written by Victor Beausoleil and Danya Pastuszek
So many of us are living in what feels like the fog of war and the fog of information, in one crisis after the next, and in polarization, uncertainty, and grief. In these tumultuous times, we have been reflecting on the necessity of radical and revolutionary love.
This is not love as comfort or agreement, but love as a courageous political and moral practice. It is the decision to refuse dehumanization even when it is rewarded, to insist that every person’s dignity is bound up with our own, and to keep choosing relationships over despair. Revolutionary love asks us to build communities that can withstand fear, tell the truth without abandoning compassion, and imagine futures where liberation is shared rather than hoarded. Perhaps this is what movements ultimately cultivate: not only resistance to injustice, but the capacity to love one another fiercely enough to create a world that does not yet exist.
After listening to Krista Tippett’s conversation with Michelle Alexander and Lucas Johnson (May 2026, On Being), reflecting on the enduring legacy of Vincent Harding, we found ourselves returning to this idea again and again. The discussion explores Harding’s role in the civil rights movement - or as he often preferred to call it, the Black freedom struggle, the Southern freedom movement, or the movement to expand American democracy. a.
Several lessons resonate from this meditation on love as the foundation of movement building.
Movements begin with transformed people. Before strategy comes self-awareness. Michelle Alexander recalls Vincent Harding asking not about campaign plans or tactics, but whether she had cultivated quiet, stillness, moral clarity, and courage. His questions remind us that sustainable change begins with the inner work of becoming the kind of people capable of carrying it. As Alexander describes, awakening is about recognizing “who we are, that we belong to each other, to the oneness of all.” Self-care and collective care are not luxuries. They are movement infrastructure.
Movements require us to hold paradoxes. Lucas Johnson reflects that brutal events can exist alongside beautiful moments. Hope and heartbreak coexist. Despair and possibility share the same space. The work is not to deny suffering but to refuse to let suffering eclipse our capacity to imagine and create something better.
Movements cultivate belonging before they cultivate scale. Johnson shares that Vincent Harding saw him “in ways that I didn’t know I needed to be seen.” When individuals feel heard, valued, and essential, they are more likely to invest themselves in building new possibilities. Belonging is not an outcome of movements. It is one of their primary organizing strategies.
Movements centre those most impacted. Success is not measured only by growth or visibility but by whether those who bear the greatest burdens are placed at the centre of decision making and care. It echoes the enduring ethical imperative of “doing unto the least of these.”
Movements protect the people doing the work. One of the most striking reflections came from the reminder that “when you love the people you’re organizing, you don’t want to see them harmed.” Too often, activism romanticizes sacrifice while neglecting sustainability. Love ensuring that those doing change work are not consumed by the very struggles they seek to transform.
Movements teach us that our futures are intertwined. The love Vincent Harding embodied demanded responsibility. It called for people to understand that another person’s fate is inseparable from their own, even when they disagree, come from different experiences, or when understanding feels difficult. In an era marked by division, this may be among the most radical acts imaginable.
Movements inspire through imagination. They choose language, stories, symbols, and goals that invite people into larger visions of themselves and their communities. They encourage us to think beyond incremental improvement toward transformational possibility, reaching beneath symptoms to address the deepest roots of injustice.
Movements make courage contagious. Michelle Alexander describes the fear people experienced boarding buses to march in Selma while reminding us that every act of courage becomes permission for someone else to act. We rarely know who is watching us or whose resolve is strengthened because they witnessed someone take the next step into uncertainty.
Movements direct our attention wisely. Perhaps one of the most practical lessons is the discipline of refusing to be consumed by distant fear. In a world designed to keep us transfixed by headlines and trending content that speaks of crisis, we are invited instead to notice the healing within reach: the neighbours we can serve, the beauty we can protect, the communities we can strengthen, and the relationships we can deepen. The world we can see and touch is often where transformation begins.
Conversations like this remind us that movements are ultimately built on more than strategy, institutions, or policy. They are fueled by disciplined hope, guided by moral imagination, and rooted in radical and revolutionary love. When people commit to one another's humanity and to a shared vision of justice, they create the conditions for transformation that can endure across generations.
Perhaps a critical question is not simply how we resist injustice, but how we cultivate traditions of love, liberation, rebellion, and resistance that make justice sustainable.
What lessons have shaped your understanding of movement building? What have traditions of love and liberation taught you about creating lasting change?
We would love to continue the conversation.
