Conflict and resolution are the lifeblood of social movements. How, and with whom, do we find lasting friendship, support, and joy in a world in need of so much repair?

In On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting veteran organizer and social worker Benjamin Heim Shepard traces a pressing dynamic of social movements: friendship and conflict. Shepard and ACT UP veteran Ron Goldberg, author of of Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of ACT UP New York, will hold a reading and conversation about friendship and social movements, conflict and resolution in ACT UP. Shepard’s work builds on oral histories with more than thirty movement organizers—from AIDS, queer, trade union, community, Occupy, and harm reduction-based movements—reflecting on the lessons, meanings, and future directions of movements and collective organizing efforts. The book examines the reasons and ways the interviewees became involved in activism, the friendships they formed, and the conflicts they faced. This includes asking questions such as: where do friendships support or undermine these efforts? How can conflicts be resolved? Is there room to agree to disagree? And where do people find lasting support?  Implications and questions about democracy and community practice will be explored.

Goldberg’s work is a coming-of-age memoir of life on the front lines of the AIDS crisis with ACT UP New York. From the moment Ron Goldberg stumbled into his first ACT UP meeting in June 1987, the AIDS activist organization became his life. For the next eight years, he chaired committees, planned protests, led teach-ins, and facilitated their Monday night meetings. He cruised and celebrated at ACT UP parties, attended far too many AIDS memorials, and participated in more than a hundred zaps and demonstrations, becoming the group’s unofficial “Chant Queen,” writing and leading chants for many of their major actions. Boy with the Bullhorn is both a memoir and an immersive history of the original New York chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, from 1987 to 1995, told with great humor, heart, and insight.

Using the author’s own story, “the activist education of a well-intentioned, if somewhat naïve nice gay Jewish theater queen,” Boy with the Bullhorn intertwines Goldberg’s experiences with the larger chronological history of ACT UP.

What they are saying:

“When I needed a friend, Ben was there for me. This books explains how I knew, instinctively, that I could trust him. We had overlapped in ACT UP, and I had read his work on collective power, but there was something in his affect, heart, and character, that let me know that Ben holds friendship as a place of grappling, listening, opening, and acting together. That he expands connection and relationship by embracing us in our weaknesses and vulnerability, as much as our creative contributions and original thought. Here is the handbook to the way and the why that Ben Shepard befriends so well.” —Sarah Schulman, American playwright and author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987–1993

“I have known how brilliant, insightful, and rigorous Ben Shepard now for over two decades, and I relish the blossoming and intersectionality of his work and life; of course this project is necessary and alive–essential to our kinship groups and social structures (right now!). I am in such deep admiration of what is collected and celebrated here—I hope to teach this in my poetry and literature classes and reckon with all the love and conflict it mindfully works to integrate. I can’t underscore enough this voluminous archive of history, documentation, and activism. And there’s so much more I want to say (and stay in) in its important and unveiling (revealing/revelatory?) discussion of friendship.” —Prageeta Sharma, the author of five collections of poetry; her forthcoming poetry collection Onement Won  will be published from Wave Books in the fall of 2025. She is the Henry G. Lee Professor of English at Pomona College.

“A great read on activist relationships—the reason many of us join movements and too many of us leave. This book offers gossipy tidbits and rich insight. Like many of us, especially at a time like this, Ben wonders, ‘How do we get beyond our silos?’ In answer, he shares the insights of scores of his ‘strange and wonderful’ activist friends, on the conflicts and caregiving within movements.” —Lesley Wood, Professor of Sociology, friend of activists and activist friend, York University

“I found myself thoroughly engaged with Benjamin Shepard’s remarkable book on friendship, which is focused on human connections, and disconnections, that occur in the process of working toward a common goal.  I love these stories, and I think this book has much to say about friendship itself and, of course, about the making of a social world.” —Jay Parini, author of Borges and Me.

“I’ve known Benjamin Shepard for decades, watching his writing on movements and collective power, affinity groups which take on drug companies and defend community gardens, battling the WTO and supporting each other. Friendship is a theme of Shepard’s work, but so is the play, and inevitably differences of opinion, the conflict which spins out of efforts to combat institutional injustice, reducing harms, and dovetailing in their own countless directions, spurning still new clashes of ideas and movements. Looking to oral histories, On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting: Oral Histories, Strategies, and Conflicts traces some of this trajectory, looking at the ways movements cope with the very notion of difference.  A leap away from the orthodox or party lines, this is Benjamin Heim Shepard’s most ambitious, and compelling work yet.” -Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, American historian and writer

“What happens when personal friendships collide with collective missions?  On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting masterfully engages the reader with fascinating oral histories of people who must negotiate the complexities of friendships while dealing with differences arising when public political struggles intersect with private loyalties. Through candid interviews, Ben Shepard introduces us to activists recounting how friendships serve as sources of strength, energy, and solidarity, yet how they can often sow conflict, betrayal, and burnout. This wonderful book brings to life Hannah Arendt’s ‘political meaning of friendship’ idea; it insightfully illustrates these tensions and triumphs and the human connections that could enhance or break collective actions in the name of social justice.” —Peter M. Nardi, author of Gay Men’s Friendships: Invincible Communities, and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College

“The furies hover above these stories about friends and their shadows, good selves battling with themselves, rivals and heroes, hubris and true heroism. Homer, our first great storyteller, wrote about Ulysses —his only hero. Shepard has many. Their stories remind us that friendship has changed and so have we. These changes reveal themselves through his singular storytelling.” —Irwin Epstein, Professor Emeritus, CUNY, author of Men as Friends (Koehlerbooks, 2023).

“Ben Shepard knows that understanding the dynamics of radical friendship is the foundation of radical movements. In this book organizers will find many of the necessities that won’t fit neatly on our strategy charts.” —James R. Tracy, editor, A Southern Panther: Conversations with Malik Rahim

“It’s not easy to live up to Aristotelean ethics. When we do, its transformative.” In his previous book, Ben Shepard showed us how essential friendships are to movement building. On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting shows us how critical they are movement survival in Trump Time. Ben’s new book instructs us through the stories of rebel friendships, collectives, and alliances that triumphed, that blew apart, that survived, that fought bitterly, that disintegrated and then regenerated, that were suppressed, that refused to be suppressed—all along carrying forward the vital tasks of resistance and advocacy. The alternately exhilarating and maddening lives we lead as activists and comrades are here in full, along with some hard lessons and much love.—Eric Laursen, author of The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State

“I love this book! The relationships forged through struggle are the foundation of all social movements. They are as complex and beautiful as the organizers interviewed for this book. Activist-scholar Ben Shephard knows this in theory and in practice because he lives it everyday.” — Lynn Lewis, Editor, Women Who Change the World: Stories from the Fight for Social Justice and founder, The Picture the Homeless Oral History Project

“On Activism, Friendships, and Fighting: Oral Histories, Strategies, and Conflicts is a book about friendship. Friendships are typically birthed in proximity or circumstance (neighbors, classmates, coworkers). They are often time-limited, simply fading away rather than blowing up from a conflict. We all know people we ‘used to be friends with’.  There are other books out there about friendship, many inspired by the ‘loneliness epidemic’ that began with COVID isolation. All of them offer the same antidote: make friends, more friends. Find a new hobby, enroll in a class, get involved in your place of worship. This is especially targeted to people who are older, looking for new friends their own age. But here Benjamin Shepard writes a more accurate prescription for people of any age: make friends with people with whom you share a passion that brings meaning to your life. Together you can make a difference in the world.  The people in this book had to do one very specific thing before they could make those friends: they had to be vulnerable. They had to share their own stories, their own struggles, their own dreams. That decision was terrifying for some of them, but all found that it was only in opening up that they could find their tribe. Finding your affinity group does not eliminate the potential for conflict, and Ben shows how those conflicts play out in various groups: “What unites us and what divides us?” The shared purpose often, but not always, is enough to keep the friendships intact. It’s only when the conflicts become attacks that friendships and affinity groups fall apart. You may be surprised to learn that the most personal, most vicious attacks came from inside the groups, not outside. When those personal, internal attacks persist – often without confrontation – those groups splinter, often beyond repair. Ben provides cautionary tales, but also solutions from those willing to have hard conversations and nurture friendships. Can activist groups that are not homogeneous survive? Can the personal friendships within – based on respect and a shared sense of purpose – overcome class differences or disagreements about tactics and ideology? How do you avoid the impulse to treat allies like enemies? Is everything black or white? As the late, great Andy Vélez of ACT UP put it, “You don’t have to like everyone. You just have to be willing to do the work.” And the most important work is listening, listening with an open mind and heart. It is also a book about the importance of storytelling. Only with a diversity of voices can the true stories of oppression, healing, and hope be told. Lin-Manuel Miranda was spot-on when he wrote “Who lives? Who dies? Who tells your story?” The answers in Ben’s book are “Everyone. Everyone. You.” — Victoria Noe, Author of the Friend Grief series F*g Hags, Divas and Moms: The Legacy of Straight Women in the AIDS Community and What Our Friends Left Behind: Grief and Laughter in a Pandemic

By day, Benjamin Shepard, PhD, works as Professor of Human Services at City Tech/CUNY.  By night, he works to keep NYC from turning into a giant shopping mall.

He is also the author/editor of over a dozen books:  White Nights and Ascending Shadows, From ACT UP to the WTO, The Beach Beneath the Streets, Play, Creativity and Social Movements, Queer Political Performance and Protest, Rebel Friendships, Illuminations on Market Street: (a Story about Sex and Estrangement, AIDS and Loss, and Other Preoccupations in San Francisco), Community Projects as Social Activism,  Brooklyn Tides: On the Fall and Rise of a Global Borough, Sustainable Urbanism, Travels in a Conflicted World, and On Friendship, Activism, and Fighting.

In 2010, he was named to the Playboy Honor Role as one of twenty professors “who are reinventing the classroom.”