Ruha Benjamin's idea of "viral justice" encourages you to create "small places to breathe...and grow the world you want"

From Princeton Press

Part of the ambition of The Alternative Global from the beginning has been to widen what is considered “political”, from the tiny percentages of those who join parties, unions or other activist groups in civil society.

So we’re really intrigued to find out about the forthcoming book (October 2022) from American technology and race scholar Ruha Benjamin, titled Viral Justice: How We Grow The World We Want. Here’s the blurb below:

An inspiring vision of how we can build a more just world—one small change at a time.

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.

We’ve been trying to glean what the theory of “viral justice” might mean, from Benjamin’s public statements on the concept over the last few years. According to her publishers Princeton University Press, the book is “weaves together historical context, social science research, and personal narrative to set forward a micro theory of change… pushing readers to confront how we individually participate in unjust systems, even when ‘in theory’ we stand for justice.”

This video from July 2021 is a comprehensive statement:

Some notes from this we’ve taken, below:

We must beware of a “freedom” not to care, to be free from mutual obligation - it breaks society, erodes mutuality, eats away at collective good

Between George Floyd/BLM and Covid we are in a convergence of pandemics

We need to recoup the potential for virality and harness it for more progressive ends. But to do this, we must discern between one kind of viral and another. Is it a bug or a meme? Substantive or superficial? What are durable changes, as opposed to performative gestures?

The hashtag show how all these small things can accumulate to create an oppressive atmosphere. But viral justice means that for every way we experience being harmed, dismissed, undermined - each is an opportunity to demand and do better

Don’t let big gestures take all our energy - change lies in the nitty-gritty.

Symbolic change can become a place holder for substantive change - who benefits in that? It can be a veneer that hides business as usual

The biological reality of the planet shows how interdependent we are at the level of our bodies. How linked we are, if we can kill each other by breathing?

Pay attention to the kinds of solidarities and interdependencies all around you - plugging into your niche, locale - forge connections if they don’t exist

Break out of the paradigm of mimimising viral things, small things, that we could grow and extend to others

A review of this lecture concludes:

Benjamin ended her talk by proposing what she called “viral justice, a micro theory of change,” centered on an awareness that seemingly minor actions and decisions could have exponentially larger effects.

While she urged the audience to understand that small gestures are crucial to maintaining the momentum of racial advocacy, she encouraged durable changes to the way we speak about, perceive and advocate for racial justice, cautioning against “performative activism.” 

“If inequality is woven into the very fabric of society,” she said, “then each twist, coil, and code is a chance for us to weave new patterns, practices, politics. We must accept that we are the pattern makers.”

Or as Benjamin elaborated in another 2020 lecture

Benjamin stated that viral justice is a new theory that can transform the current racial climate into a just system, which requires discerning between performative justice and durable change. 

“We all have the ability to seed new partners of thinking interpersonally, institutionally and internally. We need the loud and voracious world builders as much as the quiet and studious ones. The last thing we need is for everyone to do or be the same thing,” she said. 

And as this blog elaborates:

We might view racism itself as a virus – as a contagion that is sometimes invisible, but can kill. Turning this insight on its head, Ruha Benjamin calls for “viral justice.” Rather than viewing acts of racism as isolated incidents (or the acts of “a few bad apples”) Benjamin squarely confronts how:

[Racism] is systemic, connected, constructed, productive. We say racism is socially constructed, but we fail to state the corollary: racism constructs. It’s viral. If we were truly in this together, we would not be in this forever. [Racism] is not inevitable – it’s a series of choices. (emphasis in original)

To combat the virus of racism, Benjamin argues we must “recoup virality.” But more than a fleeting meme that goes viral, the virality of #BlackLivesMatter (or #MeToo and other social justice movements that go global) has moved beyond the performative to more meaningful calls for transformative change in our approach to public safety at all levels.

Small, individual acts of using a hashtag need not be superficial virtue signaling, othering, or reliant on celebrity popularism (as Kamari Clarke cautions in the context of the hashtag activism of the #BringBackOurGirls transnational campaign on behalf of the Nigerian Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram militants).

As Benjamin points out, “Small is not superficial. Creating spaces to breath is not superficial. The hashtag is a perfect example of the accumulation of many, connected individual acts. For us to each do better and demand better.” 

“Creative spaces to breath” is very much one of our definitions for a Community Agency Network/Citizens Action Network (or CAN) - see this page.