The Pandemicene Podcast aims to produce knowledge that can help all of us – scholars and scientists, students and activists – imagine and enact just futures both in our home state of California and in our communities worldwide.
Welcome to the Pandemicene Podcast. In today’s episode, Isa Ansari and Dennis Browe interview activist-scholar Dean Spade about his work and his new book on mutual aid. The conversation ranges across topics such as what mutual aid is and is not, interpersonal dynamics and the need for self-reflection during collaboration, and mutual aid as world-building. This conversation was recorded in January, 2021.
Interviewer Bios:
Isa Ansari is a recent graduate from the Department of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. She was born and raised in the East Bay, where she currently lives and organizes. Isa loves skateboarding, reading, and writing poems.
Dennis Browe is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. Dennis’ work lies at the intersections of medical sociology, science & technology studies (STS), public health, sexuality and gender studies, and feminist theory. He loves reading fiction late at night and biking during the day.
Guest Bio:
Dean Spade has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He works as an Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law. Dean’s book, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law was published by South End Press in 2011, with a second edition published in 2015 by Duke University Press. Bella Terra Press published a Spanish edition in 2016. In 2015, Dean released a one-hour video documentary, Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!, which can be watched free online with English captions or subtitles in several languages.
Dean’s new book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next), was published by Verso Press in October, 2020.