Benjamin Heim Shepard’s On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting

Introduction

In the preface of his most recent book, On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting: Oral Histories, Strategies, and  Conflicts, Benjamin Heim Shepard (2025) states a powerfully obvious fact about the times we are living in: “With pandemics ebbing and tyrannies rising, we all need friends” (p. xiii). At a time when social movements are more critical than ever, Shepard’s latest book stands as a testament to our need for connection, care, and community while exploring the role that friendship plays in resistance and advocacy.

Shepard knows a thing or two about this, both from his previous scholarship and his personal history as an AIDS activist, community organizer, social worker, researcher, and good troublemaker. He works as a Professor of Human Services at City Tech/CUNY. Over the years, he has protested, been arrested, and participated in various social movements, including ACT UP, Occupy Wall Street, Resist AIM, and the Clandestine Rebel Clown Army, among others. In all these spaces, many of which are chronicled in this book of oral histories, Shepard shows up with compassion and a deep curiosity about humanity. With an open mind, an open heart, and open ears, he listens to the rich stories of connection and disconnection, bonding and rupture that permeate social movements over several decades.

Building on his 2015 book Rebel Friendships, Shepard explores activism as relational work. Many of the groups he has been a part of or researched were often born out of conflict over who gets left out and who gets to tell the history of the movement. In this book, Shepard wrestles profoundly with these dilemmas while also demonstrating an embodied inclusivity rooted in Queer and Feminist theory and practice. Queer theory and pedagogy has been identified as an inclusive approach (Nemi Neto, 2018), and Shepard (2025) locates the epicenter of this inclusivity in queer friendships, which he believes “made room for those on the periphery” (p. 41). He also centers the long history of feminist friendship, “creating bonds of connection, breaking down isolation and separation, in favor of connection” (p. 6).

These frameworks support the structure of Shepard’s book by ensuring a consistent commitment to the essential processes of relational rapport, rupture, and repair, which are fundamental to both activism and human relationships overall.

Summary and Analysis of the Book

Throughout On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting, Shepard examines the role of friendship and community in sustaining long-term movements. He gathers and analyzes oral histories of activists from various backgrounds, identities, and lived experiences. In doing so, he positions personal storytelling as a form of political testimony. He explores human narratives that arise from crisis and trauma but foster compassion and care. However, he does not shy away from the inherent conflicts in our human relationships and how even activist communities can mirror oppressive dynamics and hierarchies, which Shepard (2025) refers to as “supremacy projections” (p. 93). Still, even in the face of conflict, Shepard emphasizes the emergence of new identities and the potential for expanding our communities of care.

The book begins with an introduction on friendship and conflict and then explores the methodology of oral histories and the role it plays in telling the stories of social movements.  Shepard then introduces queer and feminist theory that is embodied in activist friendships and brings a radical inclusivity that that sets the tone for weathering the impact of social problems, trauma, and conflict. The first half of the book navigates conflict and fighting within and beyond activist spaces, followed by a reflective interlude titled “Anarchy is for Lovers,” in which Shepard (2025) ponders the question, “Why did the groups I was working with fall apart?” (p. 97). Ultimately, Shepard explores the importance of dialectical thinking, compromise, friendship, and love, and urges the reader to consider how we can—how we must—”learn from each other, open the movement of opposing forces, and find new possibilities” (p. 116).

The second half of the book boldly envisions the possibilities that arise when we expand our capacity to see, hear, and accept one another in all our beautiful differences, intersectionalities, and struggles. However, Shepard first acknowledges the conflicts that emerge when attempting to create safe spaces free from patriarchal and oppressive forces and dynamics. The oral histories he collects here are filled with ugliness, trauma, and harm, even within movements meant to be countercultural. These testimonies are difficult to read and challenging to bear witness to, but the truth-telling reveals a larger narrative that must be heard before we can move toward restoration. This echoes attorney and activist Bryan Stevenson’s belief that if we have the courage “to engage in truth-telling, something good will happen. There is something waiting for us that feels more like freedom or equality or justice—but to get there, we have to do the hard work” (para. 9).

Shepard gives us tools to perform this important work: tools for listening and engaging in conflict through dialogue. Drawing from Freire’s (1970) and Foucault’s (1981) philosophies, Shepard emphasizes the significance of dialogue and discourse in human liberation, but only when power dynamics are analyzed and addressed. This forms part of the “working through” process that Shepard chronicles through powerful stories and narratives, in which we “participate in a process of collective meaning making” (p. 25), which is, in itself, an act of resistance.

Meaning-making is an act of resistance because it emerges only through critical thinking, lived experience, and direct engagement with diverse perspectives. We do not truly arrive at meaning through passive acceptance of what others tell us something should mean. Instead, meaning is cultivated when we explore, question, and determine for ourselves the personal and subjective significance of an experience or event—especially as it relates to our own identities. In this way, choosing to make meaning together is a refusal to be defined by dominant narratives or social isolation; it is a reclaiming of voice, agency, and community.

“On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting” concludes with reflections on activist friendships, which becomes one of the most significant sections of the book as it situates the work of rapport, rupture, and repair within the current sociopolitical and cultural context of modern life (particularly in the United States). Shepard (2025) discusses the challenges that the macro-level context imposes on micro-level relationships, stating, “today’s call out culture makes it difficult for friendships to endure conflict” (p. 166). Those of us whose work is public facing in any way know this to be true. There is a tendency for people to establish their own prowess and identity in opposition to, not in collaboration with, others, creating further rifts in a movement, even one in which supposed “enemies” are marching toward similar outcomes or goals. Oh, the irony.

Yet, instead of calling us out, Shepard honors the work of Loretta Ross (2025) and bell hooks (2000) to call all of us back in and help us find something of ourselves in each other, to embrace our differences, rather than fearing them. hooks (2000) wrote: “When we choose to love we choose to move against fear—against alienation—and separation…to connect—to find ourselves in each other” (p. 134).

Summarizing his own collective work, Shepard writes:

“This book begins and ends with stories of comrades clashing and coming together, ever joining and separating and linking anew, working through problems and finding meaning and connection. Multiple narratives overlap throughout the text, some literary, others theoretical, stories of activists coping with problems, striving to do something, and making friends along the way. Inevitably the comrades merge and split, clash or endure. Along the way, activists tried to keep these communities from replicating prevailing social dynamics of competition, racism, revenge, and sexism, negotiating ideas of speech, safety, fairness, and pleasure along with concepts of justice and accountability, resolution, and dialogue” (p. 170).

Shepard does not resolve these issues, which some may view as a limitation; however, to “solve” these complex dynamics might be too reductionist. Rather, like an activist historian, he archives these stories and testimonies of what is possible, serving as guideposts and warning signs for future activist communities. Instead, he leaves us contemplating how we can move beyond our silos. He issues a powerful call to action to do so if we are going to harness our collective power to find and generate “new waves of care and community” in our world (Shepard, p. 173).

Conclusion

“On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting” is a highly relevant, insightful, and inspiring read in these complex times. Shepard’s integration of emotion, care, and vulnerability with his sociopolitical analysis creates an intersectional lens for the reader that calls us to reflect on our own personal, professional, and political squabbles with a more critical, reflective mindset and a more open heart. He is calling us in to broaden the coalition of change—to expand the tent to make room for our differences. His application of queer and feminist theory provides a useful heuristic for decoding the complex oral histories of social activism that Shepard includes in his book. In doing so, Shepard makes this book accessible to a wide variety of audiences: academics, practitioners, and grassroots organizers. This book can help inform activist praxis for future movements by helping us implement movement-building strategies based on allyship, collaboration, and radical friendship—the kind of relationships that can endure conflict by finding common ground through our shared humanity and values of justice and care.

References

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.

hooks, bell. (2000). All About Love: New Visions. New York: William Morrow and Company.

Nemi Neto, J. (2018). Queer pedagogy: Approaches to inclusive teaching. Policy futures in education, 16(5), 589-604. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210317751273

Ross, L. J. (2025). Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel.      Simon and Schuster.

Shepard, B. (2015). Rebel Friendships: “Outsider” Networks and Social Movements. New York:  Palgrave Macmillan.

Shepard, B. (2025). On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting: Oral Histories, Strategies, and Conflicts. Philadelphia, PA: Common Notions.

Stevenson, B. (2020, December 5). On creating a new era of truth and justice. A lecture presented at the Cleveland Public Library. Notes retrieved from: https://cpl.org/bryan-stevenson-on-creating-a-new-era-of-truth-and-justice/