Viral Justice - How we Grow the World we Want
Book launch with Dr. Ruha Benjamin & Prof Victoria Collis-Buthelezi
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Join us at women-led community space Toasted for the South African book launch of Viral Justice - How we grow the world we want, with scholar, storyteller and social justice advocate Dr. Ruha Benjamin. In dialogue with RGC Director Prof Victoria Collis-Buthelezi, Dr. Benjamin will reflect on the book, its transnational resonances, and the transformative possibilities of ‘small changes’.
10 Nov 2022, 18:00, at Toasted, 138 Jan Smuts Ave, Rosebank - RSVP here / This Joburg gathering is presented in collaboration with Atlantic Fellows for Racial Equity (AFRE).
About the book:
“A book as urgent as the moment that produced it” - Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism School
Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.
Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father’s premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother’s experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well.
Born of a stubborn hopefulness, Viral Justice offers a passionate, inspiring, and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.
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Dr. Ruha Benjamin / An enthralling storyteller, brilliant scholar, and fierce advocate for all things just, Dr. Ruha Benjamin is a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University where she studies the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and inequity, knowledge and power, race and citizenship, and health and justice. Read her full bio here