Dream On

I appreciate Professor Johnson’s time and effort in writing this review, but I didn’t really recognize my argument.  I don’t dismiss organizing; on the contrary, I argue that participation in social movements change people, alter the way they see the world and provide some sense of what is possible.  It is not about “dreaming” as if new visions just spring out of one’s imagination in isolation from social struggle. 

I make it clear that this book isn’t supposed to be a handbook for making revolution, but rather a history of what particular radical movements hoped to accomplish if they won.  How is this “sidestepping” the question of organizing?  There are many people who have written on contemporary organizing strategy, my sister Makani Themba-Nixon being one; Eric Mann, another, and there are many others.  This is not what I wrote about.  I sense that I’m being accused of not writing the book Professor Johnson wants me to write.  Moreover, much of the critique is not at all addressed to Freedom Dreams but to Race Rebels, a book I published nine years ago.

Professor Johnson missed the whole point about the imagination, which is unfortunate because unless organizers find some time to talk about what kind of future they are working for, left politics will be reduced to putting out fires and reacting.  Its important to recognize that the basic premise of the book is that the catalyst for political engagement has never been misery, poverty, and oppression but hope; the promise of constructing a new world radically different from the one they

Posted by Robin D. G. Kelley on Mar 12, 2003 at 6:45 PM

I was pleased to read Kelley

Posted by Cedric Johnson on Mar 22, 2003 at 4:55 PM