Dean Spade's Audiobook Picks

The Dispossessed

S.F. MASTERWORKS: Book #71

By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrated by: Roddy Doyle & Tim Treloar
Length: 12 hours 27 minutes

“When I say this novel radicalized me, I really do mean that, in a fashion. It is the most insightful piece of social philosophy I've ever read, and it challenges ever idealistic hope I have ever had while presenting new hopes, subsequently dashing them, and showing the reader what can be made of their ashes. There is no succinct way to describe... Read more

In Defense of Looting

A Riotous History of Uncivil Action

By: Vicky Osterweil
Narrated by: Caroline Hewitt
Length: 9 hours 52 minutes

A fresh argument for rioting and looting as our most powerful tools for dismantling white supremacy.

Looting -- a crowd of people publicly, openly, and directly seizing goods -- is one of the more extreme actions that can take place in the midst of social unrest. Even self-identified radicals distance themselves from looters, fearing that violent... Read more

Torn Apart

How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World

By: Dorothy Roberts
Narrated by: Dorothy Roberts & Janina Edwards
Length: 11 hours 49 minutes

An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change 
 
Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts reveals... Read more

Border and Rule

Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism

By: Harsha Walia
Narrated by: Cindy Kay
Length: 10 hours 19 minutes

Harsha Walia disrupts easy explanations for the migrant and refugee crises, instead showing them to be the inevitable outcomes of the conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change that are generating mass dispossession worldwide. Border and Rule explores a number of seemingly disparate global geographies with shared logics of border... Read more

We Do This ‘Til We Free Us

Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

By: Mariame Kaba
Narrated by: Diana Blue
Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

"Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you're going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you... Read more

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded

Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

By: INCITE! Women Of Color Against Violence
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 13 hours 7 minutes

A trillion-dollar industry, the US non-profit sector is one of the world's largest economies. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world,... Read more

The Young Lords

A Radical History

By: Johanna Fernández
Narrated by: Joana Garcia
Length: 23 hours 46 minutes

Against the backdrop of America's escalating urban rebellions in the 1960s, an unexpected cohort of New York radicals unleashed a series of urban guerrilla actions against the city's racist policies and contempt for the poor. Their dramatic flair, uncompromising vision, and skillful ability to link local problems to international crises riveted... Read more

Prison by Any Other Name

The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

By: Maya Schenwar & Victoria Law
Narrated by: Emily Durante
Length: 9 hours 19 minutes

Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data-driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost-effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But many of these so-called reforms actually widen the net, weaving in new strands of punishment... Read more

Let This Radicalize You

Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care

By: Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba
Narrated by: Diana Blue
Length: 10 hours 41 minutes

What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.



Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the... Read more

No More Police

A Case for Abolition

By: Mariame Kaba & Andrea J. Ritchie
Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
Length: 15 hours 22 minutes

A persuasive primer on police abolition from two veteran organizers



In this powerful call to action, New York Times bestselling author Mariame Kaba and attorney and organizer Andrea J. Ritchie detail why policing doesn't stop violence, instead perpetuating widespread harm; outline the many failures of contemporary police reforms; and explore... Read more