‘We need everyone to smell the smoke’: 5 key insights from an afternoon with Ruha Benjamin

I adore Pete’s food, but not quite as much as I adore a lemon mazagran or vegan cheese fries from Red Emma’s. Whether I’m having cheese fries or herbal tea made by Malik, Emma’s’ worker-owner since 2020, or I’m set to speak with author and Princeton University professor Ruha Benjamin it’s always a warm experience at the worker cooperative bookstore. The latter conversation actually took place at the invitation of worker-owner Kate Khatib during the Waverly Book Festival on that aforementioned rainy Sunday afternoon.

Benjamin now lives in New Jersey — much further than a stone’s throw away from the “White House” she grew up in, a two-story Craftsman her grandparents bought just off Los Angeles’ Crenshaw Boulevard in the 50s. She chronicled having grown up in and around this White House in an introduction to her definition of “virality” or “viral” as it pertains to her latest book, “Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want,” which reviews on her website describe as part-memoir and part-manifesto for anybody looking to transform society through everyday choices.

Benjamin told me that because her first book is titled “Race After Technology,” a lot of folks think her latest book is also about tech, and that the title of her latest doesn’t quite help that case. She was eloquent and patient in her ability to take in both me and the audience members packed into industrial-modern Emma’s. We both laughed about becoming mothers in our 20s and nodded in agreement when discussing how the arts and humanities could continue to be a catalyst for change in the world we imagine for ourselves.

I wanted to share some of what we discussed and how Benjamin spoke about her concept of viral justice, which involves focusing on smaller-scale actions and amplifying them to effect change. She cited an example in Los Angeles, where residents successfully protected their apartments from sale to developers. She also highlighted the significance of imagination and plotting, encouraging questioning of existing scripts and working toward a more just world. Highlights from this short lecture and conversation have been transcribed and edited for clarity.

Three quotes about ‘Viral Justice’

“What I am calling ‘viral justice’ orients us differently towards small-scale, often localized actions. It invites us to witness how an idea or action that sprouts in one place may be adopted, adapted or diffused elsewhere. But it also counters the assumption that scaling up should always be the goal.”

“As a world-building rubric, viral justice is forward-looking and inventive, asking ‘what if’ while stubbornly invested in the here and now, demanding, ‘Why wait? What if we can architect a radically different existence?’”

‘The lens of viral justice encourages us to amplify, like a microscope, seemingly small actions and entices us to spread them. In the midst of multiple ongoing calamities, this work of crafting or caring for social relations isn’t charity work, like work to be done on behalf of others falling from a burning building. I might hit the ground first, but you [any person willing] won’t be far behind. My well-being is intimately bound up with yours. So we don’t need allies. We need everyone to smell the smoke.”

Viral justice in action

“This one takes us back to the city of angelic troublemakers, where we find residents planting protest signs instead of vegetables, uprooting and seeding, plotting and tilling a world where people can remain rooted in the neighborhoods where they’ve lived for decades rather than be displaced by developers and universities — which Baltimore knows something about.

“There is no magic bullet. Instead, there are thousands of answers, at least. You can be one of them if you choose.”Ruha Benjamin

“During a recent visit to Los Angeles, I saw an Instagram post about helping tenants own their apartment units. After clicking a few links, I discovered that the apartments were located just minutes from where I was staying and were in danger of being sold to developers by Boston University, my former employer. I reached out to the Corbett Tenants’ Instagram account and learned more about the situation from the lead organizer, Jose Lopez. The tenants were working to buy the property from BU through a community land trust, but the university had not responded. To raise awareness, the tenants organized a press conference and encouraged supporters to write to officials and administrators.

“Over a week, 800 letters poured in, and the tenants kept up the pressure through social media and grassroots organizing. The hard work paid off, as on January 10th, 2023, the residents of the Corbett Street Apartments announced that the entire complex would remain under tenant control. This victory is a crucial step toward justice and sets an inspiring precedent for our city and country. This is vital to justice, and we hope that this victory sets a precedent for our city and our country, so that every person has a stable, livable, affordable home. This is the world we want.”

Getting into a good plot

“I’m a student of the late-period Octavia E. Butler, writer and builder of speculative worlds. To the question, ‘What is there to do?’ she would want to respond that there is no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There is no magic bullet. Instead, there are thousands of answers, at least. You can be one of them if you choose. We can be one of them if we choose to be.”

“Plotting is about questioning the scripts we’ve been handed and scheming with others, plotting to write new poetics of living that is sustaining, nourishing and creative. To riff off of Butler one last time, it may be the end of the world, but there are other worlds.”

Editor’s note: Stay tuned for a follow-up with excerpts from Alanah’s conversation with Ruha Benjamin.