movement\u2019s massive allergy to power), and has worked with many of the best organizations dedicated to human rights and justice. I like the way he offers frank discussions of his experiences and what he learned from them. The book is not abstract, thank goodness. <\/p>\n The issues he explores\u2014grouped under the rubric \u201cthe politics of powerlessness\u201d\u2014have been burning a hole in my brain<\/strong>, as they are the things that hold these movements back, limiting their scope and impact, turning them inward or against each other, weakening their influence. There is a great deal to be learned from his descriptions of how these challenges manifest on the level of the organization or movement, and how acknowledging and facing them can have transformative ripple effects. <\/p>\n I can\u2019t exactly pick a favorite chapter. I\u2019ve always been gobsmacked at the pervasive aversion to power and the seeming lack of awareness that those who scorn power will never have any. That connects so neatly to the idea of leaderlessness, because when people assert that we have no leaders here\u2014or more commonly, that we are all leaders\u2014you can bet the farm that someone will smilingly declare allegiance to that ideology, then gather as much power as possible, more often using it for a kind of personal aggrandizement rather than common good. <\/p>\n But I\u2019m just as struck by widely held ideas of identity that sort people into simple categories (such as the big five racial categories), then establish a hierarchy of belonging and virtue on that basis. I can\u2019t quite grasp how anyone sees powerful, inclusive movements being built without partnerships based in true and equitable belonging for all, but sadly, too often, more attention goes to winning ideological arguments and performative contests than to defeating the forces of exploitation and destruction. One of Yotam\u2019s strongest arguments, illustrated with experiences of conflict avoidance that will be painfully resonant to people like me, is that facing into conflicts internal to organizations, movements, and other relationships is the only way to understand and navigate them, to have a realistic hope of resolving them through deep listening, truth-telling, compassion, and respectful negotiation. <\/p>\n Love cuts a path through the book<\/strong>. Yotam describes a life held by a huge extended family of fellow activists and seekers, by networks of blood and belief. He bravely speaks the language of love even when it is denounced as sentimental; and tries to find the pathways it offers even when beloveds have profound disagreements, such as encounters in the aftermath of October 7 that made him wonder if he belonged in a movement that denied his right to mourn the deaths of friends in Israel. Reading his take on love reminded me of a time twenty years ago when a group of us researched and wrote about the practice of community cultural development\u2014community-based arts work\u2014in higher education. We used as our watchword Reverend James Lawson\u2019s founding statement of principles for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the sixties. What SNCC was seeking, Lawson wrote, was \u201ca social order of justice permeated by love.\u201d We sent the draft of our publication to the academics who\u2019d participated. Out of the entire document, that quotation was the only sentence that drew criticism. The word \u201clove,\u201d some educators pointed out, didn\u2019t belong in something scholarly or critical or meant to be taken seriously. We kept it in, and I like Yotam\u2019s argument in its favor. <\/p>\n I recently had a chance to engage with Yotam on a Zoom with kindred spirits<\/strong>. I asked him a hard question: \u201cSo many of the questions you engage, such as the fallacy of leaderlessness, ambivalence about power, limiting ideas of identity, are the same ones I worked with decades ago, and honestly, I don\u2019t think I got much traction, as here they all are again. What can make them stick?\u201d I called him \u201cwise one\u201d and he responded \u201cyou\u2019re the wise old lady, tell me,\u201d so it obviously wasn\u2019t a fair question. But one good answer would be more people reading and taking seriously the advice this book offers. <\/p>\n The late, great James Booker: \u201cPlease Send me Someone to Love<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n