What do you think?
Rate this book
On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting: Oral Histories, Strategies, and Conflicts
224 pages, Paperback
Published March 25, 2025
5 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Heim Shepard
10 books2 followersBenjamin Shepard, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Human Service at New York School of Technology/City University of New York. He received his Masters at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, PhD at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and training in psychoanalysis from the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in their Intensive Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Program. As a social worker he worked in AIDS housing settings from San Francisco to Chicago to New York, where he directed the start ups for two congregate housing programs for people with HIV/AIDS, as well as served as Deputy Director at CitiWide Harm Reduction.
He has done organizing work with the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), SexPanic!, Reclaim the Streets New York, Times UP, the Clandestine Rebel Clown Army, the Absurd Response Team, CitiWide Harm Reduction, Housing Works, the More Gardens Coalition, and the Times UP Bike Lane Liberation Front and Garden Working Groups. Combing ethnography with social change activism, his work considers the interplay between theory and practice.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Read
January 10, 2026i adored the source material of the often invisible social binds and conflict that constitute movement work. a heartfelt reminder to get your heart broken, fail, and keep organizing anyway. sometimes the mode of storytelling through oral history was rich (isn’t that always how we get the best gossip?). sometimes it defamiliarized the authors voice and made the insertions of his own opinions and arguments awkward.
August 2, 2025
Book Review: On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting: Oral Histories, Strategies, and Conflicts by Benjamin Heim Shepard
Rating: 4.7/5
Benjamin Heim Shepard’s On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting is a revelatory exploration of the emotional scaffolding that sustains social movements. Drawing from oral histories with over thirty organizers across AIDS, queer rights, Occupy, and labor movements, Shepard—a veteran activist and social worker—interrogates how friendships fuel resistance and how conflicts can either fracture or fortify collective action. This is not a dry theoretical treatise but a living archive of movement wisdom, pulsating with laughter, grief, and hard-won insights.
Strengths and Emotional Resonance
As someone with an interest in grassroots organizing, I was struck by Shepard’s nuanced portrayal of activist friendships as both lifelines and lightning rods. The chapter “Queering Friendship: Activism and Comradeship” resonated deeply, particularly its discussion of how queer spaces transform strangers into chosen family through shared struggle. Shepard’s background in social work shines in his analysis of safer spaces, where he balances idealism with pragmatic advice, such as navigating interpersonal tensions without derailing political goals.
The oral histories themselves are the book’s heartbeat. One interviewee’s reflection on ACT UP’s “joyful militancy” brought tears to my eyes, reminding me that movements thrive not just on anger but on the radical act of caring for one another. Shepard’s inclusion of his clashes with comrades (e.g., debates over protest tactics during Occupy) adds raw authenticity, modeling how vulnerability can be a political tool.
Constructive Criticism
While the book excels in capturing emotional dynamics, it occasionally skims the surface of structural analysis. A deeper engagement with how race and class intersect with activist friendships—beyond the chapter on “Safer Spaces”—would have strengthened its framework. The interlude “Anarchy Is for Lovers”, though poetic, feels tangential; its themes could have been woven more tightly into the preceding chapters.
Summary Takeaways:
- A masterclass in movement-building—where friendship is the glue and conflict the whetstone.
- Shepard proves that the most radical act might be learning to fight with each other, not just for each other.
- For anyone who’s ever loved, lost, or locked arms in protest—this is the book we’ve needed.
Final Thoughts
On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting is essential reading for organizers, scholars of social movements, and anyone curious about the human infrastructure behind headlines. Shepard’s blend of oral history and reflexive analysis offers a blueprint for sustaining activism in an era of burnout and polarization.
Thank you to the publisher, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, and Edelweiss for the free review copy. This book earns a 4.7/5—a point deducted only for its occasional theoretical gaps, but otherwise a luminous contribution to movement literature.
Key Takeaways for Academic Readers:
-Oral History as Praxis: Demonstrates how personal narratives can document movement strategies often excluded from formal histories.
-Conflict as Pedagogy: Challenges romanticized notions of unity, framing disagreements as generative forces.
-Teachability: Ideal for courses on social work, community organizing, and queer studies, with case studies on harm reduction and labor solidarity.
For classroom use: Pair with Sheila Rowbotham’s Dreamers of a New Day to compare historical and contemporary models of activist kinship.
Rating: 4.7/5
Benjamin Heim Shepard’s On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting is a revelatory exploration of the emotional scaffolding that sustains social movements. Drawing from oral histories with over thirty organizers across AIDS, queer rights, Occupy, and labor movements, Shepard—a veteran activist and social worker—interrogates how friendships fuel resistance and how conflicts can either fracture or fortify collective action. This is not a dry theoretical treatise but a living archive of movement wisdom, pulsating with laughter, grief, and hard-won insights.
Strengths and Emotional Resonance
As someone with an interest in grassroots organizing, I was struck by Shepard’s nuanced portrayal of activist friendships as both lifelines and lightning rods. The chapter “Queering Friendship: Activism and Comradeship” resonated deeply, particularly its discussion of how queer spaces transform strangers into chosen family through shared struggle. Shepard’s background in social work shines in his analysis of safer spaces, where he balances idealism with pragmatic advice, such as navigating interpersonal tensions without derailing political goals.
The oral histories themselves are the book’s heartbeat. One interviewee’s reflection on ACT UP’s “joyful militancy” brought tears to my eyes, reminding me that movements thrive not just on anger but on the radical act of caring for one another. Shepard’s inclusion of his clashes with comrades (e.g., debates over protest tactics during Occupy) adds raw authenticity, modeling how vulnerability can be a political tool.
Constructive Criticism
While the book excels in capturing emotional dynamics, it occasionally skims the surface of structural analysis. A deeper engagement with how race and class intersect with activist friendships—beyond the chapter on “Safer Spaces”—would have strengthened its framework. The interlude “Anarchy Is for Lovers”, though poetic, feels tangential; its themes could have been woven more tightly into the preceding chapters.
Summary Takeaways:
- A masterclass in movement-building—where friendship is the glue and conflict the whetstone.
- Shepard proves that the most radical act might be learning to fight with each other, not just for each other.
- For anyone who’s ever loved, lost, or locked arms in protest—this is the book we’ve needed.
Final Thoughts
On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting is essential reading for organizers, scholars of social movements, and anyone curious about the human infrastructure behind headlines. Shepard’s blend of oral history and reflexive analysis offers a blueprint for sustaining activism in an era of burnout and polarization.
Thank you to the publisher, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, and Edelweiss for the free review copy. This book earns a 4.7/5—a point deducted only for its occasional theoretical gaps, but otherwise a luminous contribution to movement literature.
Key Takeaways for Academic Readers:
-Oral History as Praxis: Demonstrates how personal narratives can document movement strategies often excluded from formal histories.
-Conflict as Pedagogy: Challenges romanticized notions of unity, framing disagreements as generative forces.
-Teachability: Ideal for courses on social work, community organizing, and queer studies, with case studies on harm reduction and labor solidarity.
For classroom use: Pair with Sheila Rowbotham’s Dreamers of a New Day to compare historical and contemporary models of activist kinship.
August 27, 2025
Shepard uses fifty interviews with activists to impart lessons on how interpersonal relationships can help or hurt social movements. The biggest takeaway is that when activist groups parallel systems of domination that exist in larger society, they hurt everyone involved, including the movement itself.
Favorite quotes:
"Protests gain in power if they reflect the world we want to create"
"Occupy began as an ideal of challenging inequalities, welcoming strangers, and seeing through differences. Soon enough, the misogyny, status- hungry conflicts, and contradictions of our culture weighed it down, and it came to function as a microcosm of it all."
"At its most egalitarian, friendship helps us experience a tentative sensation of 'freedom and equality' - however fleeting - what Jacques Derrida saw as a space for 'democratic friends'"
Favorite quotes:
"Protests gain in power if they reflect the world we want to create"
"Occupy began as an ideal of challenging inequalities, welcoming strangers, and seeing through differences. Soon enough, the misogyny, status- hungry conflicts, and contradictions of our culture weighed it down, and it came to function as a microcosm of it all."
"At its most egalitarian, friendship helps us experience a tentative sensation of 'freedom and equality' - however fleeting - what Jacques Derrida saw as a space for 'democratic friends'"
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews